1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP

classes ::: Maps of Meaning, Jordan Peterson, Psychology, chapter,
children :::
branches :::
see also :::

bookmarks: Instances - Definitions - Quotes - Chapters - Wordnet - Webgen

object:1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP
book class:Maps of Meaning
author class:Jordan Peterson
subject class:Psychology
class:chapter

CHAPTER 3: APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION: ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP
Ideologies may be regarded as incomplete myths as partial stories, whose compelling nature is a
consequence of the appropriation of mythological ideas. The philosophy attri buting individual evil to the
pathology of social force constitutes one such partial story. Although society, the Great Father, has a
tyrannical aspect, he also shelters, protects, trains and disciplines the developing individual and places
necessary constraints on his thought, emotion and behavior.
Subjugation to lawful authority might more reasonably be considered in light of the metaphor of the
apprenticeship. Childhood dependency must be replaced by group membership, prior to the development of
full maturity. Such membership provides society with another individual to utilize as a tool, and provides
the maturing but still vulnerable individual with necessary protection (with a group-fostered identity).
The capacity to abide by social rules, regardless of the specifics of the discipline, can therefore be
regarded as a necessary transitional stage in the movement from childhood to adulthood.
Discipline should therefore be regarded as a skill that may be developed through adherence to strict
ritual, or by immersion within a strict belief system or hierarchy of values. Once such discipline has been
attained, it may escape the bounds of its developmental precursor. It is in this manner that true freedom is
attained. It is at this level of analysis that all genuine religious and cultural traditions and dogmas are
equivalent, regardless of content: they are all masters whose service may culminate in the development of
self-mastery, and consequent transcendence of tradition and dogma.
Adoption of this analytic standpoint allows for a certain moral relativism, conjoined with an absolutist
higher-order morality. The particulars of a disciplinary system may be somewhat unimportant. The fact
that adherence to such a system is necessary, however, cannot be disregarded.
Apprenticeship is necessary, but should not on that account be glamorized. Dogmatic systems make
harsh and unreasonable masters. Systems of belief and moral action and those who are identified with
them are concerned above all with self-maintenance and preservation of predictability and order. The
(necessarily) conservative tendencies of great systems makes them tyrannical, and more than willing to
crush the spirit of those they serve. Apprenticeship is a precursor to freedom, however and nothing
necessary and worthwhile is without its danger.

We are all familiar with the story of benevolent nature, threatened by the rapacious forces of the corrupt
individual and the society of the machine. The plot is solid, the characters believable but Mother Nature
is also malarial mosquitoes, parasitical worms, cancer and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. The story of
peaceful and orderly tradition, undermined by the incautious and decadent (with the ever-present threat of
chaos lurking in the background) is also familiar, and compelling, and true except that the forces of
tradition, however protective, tend to be blind, and to concern themselves more with their own stability
than with the well-being of those subject to them.
We have all heard and identified with the story of the brave pioneer, additionally plough in hand,
determined to wrest the good life and the stable state from the intransigent forces of nature although we
may be sporadically aware that the intransigent forces shaped so heroically included the now-decimated
original inhabitants of our once-foreign landscape.
We all know, finally, the story of the benevolent individual, genuine and innocent, denied access to the
nourishing forces of the true and natural world, corrupted by the unreasonable strictures of society. This
story has its adherents, as well not least because it is reassuring to believe that everything bad stems
from without, rather than within.
These stories are all ideologies (and there are many more of them). Ideologies are attractive, not least to
the educated modern mind credulous, despite its skepticism particularly if those who embody or
otherwise promote them allow the listener every opportunity to identify with the creative and positive
characters of the story, and to deny their association with the negative. Ideologies are also powerful, and
dangerous. Their power stems from their incomplete but effective appropriation of mythological ideas.

