Monday, January 01, 2007

Why myths are important?


A myth is most times a symbolic representation of reality, and it's intended to be a guide that helps us to deal with life's challenges.

In first place, myths have been used by humans since oral tradition exists, long time before writing was invented. In its primitive origins, myths used to speak about forces of nature, then evolved to stories about gods and heroes. The purpose of those stories was people learned some universal true deducted through observation of human behavior or constants in how Nature works. Those stories was made in a format of kind of condensed and exaggerated study case where the characters make decision and we can be witness of how those decisions worked in the context of the story, thus we be able to compare the results with the goals the characters tried to achieve.

In my opinion, it's more enjoyable to listen this kind of story than simply listen the conclusion, but in addition most myths provide a context and some sort of circumstances that might be extrapolated and compared with real life situations.

However, myths are far from being just a simple collection of success stories supporting a methodology related with successful living. In first place, myths are encoded in order to reach our unconscious. Actually, those stories shows astonishing tragedies or inspiring epic journeys (sometimes they mix both) that are very unlikely to be faced by a regular human being in his/her lifetime. However this sort of exaggeration is useful to highlight the most relevant attributes of characters and situations in order to be processed not by our conscious but by our unconscious. It seems to be easier for the unconscious to process symbolic representations of reality than the real thing. This is important because myths are made to warn us about danger or to bring us hope, and if unconscious is aware of these messages then I guess our response to life's challenges would be the desired one in a more natural or automatic fashion than when a similar situation is just remembered by the conscious.

On the other hand, if myths weren't important then they would be forgotten long time ago. Indeed, nowadays most of old myths like Noah's Ark, Gilgamesh's journey, Ulysses' adventures , King Oedipus' tragedy or Romeo and Juliet's story still being popular. In addition, year after year people create new myths, which is the case of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Matrix, X-Men, Superman and a long etcetera. All those Twentieth Century's myths are in part so seductive because they follows the same encoding than ancient myths. And they worked as well as old myths still doing.

In conclusion, myths are important for people because they enlighten us about how to deal with life in an unconscious level, and their effectiveness is proven by ancient myths which still working as well as the new ones.

14 comments:

Lanark said...

I mostly agree with what you have explained, except for one thing. I do not think there is such thing as an objective, a purpose for the myths. We are now used to such an engineer-like way of thinking that leads us to think about means to an end. But that is rather new; most of human history men have lived in a cyclic time, with no worries about gathering knowledge about nature, not in a conscious way anyway.

So I think of myths more as collective exercises of thinking, the thoughts of a collective mind. Some of them, of course, can be seen as a systematic effort to "deal with life's challenges", specially by us now, when we try to imagine the ancient man as a modern man. The instrumental definition proposed for ApoloDuvalis can be more suitable for paradigms than it is for myths.

On the other hand, there are not so many myths, they are just a bunch of them that repeat themselves all along human literature and tradition of all times, as Jung and Campbell cleverly noticed.

The lord of the rings is a saga, but hardly a myth, even though it has a lot of miths within, and perhaps it has even introduced new ones. I would give examples if I could, but my knowledge about it is very poor. And the same for all the others important movies.

Let me give as an example one myth wich is perhaps the most important of all: the myth of the trip of the Hero.

This myth is best reflected in the Ulyses' history, but is present as well in almost all the examples given here.

The structure, if I did not forget it, is like this: The Hero has a comftanble position in his society, but honour reasons makes him travel away, to a haphazard situation where he nearly dies, or visit the world of the dead in some way. He loses all he has, including his identity, but some kind of wisdom, and the help of supernatural characters, helps him overcome death and difficulties and come back to his life, being the same but completely new.

We can see that this myth is present in almost all the epic stories, including shaman narrations of very primitive cultures and Hollywood movies.

Unknown said...

The myths and the legend in Medellín were very own of idiosincracia. Now one remembers much the 8 of December with colorful and joy… always will follow there for the new generations because he is traditional. An affectionate hug and I reiterate for you my desires by a 2007 happy one!

Andrés Meza Escallón said...

I agree with Lanark, there is just a few myths but I think they are recycled or re-discovered through time in a kind of polygenesis (same results from completely different sources) because myths are not just simple fiction but representations of our psyche. We share a pretty much similar psyche with our ancestors, hence the recurrence of those representations.

However, I keep my point of view of myths serves a purpose, according to the second definition of The Free Dictionary: "A popular belief or story that has become associated with a person, institution, or occurrence, especially one considered to illustrate a cultural ideal".

Andrés David said...

I think both Lanark and Duvalis are right about the validity of speaking about the purpose of myths. On one hand, I don't think there was a conscious purpose to build a myth and to build it with a purpose. I believe myths are more of an emergent property of any group of individuals, than a structured bottom-up building.

