I think maybe we should move from "we must eat them raw" to "Behold! We ate them raw! What's next!?"
I’m not a historian, though I love reading about history and their myth-making larger-than-life heroes and villains. One thing epic stories always share is that the villain pushes the hero to extraordinary levels of strength and endurance, sometimes creating myth itself. Or maybe it’s the other way around… Either way, it’s a story as old as humanity: to grow stronger, faster, harder to kill, to reach our own version of “nirvana”, we need something that challenges us, something that brings the anger up so we can transform it into power, leveling up our very souls. Mythic strength requires a monumental problem to overcome. And this is where myth intersects with reality: the way we solve that problem can go in any direction, and it’s up to us to choose which path to take.
Yes—any biblical twist in linguistics is a welcome twist. Agreed wholeheartedly. We need the enemy, the antagonist to rise up against. I am either suspicious or in awe of those capable of reaching their maximal potential without an enemy, generating it solely within. Either Gods or liars.
I think you’re pointing to something real, but the split between fact-making and myth-making is doing too much work. Facts don’t produce nihilism. We’ve always had facts. What’s changed is the conditions under which we experience them. Meaning doesn’t disappear because the world is explained. It disappears when nothing we do feels like it has consequence. When action doesn’t return to us in a way we can feel, everything flattens, no matter how “mythic” we try to make it. Xenophon didn’t become mythic by rejecting reality. He became mythic because the situation had real stakes, visible dependence, and no distance between decision and consequence. Most of us don’t live inside that kind of structure anymore.
So I’m not sure myth is the cure. It feels more like a response to something deeper:
we’ve built a world where too little of what we do actually matters in a way we can perceive.
Thanks Sara. I am not sure there is actually a split between the two. Yes, we can try to bring consequence back, but how far are we willing to go? We cannot all hunt cannibals in the hills, and few things compare. For my part, I think that by recreating some of the stakes creatively we can ensure we do not retrograde evolution into the same stakes in reality. Something I'm playing with in my own thinking.
I wonder if it’s less about recreating stakes as much as recognizing what made them real in the first place. Xenophon’s situation wasn’t meaningful because it was extreme. It was meaningful because nothing in it was optional. His decisions mattered immediately, and to people who were there to feel the consequences with him.
That’s the part that’s difficult to reproduce.... we can simulate intensity, but simulated stakes rarely bind us in the same way, because we know, somewhere, that we can step out of them. And that possibility changes how seriously we inhabit them. So I’m not sure the question is how far we’re willing to go, or how to recreate extremes, but whether there are still forms of life where consequence, dependence, and visibility haven’t been fully dissolved.
Without those, myth can start to function more as compensation than structure.
That is the existential of question of modernity, safety, affluence, and ease. Though I disagree with one point—he did have a choice. Even it is life or death we are left with one choice: fight or die. This is why, in part, it is an even greater achievement to find the same spirit without the enemy present. This is one of my core themes.
The choice point is real, and it matters... I think what I'm circling is that the choice only becomes formative when it has to be inhabited, not just made. Deciding under pressure with others who share the cost is different from deciding alone, with distance, and a way out. Your theme interests me: what does that spirit look like when you've found it without the external structure? I'm not sure I've found a clean answer to my own version of that question. :)
This reminds me of the importance not falling into fact-making in medicine. Taking myself as an example, as med student, or future doctor, we tend to fall into pure fact-making too easily. To confuse the patient, the human being, with simple numbers on a lab sheet or diagnoses on a list. With more myth-making, maybe people can live longer and better, and we can see them in another life, take roads that may not fit 1:1 with pure fact-based decision making, but that may aid healing and alleviate suffering more than any clinical therapy could.
That you're already honing in on this is music, Kai. Too many of my interactions with doctors have been trying to see beyond a mere symptom and take in the larger problem of a complex entity with several concurrent autoimmune issues. The human aspect plays such a crucial role, especially when the patient is dealing with something the mainstream does not yet understand. I want to think more on your comment—it's wonderful.
That’s it! Of course different people have different responses in different intensities, but your mindset play a big big role! I had a patient during my nursing internship who told me he’s sick of being old and that he wanted to die, and a week after he said that he died peacefully in his sleep. It’s sad, but also (in the case of myth-making) very intriguing to see one‘s own agency and power to decide.
Some words conjure one’s own myths based on prior reality. The “existential threat” of Iran possessing (actually developing) and using (martyrdom of Islamist jihad) creates images of nuclear devastation and response to act in order to prevent it.
I love this Barry. Just because it is "myth" does not mean it is wholly disconnected from reality. It may indicate the greatest reality there is. From what I have seen, it is only those who are willing to take the myth seriously who can get ahead of reality. It is a delicate balance though, knowing which myths are indicative of reality and which are purely fiction.
Tolkien survived the Battle of the Somme and in his recovery wrote the first piece of his cosmology. The Fall of Gondolin.
A ferocious and cruel enemy. A hidden city in the mountains where the exiles thrive. A mere mortal war orphan who becomes an outlaw but also becomes the instrument of a rebel god's design to reshape the politics and powers of Arda. And they pull it off!
They persuade the gods to forgive to exiles, defeat Morgoth and bring forth a child who becomes the morning star. And whose children are Elrond and Elros... Yes. I need myths! I need meaning.
I think maybe we should move from "we must eat them raw" to "Behold! We ate them raw! What's next!?"
