“We need myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, instead of merely using it as a ‘resource.’”

I think it’s pretty silly to say this. We need no myths to know that planet Earth is in danger, and that the way we see it must change for the mutual benefit. J. Lovelock says that our planet, with all its living creatures, form one organism — that’s why we must protect and respect the planet.

The cousin of myth is self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m afraid that in too many cultures today, group psychology despairs of seeing a harmonious future, so our myths are dystopian, and as a result we are spiralling toward Armageddon (the war that will destroy life on earth) as if it were inevitable—but it is only inevitable if we make it so.

@Loula — The scene of the soldiers on the eve of battle is my most powerful memory as well, from the documentaries I linked. I felt like I was there, and I wanted to be with them, because the sincerity of their feeling was so plain. It was like watching ghosts who had already crossed over, and were mourning yet celebrating all the beautiful things they had known. The rational part of me says it was folly and they were misled, but I don’t dare diminish the reality of that moment of truth. If only we could have the same sense of immanent miracle in our daily lives as these men felt on the eve of their death!

@Raqqash — If you mean that Western power and dominance are dying or already dead, I think I agree with you. But once that burden is off us, won’t it be a good thing for our civilization? Our myths will be able to express themselves freely without acting as apologists to power. Which reminds me, when I was a bit younger I used to imagine what life would be like once technology had imploded and nature had returned to the heart of the city. I used to invent myths of a return to innocence. Here is an example and here is another.

@Bouba — Aren’t the myths of our ancestors a bit like plants in the Amazon jungle that might turn out to cure cancer? They are part of our “gene pool,” a precious heritage of diversity that may have exactly the answers we need. Yet instead of preserving this resource we let it die from neglect, “improve” it with modernization (parking lots instead of gardens), or even destroy it in anger, as if the existence of something we haven’t made is intolerable to us. A good myth to tell would be of an arrogant king who destroys a magical bird that whose beauty he sees as a threat. Later he falls ill and discovers that this beautiful thing he destroyed was the one thing that could have saved his life.

“As our circumstances change, we need to tell our stories differently in order to bring out their timeless truth” (p11).

(i am reading the same book, eetbees.)

@Loula, you are totally right. it is hard to come back when we get stuck in dehumanizing myths. i totally see what you mean.

Thx for this!

The War Against Terror is a myth born of 9/11, but it’s interesting to see how much it absorbs of other cultural myths. While frontier mentality seems to inform the T.W.A.T. discourse in America, Britain looks back to WWII, and France to the secular revolution of the early 20th century. The first two of these stories in particular involve struggling for sheer survival, and invoking these myths not only numbs critical discourse but greatly exaggerates the terror threat.

As you point out, only by learning to recognise and take control of our myths will we move towards more constructive ones.