Can We Believe Mythologies?

In the beginning was the War, and the War was of Man and the War was with Man. Man looked at the War and said that this is good.

For many, Western culture began approximately 800 BC (Before the Birth of Christ) with the dawning of the Golden Age of the Greeks, after a Dark Age which was the result/cause of the end of the Mycenaean Age. (Note: The Minoans were the first culture noted to have flushing toilets, yes, I’ve seen them, yes this was years ago, and my mind is still blown). The seminal work of literature from the 8^th Century BC which has survived is The Iliad, written by a blind poet called Homer (whether he was real or many people etc. is irrelevant), the story of the heroic Greek kingdoms coming together to rescues Helen of Sparta who had run away, of her own free will with Paris, Prince of the city of Troy.

To digress, a few things to clear up in this story. 1) Helen married Menelaus, King of Sparta, brother of the High King of the Greeks, against her will. The Kings of the Greek states drew lots to see who would be able to marry her, so her running away after falling in love should be seen as heroic on her part. 2) She is known as Helen of Troy, when she was Helen of Sparta, not important but it annoys me (what doesn’t, I hear you ask). 3) See below

After ten years of fighting, Odysseus, King of Ithaca, has a great idea (he was very smart). Why not build a very big horse, fill it with a candy surprise, and run away and hide, thinking that the Trojans would be so stupid that they would knock down the top of the archway of Troy to bring it inside, which they did, not knowing it was full of candy surprises in the form of the Greek Kings who heroically crept out when everyone was drunk and asleep and slaughtered all of the men, women and children, retrieving Helen in the process to take her back to a life of misery. (Note: some versions of the story say that she was speared this fate as her husband slew her and other versions say she was exiled after her husband died and was hanged, another version says that she and Paris had three children who died when the roof of their home in Troy collapsed killing them. Although the first account that she returned to Sparta is the original, none of the accounts make it seem very good to be a woman in the Age of Heroes, a common theme.)

Anyway, this is when comparative mythologies become interesting. After the Greek horse (contrived by, executed by, containing Greeks) bafflingly known as (3)) the Trojan Horse, was emptied of its candy surprise, according to Greek mythology, the Greeks went back home having killed everyone. The Roman Empire, which followed the Greek Golden Age, tells it differently. According to the Roman poet, Virgil, two Trojans survived, one being Aeneas, a Prince of Troy (it seems they had many Princes from different parents and gods/goddesses). Whilst the book which follows The Iliad in the Greek mythos, The Odyssey, tells the tale of the hero of the Greeks, Odysseus, so smart he pisses off the gods by bragging that he is smarter than them meaning they contrived to make his return journey last another 10 years through which he has flings and adventures whilst his wife sits at home, waiting for 20 years, only for him to return and trick her into proving that she has been faithful to him (not so Golden Age for women, eh?), in the poet Virgil’s The Aeneid, it is Aeneas who has the long trek, not home, but away from Troy, eventually settling in Italy and becoming the founder (indirectly) of Rome. Here we see a perfect example of how the Romans stole other mythologies to make their claim of greatness more substantive. Indeed, many of the great Greeks and Romans who founded the Western Civilisation claimed to be descended from the Greek Demi-God, Hercules.

It is not only in Greek and Roman mythologies that we can see the same story being played out. The Judeo-Christian Bible tells of a great flood which kills everyone except a select few, the same story is in Greek mythology as in Islamic, Babylonic  etc. and is believed to refer to the melting of a glacier in the region which flooded much of the Mediterranean. Also, we have, as we spoke of a few weeks ago, the First Woman myth, of how in the Greek mythos and Judeo-Christian Bible, the First Woman (Pandora and Eve, respectively), were faced with temptation and fell. Pandora opened a box and Eve ate an apple. Suddenly, the human race was evicted from paradise and we all had/have to suffer because of these two women and their curiosity (mythologies really don’t like women, do they? Luckily that has changed now, and women are given the respect they deserve. They’re not? But, at least, the same small petty insecure men aren’t in control of everything now…wait, they are? Hmmm, maybe someone should do something about that…).

