2. Myth in Other Words
This is the second in a series of posts exploring the classical meaning of myth throughout prehistoric and historic times and its current perversion in America. This post considers several ways in which myth is expressed.
In the first post in this series, I described myth as a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in society. Myth is a way of expressing what is important to individuals, groups, tribes and cultures throughout history. A whole book could be written about these traditions. In this post, I will talk about a few Western traditions with which you and I may be more familiar.
One tradition in the Jewish belief is Midrash, writings related to the interpretation of biblical texts. This includes the meaning of the words, what is behind the text and what is beyond it. A body of Midrash has been compiled by Jewish biblical scholars over the years, a significant part of which were compiled in the early centuries A.D.
Christianity has its own traditions and explanations of the Hebrew scripture, referred to as the Old Testament and the more specifically Christian bible known as the New Testament. The Church Fathers consisted of writers also living in early centuries AD. Their work centered on explanation and interpretation of the meaning of the Christian bible still prominently revered and referred to in scholarly discussion of the bible by Christians. The main fathers were Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine and Gregory the Great.
Although Muslim belief and tradition is a recent newcomer in Western society, it also plays a significant role in the thinking and belief of some Americans. According to Muslim belief, the purpose of life is to live in complete submission to Allah whom Muslims believe to be the same God as that of Jewish and Christian traditions. People are free to follow or not to follow Allah’s will for them but there eternal consequences for making the wrong choice. They believe that Allah’s will is revealed in the Koran given by Allah to Muhammad, the Torah given to Moses, The Gospel of Jesus, the psalms to David, and scrolls to Abraham.
That leaves atheists. They do not have any belief in divinely revealed truth. Perhaps the best characterization of the atheistic approach is contained in an incident involving George Bernard Shaw. Someone once asked him what would happen if when he dies he find out there is a God. His reply was “If there is a God we will sit down and discuss it man to man.”
Among the psychological thinkers of the last two centuries, Alfred Adler wrote about the concept of “guiding fiction.” He saw this as a personal principle which people rely on to guide their understanding of life and use to form the basis of how they act. It does not appear that many people are necessarily aware of the principles they live by. Yet they usually act consistently as if in line with a set of beliefs. This set of beliefs is often more evident to others than to the individual. Ideally the guiding fiction is realistic and adaptive according to Adler. In other words they are in tune with the true nature of their culture and helpful to them in living a meaningful life.
Nicholas Shumway has extended the idea of guiding fictions to nations where their peoples seek to understand what they are about and what their goals are as nations. The United States has among its guiding fictions “the American dream, the melting pot, and government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
These fictions represent the ideal but we do not always live up to it. Yet we still see these fictions as our goals and we would like to think we live in accordance with them. We have often failed throughout the history of our nation. At the time our nation was founded, “We the People” in practice meant white men for the most part to the exclusion of the native people living throughout the continent, people of different color and traditions and marginalization of women. More recently we have marginalized people with other than traditional sexual orientation and identity although we have made progress in this area. We have also marginalized the poor to some extent, sometimes blaming them for their predicament and leaving them to their own devices.
Despite this we now have a new way of looking at each other on the horizon and the prospect of taking the needs of the earth into account as we move forward. We may also move closer to the original guiding fiction or myth for our country and perhaps for the world. In the next post, we will look some historical distortions of myth and the harm they have done.