175

Their danger stems from their attractiveness, in combination with their incompleteness. Ideologies only tell
part of the story and they tell that part as if it were complete. This means that they do not take into
account vast stretches of the world. It is incautious to act in the world, as if only a set of its constituent
elements exist. The ignored elements conspire, so to speak, as a consequence of their repression and
make their existence known, inevitably, in some undesirable manner.
Knowledge of the grammar of mythology might well constitute an antidote to ideological gullibility.
Genuine myths are capable of representing the totality of conflicting forces, operating in any given
situation. Every positive force has its omnipresent and eternal enemy. The beneficial aspect of the
natural environment is therefore viewed in light of its capacity to arbitrarily inflict suffering and death.
The protective and sheltering capacity of society is therefore understood in light of its potent tendency to
tyranny and the elimination of necessary diversity. The heroic aspect of the individual is regarded in light
of the ever-lurking figure of the adversary: arrogant, cowardly, and cruel. A story accounting for all of
these constituent elements of reality is balanced, and stable, in contrast to an ideology and far less
likely to produce an outburst of social psychopathology. But the forces that make up the world as a forum
for action constantly war in opposition. How is it possible to lay a path between them, so to speak to
configure a mode of being that takes all things into account, without being destroyed in the process? A
developmental account of the relationship between the forces of the individual, society and chaos might
aid in the comprehension of their proper interplay.
I counselled an immature thirty-something-year-old man at one point during my service as a
psychological intern. He was always working at cross-purposes to himself, placing obstacles in his path and
then tripping over them. (This was the literal truth, upon occasion. He was living with his mother, after the
failure of his marriage. I suggested that he start cleaning up his life, by cleaning up his room which is a
more difficult step than might be casually presupposed, for someone habitually and philosophically
undisciplined. He placed a vacuum cleaner in the doorway of his bedroom, after getting about half-way
through the task. For a week he had to step over it but he didnt move it, and he didnt finish the job. That
situation could reasonably be regarded as a polysemic sample of his life). This person had sought help
because his disintegrated marriage had produced a son, who he loved (or at least wanted to love). He came
to therapy because he didnt want his child to grow up badly, as he had. I tried to scare him into behaving
properly, because I believed (and believe) that terror is a great and underutilized motivator. (Anxiety
which is ineradicable can work against you, or for you). We spent a long time outlining, in great detail,
the consequences of his undisciplined behavior, to that point in his life (no successful career, no intimate
relationship, an infant son thrust into a broken family) and the likely long-term future results (increasing
self-disgust, cynicism about life, increased cruelty and revenge-seeking, hopelessness and despair). We also
discussed the necessity for discipline that is, for adherence to a coherent and difficult moral code for
himself and for his son.
Of course, he worried that any attempt on his part to shape the behavior of his son would interfere with
the natural development and flowering of the childs innate potential. So it might be said, using Jungs
terminology, that he was an unconscious exponent, 359 for example, of the philosophy of Rousseau:
With what simplicity I should have demonstrated that man is by nature good, and that only our
institutions have made him bad!360
That is the Rousseau who repeatedly placed his own children in foundling asylums, because their
existence was inconvenient to him (and, we must presuppose, to the flowering of his intrinsic goodness).
Anyway the fervent hope of every undisciplined person (even an undisciplined genius) is that his current
worthlessness and stupidity is someone elses fault. If in the best of cases it is societys fault, then
society can be made to pay. This sleight-of-hand maneuver transforms the undisciplined into the admirable
rebel, at least in his own eyes, and allows him to seek unjustified revenge in the disguise of the
revolutionary hero. A more sickening and self-serving parody of heroic behavior can hardly be imagined.
One time my client came to me with a dream:
My son was asleep in his crib inside a small house. Lightning came in through his window, and bounced
around inside the house. The lightning was powerful, and beautiful, but I was afraid it would burn the
house down.

176

Dream interpretation is a difficult and uncertain business, but I believed that this image was interpretable,
within the context of our ongoing discussions. The lightning represented the potential implicit in the infant.
This potential was an exceedingly strong and useful force like electricity. But electricity is only useful
when harnessed. Otherwise it burns down houses.
I cant say much about the outcome of this particular case, as internship contact with those seeking
psychological help tends to be restricted in time. My client seemed, at least, more negatively affected by his
immature behavior which struck me as a reasonable start; furthermore, he understood (at least explicitly,
although not yet procedurally) that discipline could be the father of the hero, and not just his enemy. The
dawning of such understanding meant the beginnings of a mature and healthy philosophy of life, on his
part. Such a philosophy was outlined in explicit detail by Friedrich Nietzsche despite his theoretically
antidogmatic stance.
Nietzsche has been casually regarded as a great enemy of Christianity. I believe, however, that he was
consciously salutary in that role. When the structure of an institution has become corrupt particularly
according to its own principles it is the act of a friend to criticize it. Nietzsche is also viewed as fervid
individualist and social revolutionary as the prophet of the superman, and the ultimate destroyer of
tradition. He was, however, much more sophisticated and complex than that. He viewed the intolerable
discipline of the Christian church, which he despised, as a necessary and admirable precondition to the
freedom of the European spirit a freedom he regarded as not yet fully realized:
Every morality is, as opposed to laisser aller, a bit of tyranny against nature; also against reason;
but this in itself is no objection, as long as we do not have some other morality which permits us to
decree that every kind of tyranny and unreason is impermissible. What is essential and inestimable in
every morality is that it constitutes a long compulsion: to understand Stoicism or Port-Royal or
Puritanism, one should recall the compulsion under which every language so far has achieved strength
and freedom the metrical compulsion of rhyme and rhythm.
How much trouble the poets and orators of all peoples have taken not excepting a few prose writers
today in whose ear there dwells an inexorable conscience for the sake of some foolishness, as
utilitarian dolts say, feeling smart submitting abjectly to capricious laws, as anarchists say, feeling
free, even free-spirited. But the curious fact is that all there is or has been on earth of freedom,
subtlety, boldness, dance, and masterly sureness, whether in thought itself or in government, or in
rhetoric and persuasion, in the arts just as in ethics, has developed only owing to the tyranny of such
capricious laws; and in all seriousness, the probability is by no means small that precisely this is
nature and natural and not that laisser aller.
Every artist knows how far from any feeling of letting himself go his most natural state is the free
ordering, placing, disposing, giving form in the moment of inspiration and how strictly and subtly he
obeys thousandforld laws precisely then, laws that precisely on account of their hardness and
determination defy all formulation through concepts (even the firmest concept is, compared with them,
not free of fluctuation, multiplicity and ambiguity).
What is essential in heaven and on earth seems to be, to say it once more, that there should be
obedience over a long period of time and in a single direction: given that, something always develops,
and has developed, for whose sake it is worth while to live on earth; for example, virtue, art, music,
dance, reason, spirituality something transfiguring, subtle, mad, and divine. The long unfreedom of the
spirit, the mistrustful constraint in the communicability of thoughts, the discipline thinkers imposed on
themselves to think within the directions laid down by a church or court, or under Aristotelian
presuppositions, the long spiritual will to interpret all events under a Christian schema and to rediscover
and justify the Christian god in every accident all this, however forced, capricious, hard, gruesom, and
antirational, has shown itself to be the means through which the European spirit has been trained to
strength, ruthless curiosity, and subtle mobility, though admittedly in the process an irreplaceable
amount of strength and spirit had to be crushed, stifled, and ruined (for here, as everywhere, nature
manifests herself as she is, in all her prodigal and indifferent magnificence, which is outrageous but
noble).