However, the lack of conscious direction in the creation of a myth does not mean there isn't one. At least an apparent one. That's what Duval perceives as the purpose of the myth and it is a reinterpretation of it with modern eyes (as Lanark pointed out).

Anyway...

To me, myths (or the basic variations of a monomyth) are like musical notes: a few basic blocks which can be combined in many similar-but-different ways an establish a special kind of communication.

Johanna Pérez Vásquez said...

I just noted I maked I mistake with you because I told you the conclussion of the story, that's why will be very hard to your unconscious get it, but I'm sure you'll be able to find answers and signs by your own.
Keep focus on your goals.

Anonymous said...

I inclination not concur on it. I think warm-hearted post. Expressly the appellation attracted me to read the unscathed story.

Anonymous said...

Myths are very important in our everyday lives. The definition of a myth is a traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes, or a story that explains aspects of the natural world or the psychology, customs, or ideals of society.
It can also be a popular belief or story that has become associated with a person or occurrence, or just a story to discourage people from doing certain things.
Almost every culture in the world that ever existed has invented a myth or two. In the past, the purpose of myths was to explain phenomena or things that people could not explain in other ways, or to discourage people from doing certain things. Nowadays, however, myths are used for a myriad of purposes, from advertising, to having fun.
One of the cultures which is famous for is myths is China. In ancient China, there were many things that the people could not explain, since China was such a big country. It led to a lot of myths being created, and about almost everything.
Myths are also influenced by nature or events. Some of these things happen in a lot of cultures, but others are only present in a few. This is why myths from different cultures are so diverse.
Nowadays, myths are not that important, but they still play a key role in our lives today. We derive words and phrases from them, and they help us appreciate advertisements. Without them, our lives would be monotonous. We would not try something out to prove a myth wrong, and our books would be dull and boring without these words and phrases.
So how does the use of words from myths an article help us appreciate and understand an advertisement or an article better? As mentioned above, words and phrases from myths can help to spice up an article and make it more interesting. As for advertisements, myths can catch the attention of audiences. Advertisement makers sometimes try to make up a myth on their own to increase publicity, and that method usually works.
Myths are also used in companies to signify something about them. A phoenix represents rebirth and rarity, and an aegis, or some other shield, is usually used by insurance companies as it represents a safeguard, or protection. They also convey certain good features the company or product has. For example, the ocean liner Titanic was named to convey the fact that it was massive and invulnerable, although it sank in the middle of its voyage.
As for books, myths can be created by a writer to give suspense to the story, or describe the story better and make it more interesting. Books sometimes use their own mythology with their own phrases to make the storyline unique but more often than not they use mythology that has already been invented.
Myths also play a part in newspaper reports or magazine articles. Myths can make news paper reports more understandable and most magazines use myths to let readers interpret the information more easily. This makes them appeal to audiences.

Anonymous said...

Myths are very important in our everyday lives. The definition of a myth is a traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes, or a story that explains aspects of the natural world or the psychology, customs, or ideals of society.
It can also be a popular belief or story that has become associated with a person or occurrence, or just a story to discourage people from doing certain things.
Almost every culture in the world that ever existed has invented a myth or two. In the past, the purpose of myths was to explain phenomena or things that people could not explain in other ways, or to discourage people from doing certain things. Nowadays, however, myths are used for a myriad of purposes, from advertising, to having fun.
One of the cultures which is famous for is myths is China. In ancient China, there were many things that the people could not explain, since China was such a big country. It led to a lot of myths being created, and about almost everything.
Myths are also influenced by nature or events. Some of these things happen in a lot of cultures, but others are only present in a few. This is why myths from different cultures are so diverse.
Nowadays, myths are not that important, but they still play a key role in our lives today. We derive words and phrases from them, and they help us appreciate advertisements. Without them, our lives would be monotonous. We would not try something out to prove a myth wrong, and our books would be dull and boring without these words and phrases.
So how does the use of words from myths an article help us appreciate and understand an advertisement or an article better? As mentioned above, words and phrases from myths can help to spice up an article and make it more interesting. As for advertisements, myths can catch the attention of audiences. Advertisement makers sometimes try to make up a myth on their own to increase publicity, and that method usually works.
Myths are also used in companies to signify something about them. A phoenix represents rebirth and rarity, and an aegis, or some other shield, is usually used by insurance companies as it represents a safeguard, or protection. They also convey certain good features the company or product has. For example, the ocean liner Titanic was named to convey the fact that it was massive and invulnerable, although it sank in the middle of its voyage.
As for books, myths can be created by a writer to give suspense to the story, or describe the story better and make it more interesting. Books sometimes use their own mythology with their own phrases to make the storyline unique but more often than not they use mythology that has already been invented.
Myths also play a part in newspaper reports or magazine articles. Myths can make news paper reports more understandable and most magazines use myths to let readers interpret the information more easily. This makes them appeal to audiences.

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