I’m not a historian, though I love reading about history and their myth-making larger-than-life heroes and villains. One thing epic stories always share is that the villain pushes the hero to extraordinary levels of strength and endurance, sometimes creating myth itself. Or maybe it’s the other way around… Either way, it’s a story as old as humanity: to grow stronger, faster, harder to kill, to reach our own version of “nirvana”, we need something that challenges us, something that brings the anger up so we can transform it into power, leveling up our very souls. Mythic strength requires a monumental problem to overcome. And this is where myth intersects with reality: the way we solve that problem can go in any direction, and it’s up to us to choose which path to take.
Yes—any biblical twist in linguistics is a welcome twist. Agreed wholeheartedly. We need the enemy, the antagonist to rise up against. I am either suspicious or in awe of those capable of reaching their maximal potential without an enemy, generating it solely within. Either Gods or liars.
I write fiction and one thing I’ve learned is to make a strong protagonist, you need to match them to an equally strong (or stronger) antagonist.
Man, nothing better than Classical military insouciance.
No mercy of the fire and brimstone variety. Anytime I read Xenophon or Caesar I feel like learning how to fight with a sword.
I think you’re pointing to something real, but the split between fact-making and myth-making is doing too much work. Facts don’t produce nihilism. We’ve always had facts. What’s changed is the conditions under which we experience them. Meaning doesn’t disappear because the world is explained. It disappears when nothing we do feels like it has consequence. When action doesn’t return to us in a way we can feel, everything flattens, no matter how “mythic” we try to make it. Xenophon didn’t become mythic by rejecting reality. He became mythic because the situation had real stakes, visible dependence, and no distance between decision and consequence. Most of us don’t live inside that kind of structure anymore.
So I’m not sure myth is the cure. It feels more like a response to something deeper:
we’ve built a world where too little of what we do actually matters in a way we can perceive.
Thanks Sara. I am not sure there is actually a split between the two. Yes, we can try to bring consequence back, but how far are we willing to go? We cannot all hunt cannibals in the hills, and few things compare. For my part, I think that by recreating some of the stakes creatively we can ensure we do not retrograde evolution into the same stakes in reality. Something I'm playing with in my own thinking.
I wonder if it’s less about recreating stakes as much as recognizing what made them real in the first place. Xenophon’s situation wasn’t meaningful because it was extreme. It was meaningful because nothing in it was optional. His decisions mattered immediately, and to people who were there to feel the consequences with him.
That’s the part that’s difficult to reproduce.... we can simulate intensity, but simulated stakes rarely bind us in the same way, because we know, somewhere, that we can step out of them. And that possibility changes how seriously we inhabit them. So I’m not sure the question is how far we’re willing to go, or how to recreate extremes, but whether there are still forms of life where consequence, dependence, and visibility haven’t been fully dissolved.
Without those, myth can start to function more as compensation than structure.
That is the existential of question of modernity, safety, affluence, and ease. Though I disagree with one point—he did have a choice. Even it is life or death we are left with one choice: fight or die. This is why, in part, it is an even greater achievement to find the same spirit without the enemy present. This is one of my core themes.
The choice point is real, and it matters... I think what I'm circling is that the choice only becomes formative when it has to be inhabited, not just made. Deciding under pressure with others who share the cost is different from deciding alone, with distance, and a way out. Your theme interests me: what does that spirit look like when you've found it without the external structure? I'm not sure I've found a clean answer to my own version of that question. :)
This reminds me of the importance not falling into fact-making in medicine. Taking myself as an example, as med student, or future doctor, we tend to fall into pure fact-making too easily. To confuse the patient, the human being, with simple numbers on a lab sheet or diagnoses on a list. With more myth-making, maybe people can live longer and better, and we can see them in another life, take roads that may not fit 1:1 with pure fact-based decision making, but that may aid healing and alleviate suffering more than any clinical therapy could.
That you're already honing in on this is music, Kai. Too many of my interactions with doctors have been trying to see beyond a mere symptom and take in the larger problem of a complex entity with several concurrent autoimmune issues. The human aspect plays such a crucial role, especially when the patient is dealing with something the mainstream does not yet understand. I want to think more on your comment—it's wonderful.
Thank you Sam! It is a good fight, and I aspire to keep fighting for that!
The placebo effect now proven. Neuroscience Reveals What You Believe Can Change Your Body.
Take a look at this article!https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/neuroscience-reveals-what-you-believe-can-change-your-body-5973645
This is awesome—thanks for dropping.
That’s it! Of course different people have different responses in different intensities, but your mindset play a big big role! I had a patient during my nursing internship who told me he’s sick of being old and that he wanted to die, and a week after he said that he died peacefully in his sleep. It’s sad, but also (in the case of myth-making) very intriguing to see one‘s own agency and power to decide.
Some words conjure one’s own myths based on prior reality. The “existential threat” of Iran possessing (actually developing) and using (martyrdom of Islamist jihad) creates images of nuclear devastation and response to act in order to prevent it.
I love this Barry. Just because it is "myth" does not mean it is wholly disconnected from reality. It may indicate the greatest reality there is. From what I have seen, it is only those who are willing to take the myth seriously who can get ahead of reality. It is a delicate balance though, knowing which myths are indicative of reality and which are purely fiction.
Myth and fact. That consideration reminds of Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.
"No cat, no cradle."
There are many things that even a powerful telescope cannot see.
Tolkien survived the Battle of the Somme and in his recovery wrote the first piece of his cosmology. The Fall of Gondolin.
A ferocious and cruel enemy. A hidden city in the mountains where the exiles thrive. A mere mortal war orphan who becomes an outlaw but also becomes the instrument of a rebel god's design to reshape the politics and powers of Arda. And they pull it off!
They persuade the gods to forgive to exiles, defeat Morgoth and bring forth a child who becomes the morning star. And whose children are Elrond and Elros... Yes. I need myths! I need meaning.