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.
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.
This is powerful. Your point about his choice, his myth making decision to die, is further proof we always hold the most basic choice within us: the choice of life or death.
In medicine, imho, the placebo effect is the myth.
The research scientist wants to eliminate it, but clinicians, want, or should want, to enhance it, foster it, nourish it.
I often tell people doctors are not always giving you “facts”, it is not always science, it is just their best guess, but they need the patient to be “all in”, so they will comply with treatment, that the treatment will work, and that belief will increase their chances of it being successful.
One of my professors in Acupuncture School, always told me, when you decide on a diagnosis, then a treatment, be confident, believe, because the patient will intuit your doubt if you have them, and the patient needs to believe you are capable, knowledgeable, skillful, to believe in you, and in doing so, the chances of successful treatment increase dramatically.
That’s exactly it!!! You can’t pretend to know everything of course, but you have done your best and to your own best knowledge, you‘ve settled on a diagnosis, so now you have to be confident and follow that!
But also don’t be dogmatic, follow the patient closely, are they in compliance, if so, is the treatment having the desired, expected result, if not, put your ego aside and change the treatment accordingly.
When I consult with a physician or other expert, I want someone steeped in the fact/evidence based mode. For an expert to live a good full life and keep serving their clients in a sustainable fashion, they need to live the hero’s journey as much as possible.
I like that point with the Hero's journey, though I guess in some way it'd be better if everyone would live it! And yes I see your point, I feel like the most important thing is really awareness, so that (in this case) the doctor can adapt their approach depending on how it best benefits the patient, e.g. very fact-/evidence-based for you, and maybe more imbued with a sprinkle of myth for somebody else! Thank you for your opinion!
Agreed, Kai. While the hero’s journey is for everyone, my consulting on “burnout” in healthcare settings suggests that finding that path may be a bit of a life-and-death matter for those brilliant practitioners.
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. :)
I do not have it answered yet. I hinted in another comment that the man or woman who can access the most intense mythical and cognitive awakening without an enemy is either a god or a liar. But I am still exploring how to do so.
That’s a very interesting formulation, I wonder if the presence of an enemy isn’t doing more than intensifying the experience... it’s also structuring it.
An external threat simplifies the field. It concentrates attention, clarifies stakes, removes ambiguity. In that sense, it produces intensity, but also direction.
Without that structure, what you’re left with is something more difficult: sustaining that same level of clarity and inner demand without anything outside you forcing it.
Which may not feel mythical at all. It may feel quieter, less visible, even less convincing.
So I’m not sure the absence of an enemy produces something lesser. It may produce something less dramatic, but more internally grounded.
And perhaps the real question isn’t whether one can reach that intensity without an enemy, but whether one can remain oriented without needing one. :)
I like your proposal that we need more MEANING/PURPOSE in our post-industrial tech-infused lives, Sara. As Joseph Campbell illuminates in his writing, mythic/heroic themes can open up wide vistas of life’s wonder and meaning. I’ve been thinking/writing about all that a lot lately. As Sam says, we reach beyond fact during hard times, which we are in.
What you’re pointing to matters, especially the role myth can play in opening perception.
Meaning isn’t absent, but harder to access under certain conditions. When action, consequence, and visibility are stretched or diffused, experience flattens, myth can feel like a way of reintroducing depth.
Interesting piece. If I understand it correctly, modern life is dominated by "fact-making," which leads to nihilism, numbness, and loss of meaning. In contrast, myth-making creates meaning. Therefore, we should lean more into myth-making. Sounds a bit like Nietzsche, Jung, and Joseph Camball. My problem is that it sets fact-making and myth-making as opposing forces. For one, science produces a lot of hope (curing cancer in children). Myth-making doesn't automatically produce meaning (the myth can be very disempowering, i.e the world is rigged and nothing I do matters). I had to look up Xenophon because I didn't know anything about him. It seems, though, that he succeeded through strategy, discipline, logistics, and leadership, which is less myth-making and more fact-making reliant. Furthermore, good science often inspires awe. Meaning comes from understanding complexity, not just from re-framing suffering and struggle. There might be a hidden danger in ignoring reality - poor decision-making.
It feels as if there’s a growing hunger for myth making, a return to hopeful wonder. Perhaps my perspective is skewed- I’m a myth to my son, as he is to me. I understand what science says about how he came into existence, but am still in awe that he is here when once he was not, and being his mentor and protector have given me plenty to overcome.
I will never know everything there is to know about him, and vice versa, but herein lies the key- capturing as much of the present as we can lest we miss each other’s lives entirely.
Added to the trials and triumphs of my marriage to his mother, I have a library of epics.
The greatest “myths” come from a combination of the facts and the possible. Thomas Paine was right when he wrote at the Founding of America that “we have it in our power to begin the world over again.” As was Franklin, when he noted that “our cause is the cause of all mankind.” Both laid out a vision of the possible that they and future generations would have to work towards.
To me, their words remain as powerful today as they were then because the work is not finished. 🇺🇸
All who drop videos of Gandalf the Grey are welcome. I have a metal Gandalf silhouette covering my living room wall, daily motivation comparable to nothing else.
Your whole excellent essay (one of your best for conciseness and impact) swings on this hinge:
“For the most part, we find fact-making strength in easy times, and myth-making strength in hard times.”
I appreciate the way you extol the value of mythic/heroic living without minimizing the value of the fact-based paradigm (aka science). You get the both/and just right!