177

That for thousands of years European thinkers thought merely in order to prove something today,
conversely, we suspect every thinker who wants to prove something that the conclusions that ought
to be the result of their most rigorous reflection were always settled from the start, just as it used to be
with Asiatic astrology, and still is today with the innocuous Christian-moral interpretation of our most
intimate personal experiences for the glory of God and for the salvation of the soul this tyranny,
this caprice, this rigorous and grandiose stupidity has educated the spirit. Slavery is, as it seems, both in
the cruder and in the more subtle sense, the indispensable means of spiritual discipline and cultivation,
too. Consider any morality with this in mind: what there is in it of nature teaches hatred of the laisser
aller, of any all-too-great freedom, and implants the need for limited horizons and the nearest tasks
teaching the narrowing of our perspective, and thus in a certain sense stupidity, as a condition of life and
growth.
You shall obey someone and for a long time: else you will perish and lose the last respect for
yourself this appears to me to be the categorical imperative of nature which, to be sure, is neither
categorical as the old Kant would have it (hence the else) nor addressed to the individual (what do
individuals matter to her?), but to peoples, races, ages, classes but above all to the whole human
animal, to man.361
This is the philosophy of apprenticeship useful for conceptualizing the necessary relationship between
subordination to a potent historically-constructed social institution and the eventual development of true
freedom.
A child cannot live on its own. Alone, it drowns in possibility. The unknown supersedes individual
adaptive capacity, in the beginning. It is only the transmission of historically determined behavioral
patterns and, secondarily, their concomitant descriptions that enables survival in youth. These patterns
of behavior and hierarchies of value which children mimic and then learn expressly give secure
structure to uncertain being. It is the group, initially in parental guise, that stands between the child and
certain psychological catastrophe. The depression, anxiety and physical breakdown that is characteristic of
early childhood separation from parents is the result of exposure to too much unknown and incorporation
of too little cultural structure. The long period of human dependency must be met with the provision of a
stable social environment with predictable social interactions, which meet individual motivational
demands; with the provision of behavioral patterns and schemas of value capable of transforming the
unpredictable and frightening unknown into its beneficial equivalent. This means that transformation of
childhood dependency means adoption of ritual behavior (even regular meal-and-bed-times are rituals) and
incorporation of a morality (a framework of reference) with an inevitably-metaphysical foundation.
Successful transition from childhood to adolescence means identification with the group, rather than
continued dependency upon the parents. Identification with the group provides the individual with an
alternative, generalized, non-parental source of protection from the unknown, and provides the group with
the resources of another soul. The group constitutes a historically-validated pattern of adaptation (specific
behaviors, descriptions of behavior, and general descriptions). The individuals identification with this
pattern streng thens him when he needs to separate from his parents, and take a step towards adulthood
and streng thens the group, insofar as it now has access to his individual abilities. The individuals
identification with this pattern bolsters his still-maturing ability to stand on his own two feet supports his
determination to move away from the all-encompassing and too-secure maternal-dependent world.
Identity with the group therefore comes to replace recourse to parental authority as way of being in the
face of the unknown provides structure for social relationships (with self and others), determines the
meaning of objects, provides desirable end as ideal, and establishes acceptable procedure (acceptable mode
for the attainment of earthly paradise).
Personal identification with the group means socialization, individual embodiment of the valuations of
the group primarily, as expressed in behavior. Group values constitute cumulative historical judgment
rendered on the relative importance of particular states of motivation, with due regard for intensity, as
expressed in individual action, in the social context. All societies are composed of individuals whose
actions constitute embodiment of the creative past. That creative past can be conceptualized as the
synthesis of all culture-creating exploratory communicative activity, including the act of synthesis itself.

