PANDEMIC DIARY
MYTH IS ALL THERE IS
(dedicated to my friend in Montana)
JUNE 7, 2022
We are approaching an anniversary. The anniversary date is June 21, 1988, and since June 21 is the day Adele and I leave for Martha’s Vineyard and The Berkshires I thought it important to commemorate the the momentous meeting and discussion between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell - Bill Moyers having been the highly regarded and trusted news anchor and current events reporter for the Public Broadcasting System; and Joseph Campbell, the prolific author and expert in comparative mythology and mythology’s ongoing role in human cultures and societies.
Bill Moyers (left); Joseph Campbell (right)
Loosely speaking, myths are allegorical narratives. Beyond that simple definition things can get fairly hairy because there are different categories and types of myths - fables, fairy tales, folk tales, and legends. The myths I am referring to today are more in the category of epic myths or parables that appear throughout history, have a universality in that the fundamental story-line is repeated amongst varying cultures and possess relatively coincidental timelines. The similarities suggest preexistence, as if the stories are inherent in our brain stems, for so long in our history have myths been related and retold. Maybe, aside from what we know of human consciousness, there is something to the notion of a cosmic consciousness. (I am not prepared to get into Quantum theory just yet)
Campbell defines mythology in “The Power of Myth”, the companion book to the interview and television series as “the provision of a cultural framework for a society or people to educate their young, and to provide them with a means of coping with their passage through the different stages of life from birth to death.” This definition, to my thinking, is highly esoteric in nature and does not address the origins and functions of myths. It deals with the more ‘cosmic’ nature of myth and not the practical. I sense that at their most basic level, myths answer a need. “The need exists before the myth, which arises to fulfill the need.” (Robert A. Segal - Sixth Century Chair in Religious Studies at the University of Aberdeen) Hegel suggests that myth is appropriate only for the “childhood in mankind” and when reason has grown up and matured, they become obsolete. If that is so, given myths have persisted for thousands of years, is mankind still in its infancy, childhood, teens? Have the needs that fostered the creation of the myths not been met? Do we need so deeply and beyond any power of myths’ ability to satisfy our cravings? Or, do we simply find the need addictive and would rather look to the future with wistful hope than face our demons and grow out of the need.
A mythology is inevitably bound to the society and time in which it occurs and cannot be divorced from this culture and environment. By this measure, contemporary society has failed to pay attention to the great myths of yore - the Hero Myth; the Journey Myth; the Myth of Reconciliation. Campbell in dealing with the universality and evolution of myths in the history of the human race and the place of myths in modern society suggests “that modern society is going through a transition from the old mythologies and traditions to a new way of thinking where a global mythology will [eventually] (my addition) emerge.”
This may be true, however, what immediately grabs my attention is the importance of keeping level-headed regarding the passage of time. It has taken tens of thousands of years and throughout the history of upright beings that walked the Earth, and before language, that there exists evidence of the presence of myths, no matter which era, which region of the globe, which culture or which society. These stories are regenerative, handed down from generation to generation, and form the practices, observations and rituals that still go on today. At the core of these stories are the recurrence of certain themes that portray universal and eternal truths.
Can it all be an illusion? Human existence is a struggle. God told us from the time of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden (myth) that humankind will pay a high price for consciousness, that is awareness of one’s own presence as distinct from other things in the universe. At that moment, humans acquired an internal existence…self-reflection. And, that internal awareness separated mankind and womankind from the rest of the natural world. That phenomena of consciousness was ‘selected’ for survival, as Darwin along with Materialists, would point out. But, all consciousness, as we know it, is allegory, metaphor, a representation of a reality, not the thing itself. And, that’s where language comes in to play. “Speech is more plastic than wax and other such media” (Plato’s Republic IX, 588 D) We spend a lifetime in our brains ‘describing’ experience, ex post facto, translating into words the lived experience.
