Myth-making
and the
Logic of Myth
Figures from the Sami mythology on a shaman’s drum
Sep 30, 2015 S.U.
Mythos, Epos, and Logos
Mythos: Story(-telling), tale, moral tale, legend, fable;
word that is recited or heard.
Epos: Words (statements) recited according to a certain order
and meter. Metered and ordered story-telling is seen as the
gods’ gift to humankind.
Logos: The revelation / recitation of Truth through words.
Language, reason (rationality), logic
The Epic of Gilgamesh takes as its subject the mythified,
legendary adventures and heroism of Uruk’s king.
Its world is the mythic world of Sumerians; the experiences
depicted reveal the mythic world-views of Mesopotamia.
Myth-makers and epic story-tellers are the ancient poets;
(imaginative-creative) writers; inventors of certain narratives
claiming reality or Truth
Homer and Hesiod from the 8th C. BCE are the two great
myth-collectors, -makers, and epic writers
Homer
Hesiod
The Epic of Gilgamesh too is concerned with the gods and how
they have created the universe and humankind
In Sumerian and Akkadian mythic world-view and in numerous
others myths or mythic stories:
•Divine beings pre-exist matter. Personified supernatural
powers are key to creation. Matter is secondary.
(Idealistic approach)
Myths: Foundations and origins of things and humans
NATURE, STRUCTURE, and the WORKING of CREATION
•The mythic world-view is Anthropomorphic and Animistic
•In the mythic world-view, there is a continuum between
the conscious and the unconscious experiences, revelations,
discoveries, etc.
•In the mythic world, the identity logic may not always work –
one thing can be another thing at the same time.
A may equal B, B may turn out to be C…
Philosophical Revolution of the 6th C. BCE
Poets and myths are questioned; they lose their power to explain
the Arche (fundamental principles, first elements, beginnings,
origins and creation)
Thales of Miletus (624-546 BCE) Pythagoras (585-497 BCE)
a. Heraclitus (540-475 BCE)
b. Herodotus (485-425 BCE)
c. Plato (428-348 BCE)
a.
b.
c.
These men of LOGOS reject the (hi)stories of gods
and creation imagined by MYTHOS and expressed by EPOS
For them, these myths are irrational popular stories about
the universe, nature, and humankind
The 18th C. Enlightenment critique of myth, theology, and
religious dogma dates back to the Philosophical Revolution.
‘Myth’ taken as fairytale; a body of lies; incredible stories
impossible to observe, repeat, prove, or disprove.
Is the mythical world-view sheer ignorance, obscurantism,
childishness, plain and simple stupidity? – NOT NECESSARILY
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer,
‘The Concept of Enlightenment’ (1944)
‘Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance
of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from
fear and installing them as masters.’
BUT
‘Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to
mythology.’
MYTH is a particular way of making sense of the world.
It produces a certain body of knowledge and system with which
to record and represent an immense array of natural and
historical phenomena.
However, the long enlightenment ever since the Greeks seeks to
externalize or exterminate what we fear; to make it
our negative term – the Other.
Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that the opposition between
MYTHOS and LOGOS might be a fake one or misleading.
Myth is already logos, and enlightenment creates its own
myths (national, historical, political, economic myths
supported by ‘facts and figures’).
Symbolic Structures and Social Organization:
Implications of Göbeklitepe
Discovered by the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt in 1994
‘The World’s First Temple: Built 12.000 Years Ago’
(from the official website)
‘To Schmidt, the T-shaped
pillars are stylized human
beings….The stones face the
center of the circle….a
representation, perhaps, of
a religious ritual. As for the
prancing, leaping animals on
the figures, he noted that they
are mostly deadly creatures:
stinging scorpions, charging
boars, ferocious lions. The
figures represented by the
pillars may be guarded by them,
or appeasing them, or
incorporating them as totems.’
(Charles C. Mann, NGM)
The Old Testament – 500 BCE
Stonehenge – 2200 BCE
The Great Pyramid of Giza – 2450 BCE
Sumeria – 4000 BCE
(Gilgamesh 2000 BCE)
Göbeklitepe – 10,000 BCE
‘Within minutes of getting there,
Schmidt says, he realized that he
was looking at a place where
scores or even hundreds of people
had worked in millennia past.’
(Mann, NGM)
Maybe agriculture and settlement followed the mythic gathering
and organization around a story, a symbol, a representation…
Should the findings in Göbeklitepe change the long established,
the so-called materialistic explanations of the rise of civilization?
Is the narrative of the Neolithic Revolution discredited?
(agricultural revolution – earliest settled communities –
multiplication of population – new order, hierarchy and law –
myth and religion byproduct of complex social organization)
Not necessarily:
Symbols, images, stories, myths (the production of them) are
part and parcel of our species life/being.
A MODERN MYTH: The Market
The (mythified) invisible hand of the
market is capable of regulating economy
to the benefit of all and of sustaining
economic growth (?).
By trying to maximize their profit,
the competitors on the free market
in fact happen to work for the good
of all citizens.
Ideology = Market Liberalism
(Let them do, let them pass)
The Wealth of Nations, 1776
No regulation or planned economy (not
because it is impossible, but because it is
unnecessary thanks to the way market functions)
But every now and then
the invisible hand of the market acts quite irrationally…
Tom Tomorrow, www.thismodernworld.com, 2008
Myth of the Rational Market
Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression, 1930 – 1940s
On Wikipedia:
36 entries under “Economic
Crises” (from 1813 to 2012)
Market as the gods or ‘fate,’ has its own
design, people are ultimately subject to its
‘capricious’, unexpected movements