178

Myth comprises description of procedural knowledge; constitutes episodic/semantic representation of
cumulative behavioral wisdom, in increasingly abstracted form. Introduction of the previously-dependent
individual at adolescence to the world of ancestral behavior and myth constitutes transmission of culture
inculcation of the Great Father, historically-determined personality and representation of such as
adaptation to, explanation of, and protection against the unknown, the Great and Terrible Mother. This
introduction reaches its culmination with initiation, the primary ritual signifying cultural transmission the
event which destroys the unconscious union between child and biological mother.
The child is born in a state of abject dependence. The caring mother is simultaneously individual force,
and embodiment of impersonal biological beneficience is the eternal mythic Virgin mother, material
consort of God. The infant comes equipped with the ability to respond to this innately nurturing presence,
to develop a symbiotic relationship with his or her caregiver, and to grow increasingly strong. The
maturation of creative exploratory capacity which constitutes the basis for mature self-reliance appears
dependent for its proper genesis upon the manifestation of maternal solicitude: upon love, balanced
promotion of individual ability, and protection from harm. Tender touch and care seduces the infant to life,
to expansion of independence, to potential for individual strength and ability.362 The absence of such regard
means failure to thrive means depression and intrapsychic damage, even death.363
The maturing individual necessarily (tragically, heroically) expands past the domain of paradisaic
maternal protection, in the course of development; necessarily attains an apprehension whose desire for
danger, whose need for life, exceeds the capability of maternal shelter. This means that the growing child
eventually comes to face problems how to get along with peers, in peer-only play groups; how to select a
mate, from among a myriad of potential mates that cannot be solved (indeed, may be made more
difficult) by involvement of the beneficial maternal. Such problems might be regarded as emergent
consequences of the process of maturation itself; of the increased possibility for action and comprehension
necessarily attendant upon maturation. A four-year old, making the transition to kindergarten, cannot use
three-year old habits and schemas of representation to make his way in the novel social world. A thirteenyear old cannot use a seven-year old personality no matter how healthy to solve the problems
endemic to adolescence. The group steps in most evidently, at the point of adolescence and provides
permeable protective shelter to the child too old for the mother, but not old enough to stand alone. The
universally disseminated rituals of initiation induced spiritual death and subsequent rebirth catalyzes
the development of adult personality; follows the fundamental pattern of the cyclic, circular cosmogonic
myth. The culturally-determined rites and biological processes associated with initiation constitute absolute
destruction of childhood personality, of childhood dependence initial non-self-conscious paradisal
stability for necessary catalysis of group identification. Such rituals tend to be more complex and farreaching for males than for females. This is perhaps in part because male development seems more easily
led astray, in a socially-harmful manner, than female (adolescent males are more delinquent and
aggressive364) and in part because female transition to adulthood is catalyzed by nature in the form of
comparatively rapid maturation and the naturally dramatic onset of menstruation.
The group to which the initiate is introduced consists of a complex interweaving of behavioral patterns
established and subsequently organized in the past, as a consequence of voluntary creative communicative
exploration. The group is the current expression of a pattern of behavior developed over the course of
hundreds of thousands of years. This pattern is constructed of behaviors established initially by creative
heroes by individuals who were able and willing to do and to think something that no one had been able
to do or to think before. Integration of these behaviors into a stable hierarchy, and abstract representation of
them, in the course of a process beginning with imitation, and ending in semantic description, produces a
procedural and declarable structure whose incorporation dramatically increases the individuals behavioral
repertoire and his or her descriptive, predictive and representational ability. This incorporation which is
primarily implicit, and therefore invisible is identification with the group. Identification with the group
means the provision of determinate meaning, as the antidote to excruciating ignorance and exposure to
chaos.
A multitude of (specific) rituals have evolved to catalyze such identification. Catalysis often appears
necessary, as the movement to adolescence is vitally important, but psychologically challenging, involving
as it does voluntary sacrifice of childhood dependency [which is a valid form of adaptation, but
predicated upon (nondeclarative) assumptions suitable only to the childhood state]. Such transitional rituals

179

are generally predicated upon enaction of the fundamental narrative structure the Way previously
presented. Ritual initiation, for example a ubiquitous formal feature of pre-experimental culture 365
takes place at or about the onset of puberty, when it is critical for further psychological development and
continued tribal security that boys transcend their dependency upon their mothers. This separation often
takes place under purposefully frightening and violent conditions. In the general initation pattern, the men,
acting as a unit (as the embodiment of social history 366), separate the initiates from their mothers who
offer a certain amount of more-or-less dramatized resistance, and some genuine sorrow (at the death of
their children).
The boys know that they are to be introduced to some monstrous power who exists in the night, in the
forest or cave, in the depths of the unknown. This power, capable of devouring them, serves as the
mysterious deity of the initiation. Once removed from their mothers, the boys begin their ritual. This
generally involves some mixture of induced regression of personality reduction to the state of
precosmogonic chaos, extant even prior to earliest childhood and induction of overwhelming fear,
accompanied by severe physical or spiritual hardship or torture. The initiates are often forbidden to talk,
and may be fed by the men. They may be circumcised, mutilated, or interred alive required to undergo
intense punishment, subjected to intense dread. They symbolically pass into the maw of the Terrible
Mother and are reborn as men, as adult members of the tribe, which is the historical cumulation of the
consequences of adaptive behavior. (Initiates often actually pass, literally, through the body of some
constructed beast, aided by the elders of the tribe, who serve as the agents of this deity367). When the rite is
successfully completed, the initiated are no longer children, dependent upon the arbitrary beneficience of
nature in the guise of their mothers but are members of the tribe of men, active standard-bearers of their
particular culture, who have had their previously personality destroyed, so to speak, by fire who have
successfully faced the worst trial they are likely ever to encounter in their lives.
The terror induced by ritual exposure to the forces of the unknown appears to put the brain into a state
characterized by enhanced suggestibility or, at least, by dramatically heightened need for order, by need
for coherent and meaningful narrative. The person who is in a state where he know longer knows what to
do or what to expect is highly motivated to escape that state, by whatever means are necessary. The
stripping away of a former mode of adaptation, engendered by dramatic shift of social locale (of context),
produces within the psyche of those so treated a state of acute apprehension, and intense desire for the reestablishment of predictability and sense. This acute apprehension is, as we have seen, the consequence of
the renovelization of the environment: sufficient challenge posed to the integrity of a previous
personality disrupts its structure, freeing phenomena previously adapted to from the grasp of familiar
action and valuation. The phenomena, thus free, then once again possess sufficient energy to
motivate their reconceptualization (that is, to make of that process of reconceptualization something
sufficient vital and important to stamp itself into memory into permanent incarnation as personality).
The ritually reduced and terrified initiates, unable to rely on the adaptive strategies utilized during
their childhood, desperately need new explanations and new patterns of behavior to survive in what is, after
all, a new environment. That new environment is the society of men, where women are sexual partners and
equals instead of source of dependent comfort; where the provision of food and shelter is a responsibility,
and not a given; where security final authority, in the form of parent no longer exists. As the childhood
personality is destroyed, the adult personality a manifestation of transmitted culture is inculcated. The
general initiatory narrative or ritual is presented schematically in Figure 46: The Death and
Rebirth of the Adolescent Initiate.
The comparatively more abstracted rite of baptism is predicated upon similar principles. Baptism is the
dramatic or episodic representation of the act or ritual of initiation or, at least, stands mid-way between
the entirely unconscious or procedural forms of initiation and their semantically abstracted symbolic
equivalents. Baptism is spiritual birth (rebirth), as opposed to birth of the flesh. The font of the church,
which contains the baptismal water, is a symbolic analog of the uterus368 (the uterus ecclesiastiae), which is
the original place that transforms precosmogonic chaos into spirit-embodied matter (into personality).
When the initiate is plunged into (now sprinkled with) baptismal water, he or she is symbolically reduced,
from insufficient stability to chaos; is drowned as a profane being, and then resurrected; is re-united
(incestuously, mythically speaking) with the Great Mother, then reborn formally into the community of the
spirit.369 Such abstracted reductions to death and symbolic reconstructions constitute ritualization and

