Opinion/Editorial
THE MYTHOLOGY OF LIFE
Let’s say that we found out that the world is going to end on, say, July 19, 2024, it is very important that we wake up every day not believing it. Why? Because, if we do not believe it then we can enjoy the remaining 12 months of our lives with some semblance of comfort and bliss. Joe Campbell, the famous ethnologist, did not write or say that, but it was his study of the power of myth that made me write about it.
Truth only has a structured role in the psychology of our existence on this planet. Without convincing ourselves that something is possible, while really thinking it is impossible, we can likely never convert to a more successful reality. For example, it appeared totally impossible that the United States would be able to launch a space program that would become successful enough so men could land on the moon. Certainly not within the time constraints and technology possessed by our citizens in the early days of the 1960s. But a small number of men, led by President Kennedy, created a belief that American astronauts could indeed perform this mission in the span of less than ten years. A myth was created. People came to believe. The myth became reality.
Myth is as important to the survival of humanity as the very air itself. The way in which our minds have developed to deal with the real world has everything to do with the creation of mythology. By believing in things, we know not to be true although we may want them to be true with all our desire and being. We’ve created mythology to deal with the real world that we do not understand. This created mythology thus allows for the potential accomplishment of what is believed to be impossible. Our entire scientific method has been developed on a platform of applied mythology.
The discovery of metal and how it was used to transform the world thousands of years ago is a good example of how mythology works. Traces of metal were discovered on the earth. Thoughts were generated about how the substance might be heated, treated, or bound together to make something stronger than stone, wood, or bone. No conception of metal was possible until a process could be developed to allow it to exist in a refined form. Once a successful process was applied, the results became what we know today to be refined metals of all kinds. The mythology (often cloaked as dreaming, fiddling, or experimentation) dropped away from our thoughts and the substance itself became as if it had always existed. The mythology which had to exist to allow for the creation of refined usable metal was then forgotten with the massive success of the product.
We must get up from our nightly sleep every morning and give ourselves a reason to believe. We must believe that we can get through the day, the week, or even longer periods of time successfully. We must believe we are loved, cared about and our thoughts appreciated. We must believe in lies and things we know not to be real in order to follow our bliss. Leonardo da Vinci, if you were to review the drawings that survived him in what is called the Codex (currently owned by Bill Gates), drew the very first design of what we all know today as the helicopter. That drawing, although not aeronautically accurate in creating the machine shown to actually accomplish vertical flight, required a power source so small and powerful that no device of the time, or of hundreds of years forward in time, could be thought of to deliver enough horsepower to get the helicopter all of the ground.
What did this incredible genius do? He left a small empty space in the very center of the drawing. He wrote in the Codex that that space was for the power source that would one day be created to power the device. Leonardo believed. We must also believe, as we constantly sift through the unending data the information streams transmit to us, for those places where our belief may be all there is that powers the entire civilization on into a more successful future.
