The Power Of Myth
Today is a football game day for the University of Wisconsin , so there's a lot of red being worn around town, especially around campus. Saturday is also farmers market day at the State Capitol Square, so there was plenty of red there too.
I normally don't pay the sea of red much mind, but allegiance has been prominent in the country this week, with the pope's visit to Washington and the United Nations. Pope Francis met with President Obama at the White House, and most significantly gave a speech to a joint session of Congress . He spoke softly and eloquently about caring for the poor, for immigrants, for the environment, for refugees from war, for ending the death penalty, and about the evils of capitalism. We can hope it didn't fall on deaf ears.
The pope's speech was one of the best I ever heard, touching on all the critical issues we are all dealing with. I was very moved by this humble, soft-spoken but formidable man of faith, the faith I grew up with but left decades ago.
As powerful as his speech was, I felt no inclination to return to Catholicism. After 17 years of Catholic education I have too much experience of the Church as a corrupt institution, its clergy as terribly flawed, its liturgy as boring and tedious, and its theology as unconvincing and enforced by authoritarianism.
Years later I became a follower of an Indian guru, Swami Muktananda , and lived in ashrams - semi-monastic dwellings focused on meditation, chanting and study - in Ann Arbor, Houston, the Catskills, Honolulu and India. I felt more connected to the chanting and other rituals, the theology of Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism , the Indian music and to the guru than I ever did with Catholicism.
I left that too. After eight years I grew tired of the dysfunction in the organization - " Siddha Yoga " - and convincing reports appeared alleging the guru was molesting a number of women, especially twelve-year-old girls. The allegations were consistent with anomalies I noticed when I was a staff plumber in the SYDA ashram in South Fallsburg, NY from 1981 to 1983. It was harder to give Siddha Yoga up than Catholicism, but I managed. I wrote about it here and here .
Around the time I left Siddha Yoga I became familiar with the work of legendary scholar of mythology Joseph Campbell , especially through his interviews with Bill Moyers . Campbell explained that throughout human history societies have created mythologies - collections of stories and traditions that provide a basis of identity, origin, cosmology, and transcendence that hold societies together and give them meaning.
I found Campbell to be a fascinating and engaging explorer of the human psyche, and he has been one of the most influential people in my life. It took me a while to fully imbibe what he was saying, but over time I have become adept at recognizing the common mythological basis of not just religious groups, but allegiance to sports teams, political parties and movements, ethnic identities, places of employment, fraternities, the military, patriotic organizations, musical groups, movies, TV shows and really any way that people form into groups.
Such as fan identity with sports teams, most prominently where I live with the University of Wisconsin "Badgers" and the Green Bay "Packers" professional football team - a business. It can get pretty fanatical. All the local news providers devote much attention to the fortunes of the Badgers and Packers, and to a lesser degree to the Milwaukee "Brewers" baseball team. Most annoyingly, they also devote considerable time to the fortunes of stock car driver Matt Kenseth , because he is from nearby Cambridge , Wisconsin. You will reach new depths of boredom when you see an interview with Matt Kenseth. He apparently provides myth for some people.
So we live with competing and complementary myths. Sometimes they are combined. Notre Dame University has its " Touchdown Jesus ," a mural of the mythical son of God on a building behind one of the stadium's end zones.
Sacrilege and disrespect are common in team names, mascots and various creations by fans. A devoted fan of the Green Bay "Packers" dresses up in an imitation Catholic Bishop's vestments, complete with mitre hat that says "Saint Vince," with a picture of legendary "Packer" coach Vince Lombardi . The Washington pro football team still calls itself " The Redskins ," an insult identity with Native American fighters against the onslaught of European invaders in the centuries following "discovery" of the continent.
People get in fights and sometimes kill each other over identities with various mythologies. A San Francisco "Giants" baseball fan was beaten nearly to death in 2011 by fans of the Los Angeles "Dodgers." Arrests for fighting are common at pro football games. When the "Packers" play the Chicago "Bears" it is a handy excuse for mayhem.