180

d

Sh
e

ide

th

Gu

Rit
u
an alize
dD
d
isin Des
t
eg cent
Em
rat
erg
ion
e
n
Lin
ked t Ma
An turat
om
io
aly n-

Ad
o
ar ptio
ed
n
o
M
ap f

representation of the processes endlessly necessary to revitalization of the individual personality and the
social group. Eliade states:

CHAOS

Figure 46: The Death and Rebirth of the Adolescent Initiate
The majority of initiatory ordeals more or less clearly imply a ritual death followed by resurrection or a
new birth. The central moment of every initiation is represented by the ceremony symbolizing the death
of the novice and his return to the fellowship of the living. But he returns to life a new man, assuming
another mode of being. Initiatory death signifies the end at once of childhood, of ignorance, and of the
profane condition....
All the rites of rebirth or resurrection, and the symbols that they imply, indicate that the novice has
attained to another mode of existence, inaccessible to those who have not undergone the initiatory
ordeals, who have not tasted death. We must note this characteristic of the archaic mentality: the belief
that a state cannot be changed without first being annihilated in the present instance, without the
childs dying to childhood. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this obsession with
beginnings, which, in sum, is the obsession with the absolute beginning, the cosmogony. For a thing to
be well done, it must be done as it was the first time. But the first time, the thing this class of objects,

181

this animal, this particular behavior did not exist: when, in the beginning, this object, this animal, this
institution, came into existence, it was as if, through the power of the Gods, being arose from nonbeing.
Initiatory death is indispensable for the beginning of spiritual life. Its function must be understood in
relation to what it prepares: birth to a higher mode of being.... [I]nitiatory death is often symbolized, for
example, by darkness, by cosmic night, by the telluric womb, the hut, the belly of a monster. All these
images express regression to a preformal state, to a latent mode of being (complementary to the
precosmogonic Chaos), rather than total annihilation (in the sense in which, for example, a member of
the modern societies conceives death). These images and symbols of ritual death are inextricably
connected with germination, with embryology; they already indicate a new life in course of
preparation....
For archaic thought, then, man is made he does not make himself all by himself. It is the old
initiates, the spiritual masters, who make him. But these masters apply what was revealed to them at the
beginning of Time by Supernatural Beings. They are only the representatives of these Beings; indeed, in
many cases, they incarnate them. This is as much as to say that in order to become a man, it is necessary
to resemble a mythical model.370
Groups are individuals, uniform in their acceptance of a collective historically-determined behavioral
pattern and schema of value. Internalization of this pattern, and the description thereof (the myths and
philosophies, in more abstracted cultures which accompany it), simultaneously produces ability to act in a
given (social) environment, to predict the outcomes of such action, and to determine the meaning of general
events (meaning inextricably associated with behavioral outcome). Such internalization culminates in the
erection of implicit procedural and explicit declarable structures of personality, which are more or less
isomorphic in nature, which simultaneously constitute habit and moral knowledge. Habit, the former case,
is a way of being, a general strategy for redemption in the natural and cultural spheres, shaped by the
social exchange of affect-laden information, mastered to the point of unconscious automaticity. Moral
knowledge wisdom, the latter case is fixed representation of the (previously) unknown; is generation
of capacity to predict the behavior of objects, other people and the self. The sum total of accurate
behaviorally-linked representation of the world as forum for action constitutes the structure which reduces
the manifold meaning of the experiential plenum to a restricted and therefore manageable domain. This
manifold meaning is anxiety, on first contact (or under uncontrolled, overwhelming or involuntary
conditions of exposure) anxiety, which would otherwise be generated in response to everything.
Interference with adolescent initiation-catalyzed group incarnation is therefore disruption of or failure to
(re)generate the structure providing for respite from unbearable existential anxiety.
A society works to the degree that it provides its members with the capacity to predict and control the
events in their experiential field works, insofar as it provides a barrier, protection from the unknown or
unexpected. Culture provides a ritual model for behavioral emulation, and heuristics for desire and
prediction provides active procedures for behavior in the social and non-social worlds, plus description of
processes in the social and non-social worlds, including behavioral processes. Incorporation of culture
therefore means fixed adaptation to the unknown; means, simultaneously, inhibition of novelty-induced
fear, regulation of interpersonal behavior, and provision of redemptive mode of being. The group is the
historical structure that humanity has erected between the individual and the terrible unknown. Intrapsychic
representation of culture establishment of group identity protects individuals from overwhelming fear
of their own experience; from contact with the a priori meaning of things and situations. This is the
intercession of the mythic Great Father against the terrible world of the Great Mother. This intercession is
provision of a specific goal-schema, allowing for the transformation of the vagaries of individual
experience into positive events, within a social context, in the presence of protection against the unbearable
unknown.
This historically-determined cultural structure is constructed of courageously engineered and creatively
integrated responses to situations that arise typically in the course of human experience, arranged in terms
of their relative importance, organized simultaneously to minimize intrapsychic motivational and external
interpersonal conflict, and to allow for continued adaptation. This (primarily non-verbal) sociallytransmitted structure of assumption, expectation and behavior is very stable, under most circumstances. It