To return to the story of The Aeneid, Aeneas’ children’s children is killed. His daughter, Rhea Silvia, is then made into a Vestural Virgin (a priestess to a god/goddess who as the name suggests must be a virgin) so that she can never have children and threaten the lineage of Kingship. However, as the Roman historian, Livy, puts it, the Fates had different plans! Rhea Silvia is raped, maybe by a God, maybe not, and has two children! (Wait, even the Fates hate women?!). Rape, as we see in mythology, and in the modern Eastern and Western worlds, is something which happens to women and who they are the cause of. The cognitive dissonance there of them being the ones who are to blame for being raped is deeply concerning for some see it as truth, some very stupid people who make up the majority of the 7.5 billion people in the world. (Note: Another Greek myth of note where rape happens is the story of Medusa. Medusa was the most beautiful girl in the world and a Vestal Virgin. However, the God Poseidon wanted her and raped her in front of the statue of Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom (and War, hmmm). In mythologies, the gods and goddesses could see through the eyes of their statues and so Athena watched the rape happen. Afterwards she went to Medusa and accused her of having sexual intercourse. When Medusa explained what had happened, Athena shrugged and said ‘boys be boys’, and turned Medusa into a Gorgon, a creature so vile that to look upon her would turn you to stone, and then banished her to live alone in a place where her only company was the statues of those who had tried to kill her).

The two children of Rhea Silvia are taken away to be drowned but are rescued by a she-wolf who suckles them, and they grow up to be Romulus and Ramus. Boys being boys, and all that, the two are rivals and Romulus kills his brother and founds Rome in a swamp- a city created by the bastard child of a raped mother who killed his own brother. Nice. In the Judeo-Christian Bible, there is the story of the children of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman. Cain and Abel, long story short, sacrifice to God. God prefers Abel’s sacrifice so Cain, of course, kills his brother, just as Romulus killed his.

The Virgin Birth of Romulus, the founder of Rome, also echoes the birth of Jesus Christ of Mary in the Bible (hmmm, Roman Catholic Church…Virgin birth…hmmm, Rome…Virgin birth, maybe the is a link there…), however, these comparative mythologies cannot be contained in the West. The Great Flood also appears in Chinese mythology and in the Judeo-Christian Bible, there is the story of Abraham who has a child of his servant called Ishmael yet has another son of his wife, Isaac. Whilst God commands, as a test of faith, that Abraham kills Isaac, mirroring what he himself would do with Jesus, only to reprieve Abraham and stay his hand, Ishmael is exiled from the family. As recompense, God says that both Isaac and Ishmael will be the Fathers of Great Races, Jews and Muslims respectively. Wait, so Christians, Jews and Muslims are all technically brothers and sisters? So why all the fighting? Hmmm, makes you think…                                       

So, to return to the question, can we believe mythologies? The answer is twofold. No, we cannot see them as being literal in terms of blow-by-blow accounts of what actually happened physically, but yes, we can take them literally as metaphysic accounts of the development of civilisation and the attempt of people to understand their world, something the new religion of Science attempts to do also, and to justify what seems to be men’s crippling fear of women…

‘till next time    

Modern Man in Relation to Jung and Nietzsche

The phrase ‘Modern Man’ is used frequently, sometimes in the form of praise, others to be disparaging, for example, ‘people are now upset if I shout abuse at them, when I was young I’d have a tea cup smashed around my face to say good morning, modern people are so soft’, but, interestingly, fond reminisces of abuse, egoism and the use of technology are not what is meant by ‘Modern Man’ by the pioneering psychologist Carl Jung (you may have noticed that this is a name which has cropped up frequently over the last few weeks. This is simply because I was reading one of his books- monkey see, monkey do).

In his book of essays, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Jung defines the ‘Modern Man’ (note: ‘man’ is used in the generic term to mean humans) as someone who doesn’t quite fit in. ‘Modern Man’, says Jung, is someone who knows the history of the human race. He knows the development from monkeys to people, he knows the history of the early civilisations and he/she can see how this has led to the creation of the world in which he/she lives. However, ‘Modern Man’ does not fit in with the zeitgeist of their times, as with knowledge of the past and an eye to the future, the ‘Modern Man’ is ‘ahistorical’ by which I think Jung means removed from history (note: history does not repeat itself, yes there are natural cycles such as day and night, however, it would be more accurate to say that human nature is so limited people make the same bad decisions over the course of history). This, of course, is impossible, as history is time and we all must exist within spacetime. Yes, Einstein showed that time is relative and high gravity can slow down time, yet, there is no way to break free from time. Before birth we exist within time as the latest in a line of humans and once we die we still exist within time as a memory or statistic. And so, we must consider that what Jung means is one who does not fit within the culture, i.e. within his/hers ‘Times’.

