These days it’s very common for people to disparage mythology. Ask a given person on the street and they’ll probably tell you that mythology is make-believe, it’s fiction, it’s little more than primitive superstition, it’s not real so why should I bother with it?
Scientific rationalism has torn open the veil of the infinite and not found the face of the transcendent, but the emptiness of matter. In the heavens we’ve found only the endless void of space, cold and mechanical and dead. It has decreed that nothing is sacred.
To make a judgement on the validity of such atheistic claims is beyond the scope of this essay, and indeed probably beyond the scope of this entire publication, but I will say this: the workings of the universe are far stranger than anything we can possibly imagine. The more we learn, the more we realise just how little we understand. The deeper we delve into the realm of quantum physics, the weirder the universe begins to look. The numinous retreats before the cold, empiric gaze, but ever the numinous remains, watching us from the edges of our understanding.
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
― Werner Heisenberg
But regardless of the validity found in either atheism or creationism, man cannot live off bread alone.
The mastery reductionist rationalism has granted us over the physical world is undeniable, but in gaining that mastery, well…
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
And what’s happened in the time since then? The unifying narratives, the myths if you will, that once bound our societies together, giving us purpose and a shared understanding of the world and our place in it have lost their meaning and been stripped away. We’ve been given bread, and a lot of it, but little else.
Reductionist and postmodern thought have fragmented and compartmentalised everything and everyone. The sovereignty of the individual has been elevated to the highest place, leaving us free and empowered like never before, but also isolated. We have no grand unifying stories and so, often, we’re alone.
Lost in a sea of subjectivism, we’re unable to communicate, unable to relate, and unable to connect.
To be clear, I’m not arguing for some sort of mindless collectivism. The emancipation of the individual was one of the most profound cultural developments of the twentieth century, but surely a balance must be struck.
We’re in a crisis of meaning, a crisis of loneliness, a crisis of communication and community breakdown.
The story has been ripped from the position of sacred unifying narrative and shunted into the category of lowbrow entertainment. And yet, despite the rise of reductionist literalism, people still crave stories.
A good story will teach you about morality and ethics. It will show you what it means to be forthright and noble, and warn you of the dangers of malevolence. It will teach you about society, and relationship, and the fundamental nature of the human experience. Ultimately, a good story will teach you about yourself, about who you are, who you could be, and how you might strive to get there.
And because a story is a thing that is shared, a good story will bring people together. It will give them a common reference point with which to understand the world, a common framework of values with which to orientate themselves, and a common goal to pursue together.
A good story builds community in the deepest, most fundamental sense.
That’s not to say a unifying narrative cannot be twisted and manipulated to drive people towards xenophobic tribalism and to commit unspeakable acts of evil. History is filled with examples of such cases.
But without such stories people are left cynical, nihilistic, and isolated. People are starving for the meaning such stories provide them, and in their absence they’ll reach out and grab hold of whatever is at hand.
There’s a reason why people flock to things like Star Wars and Harry Potter, or political ideologies, or even to movements like new atheism with such fervent dedication. All of these things provide people with a sense of community, of being a part of something larger than ourselves, and most of all these things provide people a shared compass with which to understand and navigate the world. In a world stripped of meaning, people will reach for it wherever it can be found.
In the past mythological traditions were what served as these unifying, educational narratives, but in the modern, post death of the sacred world, things like pop-culture fandoms and political groupings have replaced them. These are in many ways, at least functionally, the new mythologies of the modern day, and while they have their merits, they’re often flawed and shallow, and they’re just as easily manipulated to suit the aims of the powerful.
But people cling to them, desperate for the meaning they can find there, for what else can they do?
We’re drowning in a sea of individualistic, post-modern subjectivism, and the lifeboat of our salvation can be found in stories, good stories. Stories that can help to bring us together and show us what we would be like, if we were who we could become. Nietzsche went on to say that in the wake of God's death it would be left up to us to find meaning and to establish values, and even if his own attempts at doing so left a lot to be desired, maybe he’s right. It’s a dangerous and difficult path to walk though.
To do so we need the right stories, now more than ever.
We need mythology.
In this newsletter, I’ll be exploring the intersection between mythology and philosophy in relation to the pursuit of meaning in the modern day.
This will take the form of:
More stream of consciousness tirades like this one.
Longer, more thoughtful, and better researched essays covering a range of different topics, such as the nature of truth and how it relates to our perception of the world, the dichotomy between order and chaos, the importance of myth and story, and the quest for meaning in the modern world.
Deep dives into various forms of mythological symbolism, such as dragons, the eye, the flood, etc. I’ll be looking at the nature of these symbols, what they meant to our ancestors and what they can tell us about them, what they might mean to us today, and how an understanding of them might help you to better navigate through life.
Literary analysis, mostly focusing on the themes and symbolism of a given work, and what sort of lessons and insights might be extracted from them. I’ll probably be starting with Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, but have a bunch of other stories I’d like to cover as well.
If you’re interested in fiction, this is a story I wrote exploring the depths to which nihilism and isolation can descend in the modern world:
Thank you for reading.
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"Deep dives into various forms of mythological symbolism, such as dragons, the eye, the flood, etc. I’ll be looking at the nature of these symbols, what they meant to our ancestors and what they can tell us about them, what they might mean to us today, and how an understanding of them might help you to better navigate through life."
Wonderful. This is one of the best essays I've read that covers the atheism/creationism debate. The material and spiritual balance is so important. You're spot on about the crisis of loneliness and meaning. We have countries appointing ministers for the same, it's that serious. :(
Although, however, as far as I understand it, I'd credit this hyper-individualistic and isolated society we have today, to a capitalistic way of life rather than post-modern subjectivity. As much as I've studied post-modern thought, one of its biggest contributions is that it recognized and gave a seat at the table to realities and subjectivities that were non-euro-centric. This is very vital and we can't undo that. For example, the magical realist genre, which weaves South Asian, African and Latin storytelling structures into the European form of the novel, would not have been possible in a non-post-modern world.
This is why I see the incorporation of capitalist philosophy into our daily lives, thus turning it from an economic system to a way of life, as the major reason for an individualistic society. The ideas of selfish happiness, me before others, and pursuit of the individual over community building have been hammered into every sphere of life. It has done quite a lot of good, no doubt, but it also needs to be balanced out now that we are in an active loneliness epidemic. What do you think?
P.S. Amazing essay mate. Glad to have come across your work. Stoked about whatever you're going to come up with!