182

has seen everything, and done everything, so to speak, and cannot be easily undermined. In most situations,
it efficiently governs social interaction, general expectation, and organization of goal-directed behavior. In
its implicit imitative, dramatic, narrative form, it is exceptionally durable, and highly resistant to nave
social revolution.371 However, such stability is only advantageous in stable times. Under exceptional
circumstances when the environment shifts rapidly, for reasons independent of or dependent upon human
activity the historical personality must be altered, or even qualitatively reconfigured, to allow equally
rapid adaptation to take place. This process of re-arrangement is necessarily predicated upon disruption
(death) of the old order. Dissolution of the old order means (potential) return of the determinate meaning of
experiential objects to their pre-classified state of chaos simultaneously unbearably threatening and,
secondarily, infinitely promising. Apprehension of the inevitability of such dissolution however vague
constitutes one potent barrier to the process of creative re-adaptation.
The historical structure protects itself and its structure in two related manners. First, it inhibits
intrinsically rewarding but anti-social behaviors (those which might upset the stability of the group
culture) by associating them with certain punishment (or at least with the threat thereof). This punishment
might include actual application of undesirable penalties or, more subtly removal of right to serve as
recognized representative of the social structure. This means, in the latter case, forced individual forfeit of
identification with (imitation of, internalization of) said social structure (at least for the once-socialized),
and induction of overwhelming guilt or anxiety, as a consequence of goal loss, value dissolution, and
subsequent re-exposure to the novelty of decontextualized experience. It is the potential for such an
affectively-unbearable state that comprises the power of banishment, which can be used consciously by
societies to punish wrongdoers, or that can be experienced as a self-induced state, by individuals careless,
arrogant or ignorant enough to kill what supports them. 372
The culturally-determined historical structure protects and maintains itself secondly by actively
promoting individual participation in behavioral strategies that satisfy individual demand, and that
simultaneously increase the stability of the group. The socially-constructed way of a profession, for
example, allows the individual who incarnates that profession opportunity for meaningful activity in a
manner that supports or at least does not undermine the stability of the historically-determined structure
which regulates the function of his or her threat-response system. Adoption of a socially sanctioned
professional personality therefore provides the initiated-and-identified individual with peer-approved
opportunity for intrinsic goal-derived pleasure, and with relative freedom from punishment, shame and
guilt. Potentially upsetting competition between socially-sanctified ways of being, within a given social
group, is also subject to cultural minimization. Each of the many professions whose union comprises a
functioning complex society is the consequence of the heroic past activities which established the
profession, modified by the equally heroic activities that allowed for its maintenance and update (in the
presence of other competing activities and ever-changing environmental demand). Lawyer and
physician, for example, are two embodied ideologies, nested within more complex overarching narrative
schemas, whose domains of activity, knowledge and competence have been delimited, one against the
other, until both can occupy the same territory, without emergence of destructive and counterproductive
conflict. This is the organization of dead kings, so to speak, under the dominion of the hero: doctors
and lawyers are both subject to higher-order (legal) principles which govern their behavior such that one
can tolerate at least within reason the presence of the other.
The properly structured patriarchal system fulfills the needs of the present, while taking into account
those of the future; simultaneously, satisfies the demands of the self with those of the other. The suitability
of the cultural solution is judged by individual affective response. This grounding of verification in
universally constant affect, in combination with the additional constraints of stability and adaptability,
means inevitable construction of human groups and human moral systems with centrally identifiable
features and processes of generation. The construction of a successful group the most difficult of feats
means establishment of a society composed of individuals who act in their own interest (at least enough to
render their life bearable) and who, in doing so, simultaneously maintain and advance their culture. The
demand to satisfy, protect and adapt, individually and socially and to do so over vast and variable
stretches of time places severe intrinsic constraints on the manner in which successful human
societies can operate. It might be said that such constraints provide universal boundaries for acceptable
human morality. The nature of what constitutes such acceptability fosters direct conflict or debate, in terms

