Myth . and . Role

The links in the table on the left take you to sub-headings in this article.

In my view each episode of a human life on Earth has a big factor of pre-determinism, and the reason for this is that by and large a human life is a mythic one. Each person lives in a world of mythology. It is the drama and spectacle of the mythic quality of life that is the intermediate stage between pre-determinism and values (of which ethical values are the most important ones). A world of mythology can incorporate many value systems, not just a particular favourite one.

A person requires that there be meaning to his life. However, there is little meaning in living a pre-determined life if the person is free of illusion. So meaning is sought by living within a symbolic myth. A myth allows a person to adopt particular roles in life, and through these roles he gains experience of life. Each person lives a symbolic myth, but this myth cannot be seen to be such whilst that person believes in and lives his roles. Roles are usually standard ones like ‘father’, ‘son’, ‘plumber’, ‘politician’.

I need to bring in my concept of relativity, which is not the same as in traditional views of it. In these articles, the general meaning of relativity is that a subjective effect always goes hand in hand with an objective effect. Relativity ties subjectivity to objectivity. See the articles in the section on Relativity.

Now I can return to the analysis of myth. Myth and role link together via relativity. Myths are always a product of a relative interpretation of life.

The myth is the subjective factor of relativity, and
the role brings in the objective factor.

The role focuses on objective values and the myth brings the subjective experience that the person is seeking. A person gains experience of life by living a myth. It is experience that the person seeks, and the myth is the means of obtaining it. Experience allows for free will, and usually free will is nothing more than the interpretation of one’s personal myth.

When a person takes his myth to be reality, then he has become immersed in illusion. So long as a person desires to experience life, which means to experience myth, then he has to continue to reincarnate on Earth.

Positive Function of Myth

The postive function of myth is to facilitate the development of new states of mind. A myth has many roles embedded in it. The purpose of these roles is that they allow the person, by adopting particular ones that he needs, to gain the experience that he seeks. He adopts a particular role by identifying with it. Identification is always with a role within a myth. The importance of identification is this:

Only identification brings experience.

If we want to experience some aspect of life, then we first have to identify with a role that can bring us that experience. A particular myth will develop suitable (for that myth) attitudes and beliefs in us. So in order to develop an attitude that we need, we have to identify with a role within a myth that allows for the expression of that attitude.

When identification is broken but we still seek to live a mythic life, then nihilism and meaninglessness arise.

The particular advantage of a role is that it has boundaries to it. A role is primarily the exercise of particular rules within one or more particular boundaries. For example, if the role is ‘parent’ in a nuclear family, then a relevant boundary is that of giving social learning only to one’s own children. But if the role is ‘parent’ in a communal family, then the boundary changes so that one gives social learning to other people’s children.

This combination of rules and boundaries within any particular role develops particular values, values that are necessary to that role. Boundaries are essential to living an harmonious life. The subconscious mind is a storehouse of confusion, self-deception, and potential violence (as well as a reservoir of creativity and imagination). These undesirable states of mind are contained by putting boundaries around them. Within the boundary of any particular role, rules enable the person to decide what values he can express and what ones he has to repress (since he has not yet learned either to sublimate them or to assimilate them through psycho-analysis).

Negative Function of Myth

The negative function of myth allows the person to live his life on automatic pilot. This occurs once the roles within the myth have become stereotyped. Now the mythic scenario has ceased to be rewarding and creative, and has become restrictive to any new energies that the person may still have. The person still makes decisions within his role, but these decisions are part of the myth. Hence in reality there is little exercise of free will: once a person chooses a myth, and then a role within it, so everything else can follow automatically. Since the myth is usually chosen subconsciously, so the person’s exercise of freewill within the myth is often illusory.

The limitation of living a myth is that the person functions in a role without having much understanding of why that role is chosen, or its purpose. The person has little understanding of his place in life and little understanding of the purpose of his life. So the central criticism of mythical living is that the person has no real awareness of what he is doing.

Illusion
Some past thinkers considered that the physical world is an illusion. This interpretation is usually a result of the influence of subconscious guilt. But the interpretation contains some truth in it, in that an illusion does exist. It is not that the world is an illusion, but that mythical life is an illusion.

Nature is not mythic because the impersonal will within it (which means the will of the impersonal god) is amoral and has no concern for life forms, other than for their survival. However, human existence does have concern : it focuses on the social, the personal and the moral, and it is within this format that myth operates. It is the relativity of good and evil that underpins myth. This relativity allows roles to vary in their intensity and in their degree of ‘goodness’.