A great example of this can be found in literature. The German philosopher Nietzsche in his book Thus Sapke Zarathustra speaks of the coming of the Ubermensch. The Ubermensch, or superior being, often translated as Superman, is, in my opinion, a phantasy of Nietzsche’s of a time when the pettiness of humans will be replaced by a higher, loftier, spirit. Ironically, given Nietzsche’s dislike of Christianity, Jesus Christ may be seen as a Nietzschean Ubermensch, which is not really ionic if one looks at Nietzsche’s work as it seems clear that Nietzsche’s dislike was of the institution and not of the man himself. Yet, is the Ubermensch or Christ the ‘Modern Man’? In a way Christ is as the Ubermensch is not. The Ubermensch, according to Nietzsche, will be preceded by one who will bridge the chasm of where people are and where people should be. This can be seen as a Prophet as the historical figure of Zarathustra was whose identity Nietzsche embodies and turns into his mouthpiece as Plato did with Socrates to express his own views and indeed, whatever divinity Jesus may or may not have had, the likes of him and the Buddha, Moses and Muhammed, can be seen as preparing the way for the superior state of being, that, ironically, not being an Ubermensch, rather as being more human that those who have come before.

I used the phrase ‘more human’ as a polemic against not only my times, but those which have come before and those which will (likely) come after. If one looks at history one can se that the basics of being human, of compassion, kindness, love, or in other words, humanity, has been woefully absent.  If one is human, one cannot commit genocide. If one is human, one cannot abuse those who are almost identical but slightly different (ethnicity, gender, skin colour etc.), if one is human, one cannot stand by as the Good are crucified for the very humanity they embody. Or as the American writer, Hemingway (when he wasn’t drunkenly beating his wives) put it,

‘The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed’    

Or in other words, the ‘Modern Man’ is an ironically Heroic figure, the one who can embody the greatest qualities of being human and, being ahistorical, finds his/her self attacked by those to whom life is nothing more than a dark pit of despair and suffering, most of which is self-inflicted.

‘till next time  

Intangible Reality

The psychologist Carl Jung notes in an essay in his excellent book of essays, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, that with the Reformation the world changed. The Reformation was a 16^th Century European upheaval when the established Catholic Church and much of society were overthrown (sort of) by the new Protestant Church (both Christian so more a change of Dogma than actual, you know, change) and a new-fangled invention, science. The Reformation later evolved into the Age of Enlightenment (17-18^th Centuries) with poster boys such as Immanuel Kant and the new foundation of Western philosophical, cultural, and political thought. Later, one might argue, that this then gave birth to the 19^th Century and the likes of Nietzsche, leading into the 20^th Century and the likes of, you guessed it, Carl Jung. Anyway, digression aside, Jung notes in his book that the world of superstition, the soul, the intangible etc. gave way to what became known as physics. (It is important to note that physics (or the science of nature, the natural science) dates back to the 7^th BC (before the birth of Christ, so 2700 years ago approximately) with the advent of science and Thales of Miletus and indeed led to a large differing of opinion between the 5^th Century Greek philosopher, Aristotle and his teacher, Plato, as Aristotle, as with The Reformation, argued against the mysticism of Plato.) Suddenly the world was no longer intangible, if one could not hold it or measure it then it could not be real and so the Mind and Soul gave way to Reason and Logic.

Jung notes in a different essay, if I may paraphrase, that we must be careful when talking about Logic for is it real Logic or is it something that we have been told is true ergo we think it must be so (I am told I think, ergo I do, to bastardise Descartes for a moment)? For example, for us, if a house is struck by lightning then atmospheric conditions led it to be so. We can sit down and use dreaded pie-charts to prove why it is so. Yet for someone from an isolated tribe who lives in pre-Reformation times (I’m trying to word it differently from Jung who, when calling them primitive later shows that they are not so far departed from his thought, and so we cannot say one is more ‘evolved’ than another) then the Reason, using their Logic, is simple- someone angered a mystic or daemon who then called down the power of the skies to smite the house. Viewed from both perspectives, both explanations are completely logical and ergo must be true, yet, here is where I diverge from Jung on this topic. Neither the mystical not scientific explanations explain what happened, rather they attempt to explain the effect that was caused. It is simple causality, X happened, ergo there must be a reason why. It’s very simple, we do it all the time. I eat food I should not eat and become sick. I become sick because I ate food I should not. Simple, right? However, here is a more interesting question. I ate food I should not, why did I do so? Did I choose to do so? Was the decision made for me? Was it conscious thought? Or was it unconscious? Was it even instinct? Did I disobey, like a silly child, my instinct and my body? Did I feel left out and succumb to societal pressures? In all honesty, I will probably never know. I can refrain from making the same mistake, learning from history, but why I chose, I will probably never know as the truth of it lies beyond my finite powers of reason and deduction as these are dependent upon information that I cannot possibly know. And so, if we can say what is Real is that which can be reasoned or seen then we are forced to conclude that the majority of our existence is not Real.  What do I mean by that? Well, I’m so glad that you asked!

