“In what myth does a man live nowadays? (…) What is your myth – the myth in which you do live?” – once asked Carl Jung. The answer that I/we live in a story probably would not satisfy the master, but… for now, I have no other.
They lead us through life from event to event, interweaving between what is important to us, edifying or ruinous; between moments when we wonder who and what we are for and when we choose the direction we decide to go. They create the context for making choices. They are woven from words and facts that are sometimes connected in simple and other times in surprising or even non-obvious ways.
Stories happen between us, just as they did between our ancestors generations back. They may not explain the world to us in the same way they used to (after all, we have all the later scientific inventions and discoveries), but stories, and in time the myths created from them, accompany human culture, our individual and group identities, like a century of ages. Is this a bad thing?
It depends. I think about my childhood when Mom read or told me about the mythology of the Greeks and Romans. It was not long before I waited for the transition from versions for younger readers to more juicy and blunt stories (ah, Graves, ah, Parandowski). But it did not end with these myths. There were the Slavs, the sacred cats of Egypt, the Mayans, the stories of the peoples of the East, the myths of Africa… Stories about peoples, gods, and worlds created by forces understood by few at the time, offered to others in a more digestible, mythological form.
Myths that were more about what we are and why we are the way we are. They told about the fear of losing power (Saturn), the insatiable desire for wealth (Midas), the defiance against the gods (Prometheus), the traps of curiosity (Pandora), the love worth going to hell for (Orpheus and Eurydice), and many more. Myths passed from mouth to mouth, preserved from word to word, retained by Homer, Greek tragedians, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Shakespeare, Blake, and Milton, from Bronisław Malinowski to Mircea Eliade’s “Myth, Religion, and History.”
The functions of myth seemed self-evident. Themes connect humanity, explaining the beginnings of the world (sometimes beautifully, other times filled with dreadful senses), and the sacred functions, allowing the repeated return of the same, in an unchangeable form, so that the groundbreaking/founding event happens again, reminding of the significance of that beginning/end/breakthrough. They unite around an idea, concept, faith, or plan established for here and now/for someday, which does not necessarily mean unchangeable “forever and ever” or around the founding myth of a given community – closed or open.
The very knowledge of myths, identities, and cultures should open us up to understanding diversity and guarantee upbringing where we are not identical, where difference means openness to wealth, not closing off out of fear. But that is just one face of the myth.
Because myths – as Kapuściński wrote – can also be nasty. They can be even nastier when they become the basis for hostility, when they divide, segregate, and exclude; when they are based on gossip (because “when gossip ages – Lec claimed – it becomes myths”), on dreams of greatness (“generations” of dictators), on unhealed wounds (a complete set of resentments), on personal tragedy (Smoleńsk). Here lies the source of our problems.
The problem is moving out of creative myths towards destructive stereotypes, exclusionary “urban” legends, ego-playing mythomania, towards bubbles of stories that do not allow the voice of dissent, towards unverified rumors, gossip, or even opinions, ruining not only the chances of thinking/acting together (on any issue) but also the ordinary/unique relationship between Self and You. Mythologization, insidiously replacing mythology, does not develop us, but sets us back, perhaps in every aspect of our daily life.
In the record-breaking musical “1989,” we hear: “Can we finally have a positive myth? / A story that ends well?” Here, in Poland? Here, among Us? It was my birthday on July 11. I wish myself and all of you such a happy ending.
The article was originally published in Polish at: https://liberte.pl/towarzystwo-mitow/
Translated by Natalia Banaś