Up to modern times, goodness has been more important than truth in human evolution. The advent of the ideal of truth within scientific pursuits is changing this, so that a better balance between goodness and truth is being achieved.

The person lives in a world of myth because the myth encourages the pursuit of goodness within a framework of need rather than the pursuit of wisdom within a framework of truth. Truth was only needed in order to keep ideas of ethics and goodness up to date with evolving needs. Once ethics becomes a solid part of human values again, then truth can evolve along new directions. Only truth can take the person beyond myth.

In the evolution of mankind, evolution is primarily a dialectical zig-zag between the collective and the individual. Collective myths gradually change into personal myths ; collective roles gradually change into individual roles. Then the dialectical pendulum swings to the other extreme and personal myths give way to collective myths, and collective roles assume their former importance. Each swing of the evolutionary pendulum evolves ideas of individuality and collectivity. The individual of one era is different from the individual of a previous era ; similarly for collective roles.

Kinds of Myth

The psychological mechanism that maintains mythic roles is that of the loop of projection and introjection. [¹]. Roles are usually standard ones, and so myths tend to be standard ones too.

Some examples of mythic scenarios :

Fundamental myths :

• The two fundamental myths which act as the frameworks for lesser myths are those of ‘realism’ and ‘romanticism’. The young infant is a romantic, but unfortunately childhood sorrow imposes realism on him.
  For the philosophically-minded person, the two fundamental myths may be ‘realism’ and ‘philosophical idealism’.

Individual mythsm :

• The ‘American dream’, where the person goes from rags to riches, from poor immigrant to wealthy and respected businessman.

• The rebellious teenager, absorbed in teenage vitality and culture before graduating to conformity in his 20s.

Collective myths :

• The need to share in a common identity. The need to belong, whether to a family, a clan, a community, a nation state, or a federation of nation states (such as the European Union).

• The need for only one valid perspective on life, only one universal ideology (even only one universal language). Hence religion, science, and esotericism (such as New Age ideas) are held to be antagonistic to each other, because each can claim to be universal.

• The central myth of bureaucracy: the office is what is important, not the person who fills it. Power accrues to the office, not to the person. Hence it becomes difficult to remove incompetent holders of high office.

Spiritual myths :

• The excitement of spiritual drama, enacted by the two main character types of saint and noble warrior. These roles are complementary ways of handling good and evil. The saint works on accentuating goodness in himself ; he centres on morality and hopes to experience justice. The warrior works on removing badness from himself ; he centres on psychology and hopes to experience freedom.

There are several ways of handling myth

For example :

• To live myth we follow power and happiness.
• To survive myth we require ethics.

• To master myth we need psychology.
• To break free of myth we need freedom.

• To transcend myth we need a spiritual idealism, together with the pursuit of truth.

The reason that we have so little free will is because we have so little ability to step outside of myth. And to step outside of a myth we first need to identify and analyse it. This is not as easy as it might at first appear. To be able to identify and analyse a myth we have to feel that we are excluded from it. We cannot effectively analyse anything from which we derive a sense of power or happiness. If we have invested some power or happiness into a myth that we like, then we will not be subconsciously willing to lose this investment by our analysis – we will not bring into the open our own deficiencies. So in this situation our analysis will be superficial.

It is the urge to freedom that allows one to break free of a myth (only to fall into a new one). When the person breaks free from his dominant myth, and has not yet found a new one that can carry the meaning that he requires, then nihilism, lethargy, and pointlessness arise.

It is the urge to freedom that provides the excitement and energy by which the person can orientate to a new way of life. In the past ages, the great teachers came at times when a mass change in consciousness was needed, when the current collective myth or personal myth had become inadequate. Freedom was in the air.

As we go into the twenty-first century,
freedom is once again in the air.

A new myth awaits us.

The number in brackets at the end of the reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it.

[¹]. An article Projection and Introjection is on my websites Discover your mind and The Strange World of Emotion. See Links page for the addresses. [1]

The articles in this section are :

Morality & its Origins

Sexuality & Ethics

Personal Evolution

Myth and Role

Existentialism & Human Evolution

Dualism & Theories of Ethics

Copyright © 2003 Ian Heath
All Rights Reserved

The copyright is mine, and the article is free to use. It can be reproduced anywhere, so long as the source is acknowledged.

Ian Heath
London, UK

My email address is likely to change.
So if you want to write to me, go to the Home page and use the address at the bottom,

or click on http://www.modern-thinker.co.uk/