We can see how important myth and identity are in adding meaning to people's lives, and how the most trivial mythic identities can be life and death matters. In mass systems such as we have throughout most of the planet, the search for meaning can reach levels of desperation and fanaticism that are mind-boggling. As a result of the Bush criminal regime's invasions of "Afghanistan" and "Iraq," religious fanaticism has reached new depths throughout the Mideast and elsewhere.
The most alarming and dangerous mythological phenomenon on the planet, though, is what is known as "Conservatism." It consists of an unholy mixture of "Christian" religious fanatics, anti-government zealots, racists, xenophobes, gun nuts, climate change deniers, sociopathic capitalists, various media agitators, politicians and opportunists. There is a strong intersect among many of these various extremists, with some identifying with several or even all of the "right wing" opportunities.
The one thing they all have in common is reptilian brain predisposition - by the most ancient part of all human brains, related to instinctual behaviors, tribal identity, territoriality, aggression, dominance and ritual displays. When a person is most heavily controlled by the reptilian brain there isn't much difference between wearing a "St. Vince" mitre and a Ku Klux Klan hood. The identity state is the same, the difference being the object of identity.
This should be instructive for "leftists," but almost certainly won't be. They have their own myths and identities to contend with, and getting beyond the "us versus them" fixation of the reptilian brain is beyond the comprehension and willingness of almost everyone. The human species is stuck in binary identity: the "good guys" versus the "bad guys." Soldiers, police, and of course politicians routinely refer to chosen "others" as the "bad guys," whether they are bad or not.
So here we are in the days before climate change takes off, obstructed in our efforts to change our ways of being on this planet, particularly in reducing our carbon dioxide emissions. We are impeded by human psychology - subservience to the reptilian brain. It is supposedly counterproductive to keep showing pictures of the threatened polar bears, but for me they serve as the hologram for our future. I could just as easily use the forest fires in California, hurricanes here and there, floods, tornadoes, blizzards, droughts, oil spills, befouled air, deteriorating reefs, and any number of other disasters, but the polar bears will do. We reptilians are on a path to ruin, and our likely response, based on past behavior, is to become even more reptilian. Go Badgers!
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The most alarming and dangerous mythological phenomenon on the planet, though, is what is known as "Conservatism." It consists of an unholy mixture of "Christian" religious fanatics, anti-government zealots, racists, xenophobes, gun nuts, climate change deniers, sociopathic capitalists, various media agitators, politicians and opportunists. There is a strong intersect among many of these various extremists, with some identifying with several or even all of the "right wing" opportunities.
And they are blind to the damage they are at least attempting to do to America. They are un-American in their zeal for power at any cost.
Years later I became a follower of an Indian guru, Swami Muktananda , and lived in ashrams - semi-monastic dwellings focused on meditation, chanting and study - in Ann Arbor, Houston, the Catskills, Honolulu and India. I felt more connected to the chanting and other rituals, the theology of Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism , the Indian music and to the guru than I ever did with Catholicism.
I too spent many years trying to find faith. I was raised in a semi-Catholic household where we didn't attend church except on Easter or such. In my late teens when I was in the Air Force I was a member of an organization called "Youth for Christ" and witnessed on street corners and prayed and thought I had be "saved", until they asked me to sign the title of my car over to them so everyone could use it. I was disillusioned for years. I read the Catholic bible and the King James version and even the so-called "Living Bible" (Horrible book! Might as well say it's the Reader's Digest Condensed Bible) cover to cover and I tried to reconcile what I read with what was being done in it's name and the harm and selective use of parts of each version of that book to justify hate and bigotry. It was like they read it, but it (especially the New Testament) never really sunk in.
It was then that I came to the realization that it was all a myth. That the bible might as well have been Grimm's Fairy Tales. It was like a a revelation of complete truth. There is no god. There may have been a person named Jesus Christ at one time, but he wasn't the son of a being that doesn't exist. His words have been told verbally over and over before they were put to paper and then translated and changed so many times that no person can honestly say what he had to say about anything at all.
That was many, many years ago and I have lived my life as an atheist as happily as any believer in any religion. There is no dark desperation or loss of hope or that something undefinable is missing in my life that some seem to think atheists have. I think they think those things about atheists must be true, because it justifies their clinging to an ancient myth so hard. That's their problem now, not mine.