Much of what we see and can measure is not a thing in it-self, rather it is the by-product of. For example, we cannot see wind, but we can see a tree sway and think, ‘ah, it must be windy’, likewise the majority of our thoughts and decisions stem from something which cannot be touched, cannot be measured, cannot truly be known, yet can be seen be its effects, and that is emotion. If someone is filled with bitterness from insecurity, then we can know this by their actions. Likewise, a pure emotion such as Love cannot be measured or touched or put in a pocket but if I am to send someone a gift across the sea then she, opening the gift, can see a physical manifestation of the Love that I have for her.    

Pre-Reformation thinking dictated that Logic stemmed from a place of mysticism and Post-Reformation thinking stated that only that which can be touched and measured can be considered real, I think that I have shown above that neither of these viewpoints deal with what truly ‘Is’ only seeks an answer to explain the manifestation of what appears ‘To Be’. And so, we can conclude, that that which we call Reality cannot be considered from a tangible (perceptible to touch and, to expand the definition, Reason) perspective and we must conclude that our True Reality in intangible.

‘till next time       

Vampires and the Myth of Perfection

With the creation of the paradigm shifting television show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the notion of vampires in popular culture changed. No longer were vampires living in crumbling castles as their bodies decayed, as in Bram Stoker’s vampire myth, Dracula, based on the life of Vlad the Impaler, whom Stoker read about in Whitby Public Library, Yorkshire, UK, miles away from the setting of Dracula, now they were young, attractive (the character Angel in Buffy was said to be like an angel as his face never aged and lost its boyish (mid-20s) charm. The actor, David Boreanez got the role after he was spotted walking his dog, based on his looks) with a fetish for schoolgirls (hmm). Vampires had now returned to their pre-Stoker heritage of John William Polidori and Caroline Lamb who both created a vampire who was suave, elegant, and sucked the life out of people, based on the English writer, Lord Byron.

Now, combining the pre and post Stoker vampires, vampires were blessed with superhuman powers and the fulfilment of the American Dream of dying young and staying beautiful. Finally, the genre seemed to be saying, perfection is here. But was it?

In the show Buffy, Angel is cursed by Gypsies as punishment to have his soul returned. Suddenly, here is a perfect being who realises that he is merely a monster. He understands that to live one must live in both the day and night, however, the very things which make life worth living are denied him. An aversion to daylight means that Truth, the light of being, can destroy his myth of perfection. Likewise, that which we all yearn, Love is deprived of him as he cannot touch the symbol of Love in Western society (the Cross, depicting Jesus Christ’s sacrifice). Indeed, the irony of the curse is that if he experiences one moment of pure happiness, he will lose his soul and return to the monster whom he was before. This, he manages, by engaging in sexual intercourse with Buffy, the love of his life.

We can interpret the transformation of Angel in the psychologist Jung’s terminology. As a vampire, Angel acts out his unconscious, or in Freudian terms, his ID, his pure instinct- self-preservation (eat, reproduce and rest, although vampires cannot sire offspring as new-born children, they can create other vampires, thusly fulfilling that base instinct.). However, once Angel has his soul restored, the unconscious becomes conscious and Angel realises that he is not perfect, rather his is merely a shadow of a person.

I used the word shadow advisedly for to return to Jungian psychology, Jung states that for one to be whole, one must cast a shadow, something that vampires who have no reflection cannot. By this Jung means that if a person is complete then they must have two sides to them, a Ying and a Yang to use the Oriental philosophical terms. One must have the capacity for both Good and Evil, for Love and for Hate (which aren’t opposites but are used here to illustrate). The Jungian theory goes that if one is complete, a full person, then when facing the light, the light cannot pass through them, thusly they cast a shadow. If one is incomplete then the light passes through one and no shadow is cast, or a partial shadow etc. as these things must work in gradients.

To be complete, Stoker argued in his notes for Dracula, one must be able to appreciate the finer things in life. For example, classical music, which has come synonymous with Stoker’s vampire legacy, was abhorrent to vampires unable to appreciate the purity and the beauty. In the modern vampire myth, the vampires listen to heavy metal and indie rock, music associated with Emos and other black-clad teenagers, indeed, vampires in Stoker were for adults, now infantilised for children.  Interestingly, when Angel has his soul he listens to opera and reads great fiction such as the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre suggesting that the creator Joss Whedon (who if reports are correct treats women as though he was a soulless vampire and should never be allowed to make a big budget film or series ever again) was influenced by Stoker’s notion of beautiful things only being appreciated by those with a soul, those who are more ‘complete’, those who, although imperfect, are human.