183

of the details, but the broad picture is necessarily clear. That picture is presented and represented in ritual,
mythology and narrative, which eternally depict intrinsically meaningful themes, playing themselves out, in
eternally fascinating fashion. Nietzsche states:
That individual philosophical concepts are not anything capricious or autonomously evolving, but grow
up in connection and relationship with each other; that, however suddenly and arbitrarily they seem to
appear in the history of thought, they nevertheless belong just as much to a system as all the members of
the fauna of a continent is betrayed in the end also by the fact that the most diverse philosophers keep
filling in a definite fundamental scheme of possible philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always
revolve once more in the same orbit; however independent of each other they may feel themselves with
their critical or systematic wills, something within them leads them, something impels them in a definite
order, one after the other to wit, the innate systematic structure and relationship of their concepts.
Their thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a recognition, a remembering, a return and a
homecoming to a remote, primordial, and inclusive household of the soul, out of which those concepts
grew originally: philosophizing is to this extent a kind of atavism of the highest order.373
Adoption of a particular way of being allows, concurrently, for determination of the meaning of objects,
and the morality of behaviors. Objects attain significance according to their perceived utility with regards
to their capacity to further movement away from the unbearable present towards the ideal future; likewise,
moral behavior is seen as furthering and immoral behavior as impeding or undermining such movement. Of
course, identification of what constitutes the basis for establishing the nature of morality or the comparative
value of objects is no simple matter. In fact, such judgment comprises the constant central demand of
adaptation. No fixed answer solution to this problem can be offered this question, the nature of the
highest ideal or the nature of the highest good because the environment which poses the query, so to
speak, constantly shifts, as time progresses (that shift constitutes, in fact, times progression). The constant
fact of eternal change does not eliminate the utility of all moral answers, however, as such answers must
be formulated, before any action or interpretation an take place. Time merely makes eternal nonsense of the
offer of fixed structure as solution fixed structure, that is, as opposed to process (in this case, the
patterned creative communicative process of generating adaptive structure).
Conflict, on the individual and social planes, constitutes dispute about the comparative value of
experiences, objects and behaviors. Non-declarative presumption a, upon which behavior a is
(hypothetically) predicated, becomes subjugated to presumption b, b to c, and so on in accordance
with some implicit scheme or notion of ultimate value which firsts manifests itself in behavior, and in
behavioral conflict, long before it can be represented episodically or semantically. It might be said that the
emergence of a scheme of ultimate value is an inevitable consequence of the social and exploratory
evolution of man. Cultural structure, incarnated intrapsychically, originates in creative action, imitation of
such action, integration of action and imitated action constitutes adaptive action and representation of
integrated pattern of action. Procedures may be mapped in episodic memory, and abstracted in essence by
the semantic system. This process results in construction of a story, or narrative. Any narrative contains,
implicit in it, a set of moral assumptions. Representation of this (primarily social) moral code in form of
episodic memory constitutes the basis for myth; provides the ground and material for eventual
linguistically-mediated development of religious dogma or codified morality. Advantages of such
codification are the advantages granted by abstraction per se ease of communication, facilitation of
transformation and formal declaration of (historically-sanctified) principles useful in mediation of
emergent value-centerd dispute. Disadvantages more subtle, and more easily unrecognized include
premature closure of creative endeavor, and dogmatic reliance on wisdom of the (dead) past.
Human beings, as social animals, act as if motivated by a (limited) system of more-or-less internally
consistent and integrated set of moral virtues even in the absence of the explicit (declarative)
representation of this system. The nature of these virtues, embodied in behavior, in their origin, have
become more and more conscious (more represented in declarative thinking and remembering) over the
course of socially-mediated human cognitive evolution. Nonetheless even at the present it is very
difficult to determine and explicitly state just what virtuous behavior consists of; to describe, with accuracy,
how it is that people should (and do) act to identify those ends towards which behavior should be
devoted, and to provide explicit and rigorous justification for such claims. A culture is, to a large degree, a

184

shared moral code, and deviations from that code are generally easily identified, at least post-hoc. It is still
the case, however, that description of the domain of morality tends to exceed the capability of declarative
thought, and that the nature of much of what we think of as moral behavior is still, therefore, embedded in
unconscious procedure. As a consequence, it is easy for us to become confused about the nature of
morality, and to draw inappropriate, untimely and dangerous fixed conclusions.
The conservative worships his culture, appropriately, as the creation of that which deserves primary
allegiance, remembrance and respect. This creation is the concrete solution to the problem of adaptation:
how to behave? (and how can that be represented and communicated?). It is very easy, in consequence,
to err in attri bution of value, and to worship the specific solution itself, rather than the source of that
solution. Hence the biblical injunction:
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or
that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that
hate me. (Exodus 20:3-5).
This arbitrary injunction exists in large part because much less explicit attention is generally paid (can
be paid, in the initial stages of abstract representation) to the more fundamental, but more abstract and
difficult, meta-problem of adaptation how is (or was) how to behave determined? or what is the
nature of the behavioral procedure that leads to the establishment of and rank-ordering of valid forms of
how to behave? (that leads to succesful adaptation, as such?) (and how can that be represented and
communicated?). The answer to the question what constitutes the highest value? or what is the highest
good? is in fact the solution to the meta-problem, not the problem, although solutions to the latter have
been and are at present constantly confused with solutions to the former to the constant (often mortal)
detriment of those attempting to address the former.
The precise nature of that which constitutes morality still eludes declarative exposition. The moral
structure, encoded in behavior, is too complex to completely consciously formulate. Nevertheless, that
structure remains an integrated system (essentially, a historically-determined personality, and
representation thereof), a product of determined efforts (procedural and declarative) devoted towards
integrated adaptation, and not a merely random or otherwise incomprehensible compilation of rituals and
beliefs. Culture is a structure aimed towards the attainment of certain (affectively-determined) ends, in the
immediate present and over the longer course of time. As such, a given cultural structure necessarily must
meet a number of stringent and severely constrained requirements: (1) it must be self-maintaining (in that it
promotes activities that allow it to retain its central form); (2) it must be sufficiently flexible to allow for
constant adaptation to constantly shifting environmental circumstances; and (3) it must acquire the
allegiance of the individuals who compose it.
The first requirement is so fundamental, even in the short term, that it appears self-evident. A culture
must promote activities that allow for its own maintenance, or it will devour itself. The second requirement
flexibility is more difficult to fulfill, particularly in combination with the first (in combination with selfmaintenance). A culture must promote activity that supports itself, but must simultaneously allow for
enough innovation so that essentially unpredictable alteration in environmental circumstance can be met
with appropriate change in behavioral activity. Cultures that attempt to maintain themself through
promotion of absolute adherence to traditional principles tend rapidly to fail the second requirement, and to
collapse precipitously. Cultures that allow for unrestricted change, by contrast, tend to fail the first, and
collapse equally rapidly. The third requirement (allegiance of the populace) might be considered a
prerequisite for the first two. A culture that lasts must be supported (voluntarily) by those who compose it.
This means, in the final analysis, that its mode of operation must remain verified by the sum total of
individual affect; means that those who constitute the group must remain satisfied by its operation must
derive sufficient reward, protection from punishment, provision of hope, and alleviation of threat to render
the demands of group maintenance bearable. Furthermore, the group solution must appear ideal in
comparison to any or all actual or imaginable alternatives. The compelling attractiveness of simplistic

