(July 26, 2019 at 10:16 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: Most of us know that spiders did not originate from a bitter Athena after she lost a weaving contest. We know that the sun is a massive ball of fusing hydrogen, not the flaming wheel of a celestial chariot. Myths are (by definition) false. But do myths have truth value?
Of course, there are tons of stories, yarns, and fables out there. Many of them say something true or valuable. I'm not asking the question "at that level"... I mean something more like C.G. Jung meant. Jung thought that by examining ancient myths, one may find profound truths concerning the "inner reality" of the human psyche. Do you agree with Jung here?
If you do, I think a good followup question is: is it to modern humanity's detriment that it no longer creates mythologies?
I'm not being overly serious here. This is just a "food for thought" thread. I'd like to hear people's takes on the issue (or "non-issue" as I suspect some will take it to be). Science has wisened us so much that we have outgrown the ancient custom of inventing gods. But, though it's a piss poor way to explain natural phenomena, a little part of me thinks that inventing gods might be a worthwhile activity-- if anything just as a creative exercise, that we might through these created gods speak the ineffable.
I'd say there are good mythologies and bad mythologies.
The good ones reveal us to ourselves, and the bad ones do the opposite. The good ones are like psychoanalysis, inventing stories which emotionally present and clarify -- though not necessarily resolve -- difficult things in life. The bad ones are reverse psychoanalysis, covering over the depths with easy answers.
The myths in the Bible might well serve in both good and bad ways, depending on how they are read. If they are used to show that everything is peachy and if you pray you'll be fine, that's creating illusion. If they are meant to be puzzles we can't solve -- like the Book of Job -- I think they're good.
Examples of bad myths are easier to name. Our collective myth that the US is a force for good in the world -- a liberator which brings democracy to the oppressed -- that's an evil myth. And the media correlative of this, Marvel movies, Star Wars, Star Trek, and similar dreck. These make us stupider by allowing us easy identification with the good guys, and fake moral dilemmas that are generally resolved by showing the best person to be the one who makes the most effective use of violence.
I honestly can't think of many modern examples of good myths. Maybe we could divide these good ones into two categories: the Nietzschean type, which, as he writes in The Birth of Tragedy, honestly shows us the real chaos of the world in a way which makes it tolerable. I suspect that Homer, Virgil, many of the big names are in this.
The other category would be something like Dante. Structures of symbols that give us the tools to think about ourselves.