‘till next time          

Consciousness and the Birth of Knowledge

In Greek mythology, the first lady who was created was called Pandora. Pandora lived in paradise on earth, one might say a garden of Eden, but she was given a box and told that she must never open the box. Zeus, presumably not understanding human nature, created temptation for her. If he had hidden the box at the bottom of the ocean and never told anyone about it, then maybe things would have been different. But, by giving her the box and telling her never to open it, one must wonder if, indeed, Zeus wanted her to open the box. Well, anyway, one day Pandora opened the box and out came every form of suffering. Suddenly the world was filled with pain. Pandora slammed the box shut, but only one thing remained within it. And that was Hope. The world was now filled with suffering and devoid of Hope. (Note, the German philosopher Nietzsche said that this was a good thing as hope is the worst suffering of all. He was a cheerful soul).

In the Judeo-Christian faith, the first lady created was called Eve. Eve lived in paradise, a Garden of Eden if you will, and yet God told her that the world was all for her, all perfect, but that there was just one tree on which there grew a fruit that she must never partake of. And thusly the snake temptation was introduced into paradise. Well, anyway, one day Eve and her partner Adam partook of the tree and thusly grew ashamed. The world was no longer a paradise, rather it was something to fear, something to be ashamed of. God, upon finding out that they had fallen to his temptation, banished them from the Garden and forced them to suffer and then die as mortals.

It is easy to read such Myths as the aging process. When one is young one has no concerns, as one gets older then one starts to suffer, or even, in terms of the Eden myth, be aware of one’s suffering, ‘nakedness’. The pioneering psychologist Carl Jung writes about how consciousness for a child starts when a child starts to refer to themselves as ‘I’. Before this age, and even during, the child does not have any conscious problems. The basics- eating, sleeping, attention, are tended to at the behest of the child, achieved through verbal and non-verbal communication such as crying. As the child grows, although it starts to become conscious of its needs and desires, it is still deeply rooted in its parents’ world. The needs and desires are yet to get any individuality. Jung calls this ‘self-problems’, which I interpret to mean in relation to their conscious self.

A lot of scholars interpret the ‘Fall Myths’ of Adam and Eve and Pandora as the discovery of sexuality. This, in my opinion, is flawed thinking. Firstly, the myths seem to blame women for the problems of the world, ignoring that it was a man (Zeus and the male notion of the Judeo-Christian God) who was the catalyst for the problems. Other than supporting the oppression of women in society, these should not be read as problems caused by women. Secondly, sexuality is something that is instinctive and thusly does not require consciousness. Many people have engaged in sexual intercourse but how many have understood why? The primal drive, the release of endorphins, the lack of anything else to do, societal norms and culture, the lack of a full conscious self, etc.  

The last of these is, for me, the most important. For when a child develops the notion of ‘I’, a shorthand for individuality, who is the ‘I’ that is created? Is it as the great French poet Rimbaud wrote, ‘I is another’, meaning when we speak of ‘I’ we are referring to a fictional sense of self? Or is the ‘I’ which is created merely a continuation of our parents and society in which we live? Yes, our instincts are still there, but often the desire to do what is right, to reach out and take that which we desire most, is quashed by societal expectations and thusly when we say ‘I’ what we mean is ‘We as a society’. In these pages we have looked, in depth, at how society is created by the insecure who then punish the brave out of fear, envy, confusion etc. Indeed, if the ‘I’ is the ‘We’ then, maybe the actions come out of a cultural notion of normalcy and not the expression of the individual.

The question then becomes, if these people who claim to be adults still act with the ‘I’ of their parents and culture, then are they adults? The answer must be, no. We have all met people older than us who still act like they are in school. Many, it seems, stops developing at an early age where tastes and opinions are formed, only to become hardened over time. I would argue that this is not that they have stopped developing at that age, rather, they have reached the limits of their imposed ‘I’. The ones who we see go beyond this, who grow up with real wisdom, are those who have developed their own ‘I’, who have started on the process of becoming their own self. Often these people are shunned by society. Often these people’s lives are hard. As with Eve and Pandora, they have partaken of the forbidden, through curiosity they have acquired self-knowledge and this knowledge has led to suffering, but through the suffering they have become stronger, they have formed their own ‘I’. In other words, through the beginning of consciousness, they have witnessed the birth of knowledge, self-knowledge, and thus have become what society fears most. An adult in a world of children.

‘till next time