Atheists complain too much.
I did think this was an interesting article though.
No one "knows" there is no God. It is not possible to know that.
Atheists complain too much.
Atheists have to give up the right to complain like everyone else? Why? Do only followers of a religion get to complain? Besides, I don't know any atheists who complain much at all.
No one "knows" there is no God.
I do. I know there's no Santa Claus or Leprechauns either. All are in the exact same category.
Now The Three Bears on the other hand...maybe.
They did not cause me to disdain god. I came to the realization that there is no god later then that and have had as full and happy life as any believer since then. I can not disdain something that does not exist.
I thought you suffered from depression.
As do many religious people. The two are not connected. Depression is a medical illness controllable with medication and sometimes talk therapy helps. Your comment is the same as saying "I thought you suffered from diabetes?" or "I thought you suffered from epilepsy."
Not trying to be a jerk but I thought depression causes one to be unhappy. A close friend of mine suffers depression. His father was riding a bike and was killed by a drunk driver when he was ten right in front of him. His therapists often link his traumatic childhood experience to his depression. He is bipolar.
So polar bears don't have reptilian brains?
I believe I finally get what you are trying to say in your next to last sentence, but it seems a rather rambling way to get there.
You are aware that the "left" can be just as reptilian.
This is so completely politically biased it is its own parody . No mention of ISIL or what Assad is doing in Syria or the unfair trade practices in China . Author , take your head out of your ass . It will become a lot easier to see the world the way it really is if you do that .
From time to time. However if one takes their medications then as a rule you don't suffer from any more unhappy times then anyone without depression. If your dog dies, you're un-happy. If the Lions win (rare, I know) then I'm happy. If your child is sick, you worry. It's all the same as anyone else.
If you feel you are having episodes of un-natural unhappiness (un-happiness without an apparent cause), you talk to your Psychiatrist and he or she adjusts your medications accordingly to bring you back into balance. This happens more or less often in different people, depending on how bad their Depression is. Mine is relatively bad so I need my meds adjusted about 3 times a year. Like diabetes, it is something you have to be aware of and monitor it, but it doesn't make me more or less happy then someone without it. Also, religion, or in my case not having one, doesn't affect it one way or another.
And no I don't think you're being a jerk to ask about it. Far too many people are unaware of what it really is. It is a physical chemical imbalance in my brain and it needs to be treated. Sometimes the symptoms appear strange to others (like seizures with an epileptic) so some people have odd reactions to them. And sometimes, like any human with a chronic condition, I ignore the warning signs of problems coming and have bad reactions (even to the point of (very rarely) getting suicidal), but my wife is a retired Psychiatric RN and catches them for me. However the chemical imbalance in my brain would still be there if I am an atheist or Pope Francis.
His therapists often link his traumatic childhood experience to his depression. He is bipolar.
I am sorry to hear about your friends condition. Yes severe trauma like the that, psychological or physical (or a combination) can cause an altering of the chemical reactions in ones brain. The brain is shocked and releases too much or not enough of some chemicals trying to deal with the shock that can cause permanent damage. This is one of the reasons we see so many people, even non-soldiers, with PTSD. Mine was almost certainly caused by severe beatings and sexual molestation by my mother's boyfriend when I was 6 and 7 years old. For many years I dealt with it through withdrawal, denial and when I became an adult I self-medicated with lots and lots and lots of scotch.
Thanks, watching the game now.
You're welcome and enjoy.
To be fair Petey, it is difficult to write a non-biased article. If you write an article lambasting both left and right, then you are biased towards the center are you not?
Perhaps he just needs more practice in writing coherent pieces.
I wonder if stream-of-conciousness writing is a reptilian behavior? It is certainly Faulkneresk.
I'm not asking for non-biased , just to avoid the obviously untrue exaggerations ...
Whenever I see or hear the word "myth" it makes me think of the story about a doctor who was examining a well-developed young girl who lisped, had put his stethoscope on her chest and said "Big breaths", to which she replied "Thank you thir".
Ooops - sorry for the derail. Actually I thought this was a fairly interesting article.