185

utopian ideologies, even in the skeptical twentieth century, is evidence for the stringent difficulty of this
final requirement.
In sub-optimal circumstances, the problem of protection for the developing individual and
maintenance of the protective, uniform social structure is solved by the permanent sacrifice of individual
diversity to the stability and identity of the group. This solution banishes fear effectively, in the short term,
but also eliminates necessary potential and the capacity for adaptive transformation. The suboptimal
solution to the problem of authoritarian or totalitarian danger, in turn, is denigration of the role of society,
attri bution of evil to its effects, and degeneration of traditional skill and learning. This is sacrifice of the
Terrible Father, without recognition of the need for his resuscitation and is, therefore, an invitation to the
intrusion of chaos. The optimal solution to the problem of the necessity for group identification is, by
contrast, to be found in the philosophy of the apprenticeship: each individual must voluntarily subjugate
him or herself to a master a wise king whose goal is not so much maintenance and protection of his
own identity and status as construction of an individual (a son), capable of transcending the restrictions
of the group.
The optimal wise king to whom subordination might be regarded as necessary must therefore either be
an individual whose identity is nested within a hierarchy whose outermost territory is occupied by the
exploratory hero, or a group about which the same might be said. So the ideal group or master might be
conceptualized, once again, as Osiris (the traditions of the past) nested within Horus/Re (the process that
originally created those traditions, and which presently updates them). This means that the meta-problem
of adaptation what is the nature of the behavioral procedure that leads to the establishment of and rankordering of valid forms of how to behave? (that leads to succesful adaptation, as such?) has been
answered by groups who ensure that their traditions, admired and imitated, are nonetheless subordinate to
the final authority of the creative hero. So the highest good becomes imitation (worship) of the process
represented by the hero, who, as the ancient Sumerians stated, restores all ruined gods, as though they
were his own creation.374
Human morality is exploratory activity (and allowance for such), undertaken in a sufficiently stable
social context, operating within stringent limitations, embodied in action, secondarily represented,
communicated and abstractly elaborated in episodic and semantic memory. Such morality act and thought
is non-arbitrary in structure and specifically goal-directed. It is predicated upon conceptualization of the
highest good (which, in its highest form, is stable social organization allowing for manifestation of the
process of creative adaptation), imagined in comparison to the represented present. Such conceptual
activity allows for determination of acceptable behavior, and for constraint placed upon the meaning of
objects (considered, always, in terms of their functional utility as tools, in a sense, for the attainment of a
desired end).
The pathological state takes imitation of the body of the laws to an extreme, and attempts to govern
every detail of individual life. This total imitation reduces the behavioral flexibility of the state, and
renders society increasingly vulnerable to devastation through environmental transformation (through the
influx of chaotic change). Thus the state suffers, for lack of the water of life, until it is suddenly
flooded, and swept away. The healthy state, by contrast, compels imitation more in the form of voluntary
affiliation (until the establishment of individual competence and discipline). Following the successful
apprenticeship, the individual is competent to serve as his own master to serve as an autonomous
incarnation of the hero. This means that the individuals capacity for cultural imitation that is, his
capacity for subservience to traditional order has been rendered subordinate to his capacity to function as
the process that mediates between order and chaos. Each properly-socialized individaul therefore comes
to serve as Horus (the sun-king, the son of the Great Father), after painstakingly acquiring the wisdom of
Osiris.
The adoption of group identity the apprenticeship of the adolescent disciplines the individual, and
brings necessary predictability to his or her actions, within the social group. Group identity, however, is a
construct of the past, fashioned to deal with events characteristic of the past. Although it is reasonable to
view such identity as a necessary developmental stage, it is pathological to view it as the end-point of
human development. The present consists in large part of new problems, and reliance on the wisdom of the
dead no matter how heroic eventually compromises the integrity of the living. The well-trained
apprentice, however, has the skills of the dead, and the dynamic intelligence of the living. This means that

186

he can benefit from even welcome inevitable contact with anomaly, in its many guises. The highest
level of morality therefore governs behavior in those spaces where tradition does not rule. The exploratory
hero is at home in unexplored territory is friend of the stranger, welcoming ear for the new idea, and
cautious, disciplined social revolutionary.

187

questions, comments, suggestions/feedback, take-down requests, contribute, etc
contact me @ integralyogin@gmail.com or
join the integral discord server (chatrooms)
if the page you visited was empty, it may be noted and I will try to fill it out. cheers

OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS

SEE ALSO

AUTH

BOOKS

IN CHAPTERS TITLE

1.03_-_APPRENTICESHIP_AND_ENCULTURATION_-_ADOPTION_OF_A_SHARED_MAP

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT

1.03_-_APPRENTICESHIP_AND_ENCULTURATION_-_ADOPTION_OF_A_SHARED_MAP

PRIMARY CLASS

chapter

SIMILAR TITLES

DEFINITIONS

QUOTES [0 / 0 - 0 / 0]

KEYS (10k)

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

IN CHAPTERS [0/0]

WORDNET

IN WEBGEN [10000/0]

change font "color":
change "background-color":
change "font-family":
change "padding":
change "table font size":
last updated: 2022-02-04 19:20:16
299471 site hits