If “function is the flip side of origin”, as Segal indicates, “the need that causes myth to arise is the need that keeps it going. Myth functions as long as both the need continues to exist and myth continues to fulfill it at least as well as any competitor. The need for myth is always a need so basic that it itself never ceases.” Included in those needs are basic needs such as the need to eat, and no less basic to the conscious mind the need to understand and explain the world we live in, to express one’s unconscious in the material world, and, to provide meaningfulness to life.
These latter needs are panhuman or apply and affect all humanity. It is these needs from which religion arises. However, unlike food which physically and literally can satisfy a need and thusly eliminate the need for myth, religion’s whole raison d’etre is to accomplish the impossible. That is, fulfill a human need with myth or an insubstantial attempt at a satisfying answer. For many throughout the world the gathering of like-minded individuals provides a level of confirmation of truth. Yet, while the myth has been historically powerful and unifying, it remains inadequate to satisfy the need. In other words, the need from which the myth arises is the need that keeps it going, like the ‘Duracell’ battery.
Will the need for myth be with us always? Here is a poem I wrote a paper on in college that (by the way) go me an “A”. It is by Stephen Crane, author of The Red Badge of Courage. It will not go down in the pantheon of great poems but is marvelously applicable here.
A Man Saw a Ball of Gold in the Sky
Stephen Crane
A man saw a ball of gold in the sky;
He climbed for it,
And eventually he achieved it --
It was clay.
Now this is the strange part:
When the man went to the earth
And looked again,
Lo, there was the ball of gold.
Now this is the strange part:
It was a ball of gold.
Aye, by the heavens, it was a ball of gold.
The need for myth seem basic to human life’s attributes - striving, ambition, pursuing, inquiring, seeking - while the answers do not always appear evident. However, even consensus reality may not satisfy a particular human need. In the poem, the answer is obvious - a ball of gold - right there in the sky. That should satisfy and quell a need. But, all is not as it seems. For all the effort to achieve the intended goal and satisfaction, nay, it was a deception. Or, was it? Was it, indeed, a ball of gold, and we, the seeker, could not appreciate it? Was it devalued the moment it was held/owned? Was it worth all the trouble in the first place? Yet, there the answer remains, oh so near.
As long as the need does not cease, myth itself will never cease. One has to ask, is what we are witnessing today in the world the expression of a need without a myth capable of any satisfying answer? Is that the origin of upheaval, revolution, terrorism, even international crime? Will science, which itself can be likened to modern-day religion, supplant myth? Is the concept of myth already obsolete in this modern society?
Myth has been a reliable resource for mankind and should not be dismissed “as mere myth” as Segal states. If you read myth literally and in an historic context, it may provide meaningful insights into human desires and even provide insight into a course of action. Myths can certainly have a hold on large portions of the population worldwide…and do. The problem is that once a myth takes hold and there exists consensus agreement, true or otherwise, the story holds strong for those who accept it; they are not willing to let the myth go. The resistance to giving up or the absence of persuading one to give up a myth is a clear testament to its power. Richard Dawkins, famed atheist, renowned scholar, author, Biblical scholar tells us, “Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time”, but insists “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
Is that the bottom line of existence? Is Dawkins suggesting we should give up the ghost. Absolutely not. I believe he is saying that we are making a mess of things. Our inability to fess up to the truth about life and death keeps us attached to myth, illusion, false gods, and hope. These dependencies shift our reliance from the love and trust in one another to the unattainable ‘pedastelized’ virtues of a Christ and Brigadoon-like places akin to heaven, which is like moving the goal-posts to another city from where the game is being played.
Will humankind be able to break away from our own actions and their creations cannot supersede the needs and beliefs we impose upon ourselves. Our lives mirror our beliefs, projections and structures we create. Maybe it is time to look at our creation and write new myths? Maybe we need to examine our needs and determine what among them is vital and necessary, not merely desired as ‘pipe-dreams’? Until we satisfy our human needs, anticipate more myths, stories and conspiracy theories to fill the void.
Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Richard Dawkins
Religion institutionalizes mythology. Religion is the intentional manipulation of myths to control populations.
David Roth