566. The Meaning Of: There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon
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What is the children’s book “There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon” and why does Jordan Peterson use it?
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So recently I recorded some analysis of Children's stories once again. I had done this years ago with Pinocchio and the Lion King, uh that was part and parcel of the lectures that I did at Harvard and at the University of Toronto. More recently I recorded an analysis of Snow White, the Grimm's Brother version, and also of Hansel and Gretel. I'm going to continue that today with a more recent book, a much more recent book, called There's No Such Thing as a Dragon, The Story in Pictures by Jack Kent. I used to read this to my Maps of Meaning class often as the first lecture. Because it touches on the Themes that are Very relevant to a narrative understanding of the world, a description of the structure through which we see the world is a story.
And the motifs in stories are represent cardinal elements of all of the environments that we encounter. And I'll try to make that clear today in the discussion of There's no such thing as a dragon. I want to show you um A dragon that I have in my office here. This is a Sculpture from Mexico. Which I got several years ago. Um It's a circle, basically, and it has a the head of a bird. Kind of a monstrous bird, and it has wings like a dragon or like a bird, and it has a snake. Wrapped around the bird's neck, but It's an analogue of a dragon. Uh there's a book that I found very useful in my analysis of such things. Called An Instinct for Dragons by a man named David E. Jones and David Jones offers a essentially an evolutionary explanation for the concept of dragon.
He described a dragon as a tree, cat, snake, bird, like an amalgam of the features of tree, cat, snake, bird. And um Those and of course there's the element of fire as well. And so those are all elements of Predator, you might say the kind of predators that have b have been preying on us or our evolutionary ancestors for Millions of years are we had tree dwelling ancestors sixty million years ago. And so the dragon is an amalgam of of the motifs of predator. That's a good way of thinking about it, or of danger. And the the dragon battle is a narrative condensation of the Drama of human beings, the fact that we have to encounter the terrible, predatory unknown, and to try to gather what's valuable that's hidden in it, and to transform ourselves in that pursuit and to make our way forward as heroes.
And part of that is the ability to pay attention, to careful attention to the things that we might want to put aside and avoid. And that's what this little story is about. Billy Bixby was rather surprised when he woke up one morning. And found a dragon in his room. It was a small dragon. About the size of a kitten. Well, so let's delve into the idea of dragon again. So The book's title is There's No Such Thing as a Dragon. And Whether or not something is real Depends to some degree on your level of analysis. So Obviously bears are real and lions are real and komodo dragons are real and crocodiles are real and fire is real. Is an amalgam of all those things real? Well, it's real in the way that an abstraction is real.
It's real in the way that the word predator is. Or danger is real, right? Because there's many diverse phenomena that are aggregated together. in the notion the conceptual notion of say predator or danger But That has very little to do with the reality of the concept. Dragon is as real as predator, let's put it that way. Now the dragon concept is broader than predator. mere predator, because the dragon really stands for everything that lurks in the unknown as such.
How does Peterson define a dragon as an evolutionary archetype of danger and predator?
And everything would be the danger that's part and parcel of the unknown, which is the place that the predators aggregate, let's say, but also The promise. So out in the unknown, which is the land of dragons, there are terrible dangers and great benefit, hence the treasure that's associated with the dragon.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the children’s book “There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon” and why does Jordan Peterson use it?
0:00–5:25
2
How does Peterson define a dragon as an evolutionary archetype of danger and predator?
5:25–11:19
3
What is the moral of Billy Bixby’s story about the tiny dragon that grows when ignored?
11:19–17:39
4
Why does Peterson call the family’s denial of the dragon “willful blindness” and what are its consequences?
17:39–24:50
5
How does the Egyptian creation myth of Osiris, Seth, and Horus illustrate the dragon‑like force of malevolence?
24:50–30:10
6
What is the connection between the bronze serpent in the Exodus narrative and the crucifixion of Christ?
30:10–37:07
7
What practical lesson does Peterson draw about confronting problems early to prevent them from overwhelming you?
37:07–41:21
8
How can the story’s insights be applied to modern family dynamics and personal growth?
41:21–41:38