Rock on, Baird, thank you. It is a war for the balance. And I do believe the delusion piece is also crucial. Allowing ourselves the chance to really be wrong, mess things up, explore a new idea—this is crucial to the balance as well.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is powerful. Your point about his choice, his myth making decision to die, is further proof we always hold the most basic choice within us: the choice of life or death.
And it works both ways, you can also harm yourself with belief.
In medicine, imho, the placebo effect is the myth.
The research scientist wants to eliminate it, but clinicians, want, or should want, to enhance it, foster it, nourish it.
I often tell people doctors are not always giving you “facts”, it is not always science, it is just their best guess, but they need the patient to be “all in”, so they will comply with treatment, that the treatment will work, and that belief will increase their chances of it being successful.
One of my professors in Acupuncture School, always told me, when you decide on a diagnosis, then a treatment, be confident, believe, because the patient will intuit your doubt if you have them, and the patient needs to believe you are capable, knowledgeable, skillful, to believe in you, and in doing so, the chances of successful treatment increase dramatically.
That’s exactly it!!! You can’t pretend to know everything of course, but you have done your best and to your own best knowledge, you‘ve settled on a diagnosis, so now you have to be confident and follow that!
But also don’t be dogmatic, follow the patient closely, are they in compliance, if so, is the treatment having the desired, expected result, if not, put your ego aside and change the treatment accordingly.
Of course, that’s what being human is about! :)
When I consult with a physician or other expert, I want someone steeped in the fact/evidence based mode. For an expert to live a good full life and keep serving their clients in a sustainable fashion, they need to live the hero’s journey as much as possible.
I like that point with the Hero's journey, though I guess in some way it'd be better if everyone would live it! And yes I see your point, I feel like the most important thing is really awareness, so that (in this case) the doctor can adapt their approach depending on how it best benefits the patient, e.g. very fact-/evidence-based for you, and maybe more imbued with a sprinkle of myth for somebody else! Thank you for your opinion!
Agreed, Kai. While the hero’s journey is for everyone, my consulting on “burnout” in healthcare settings suggests that finding that path may be a bit of a life-and-death matter for those brilliant practitioners.
That is absolutely a good point, I hadn't thought about that yet, thank you!
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. :)
I do not have it answered yet. I hinted in another comment that the man or woman who can access the most intense mythical and cognitive awakening without an enemy is either a god or a liar. But I am still exploring how to do so.
That’s a very interesting formulation, I wonder if the presence of an enemy isn’t doing more than intensifying the experience... it’s also structuring it.
An external threat simplifies the field. It concentrates attention, clarifies stakes, removes ambiguity. In that sense, it produces intensity, but also direction.
Without that structure, what you’re left with is something more difficult: sustaining that same level of clarity and inner demand without anything outside you forcing it.
Which may not feel mythical at all. It may feel quieter, less visible, even less convincing.
So I’m not sure the absence of an enemy produces something lesser. It may produce something less dramatic, but more internally grounded.
And perhaps the real question isn’t whether one can reach that intensity without an enemy, but whether one can remain oriented without needing one. :)
I like your proposal that we need more MEANING/PURPOSE in our post-industrial tech-infused lives, Sara. As Joseph Campbell illuminates in his writing, mythic/heroic themes can open up wide vistas of life’s wonder and meaning. I’ve been thinking/writing about all that a lot lately. As Sam says, we reach beyond fact during hard times, which we are in.
What you’re pointing to matters, especially the role myth can play in opening perception.
Meaning isn’t absent, but harder to access under certain conditions. When action, consequence, and visibility are stretched or diffused, experience flattens, myth can feel like a way of reintroducing depth.
Meaning is harder to access (construct) under certain conditions. You’ve nailed it there, Sara! 👏
I think so. Glad it resonates.
(Subscribing to you now for more gems like that)
Interesting piece. If I understand it correctly, modern life is dominated by "fact-making," which leads to nihilism, numbness, and loss of meaning. In contrast, myth-making creates meaning. Therefore, we should lean more into myth-making. Sounds a bit like Nietzsche, Jung, and Joseph Camball. My problem is that it sets fact-making and myth-making as opposing forces. For one, science produces a lot of hope (curing cancer in children). Myth-making doesn't automatically produce meaning (the myth can be very disempowering, i.e the world is rigged and nothing I do matters). I had to look up Xenophon because I didn't know anything about him. It seems, though, that he succeeded through strategy, discipline, logistics, and leadership, which is less myth-making and more fact-making reliant. Furthermore, good science often inspires awe. Meaning comes from understanding complexity, not just from re-framing suffering and struggle. There might be a hidden danger in ignoring reality - poor decision-making.
Agreed. I have a section in the middle of the essay to this exact point. We need a balance between them.
It feels as if there’s a growing hunger for myth making, a return to hopeful wonder. Perhaps my perspective is skewed- I’m a myth to my son, as he is to me. I understand what science says about how he came into existence, but am still in awe that he is here when once he was not, and being his mentor and protector have given me plenty to overcome.
I will never know everything there is to know about him, and vice versa, but herein lies the key- capturing as much of the present as we can lest we miss each other’s lives entirely.
Added to the trials and triumphs of my marriage to his mother, I have a library of epics.
Thanks for another thought-provoking piece
Maintaining that perspective is worthy of Xenophon, perhaps even more so because the Kolchoi are not needed. Thank you for sharing.
The greatest “myths” come from a combination of the facts and the possible. Thomas Paine was right when he wrote at the Founding of America that “we have it in our power to begin the world over again.” As was Franklin, when he noted that “our cause is the cause of all mankind.” Both laid out a vision of the possible that they and future generations would have to work towards.
To me, their words remain as powerful today as they were then because the work is not finished. 🇺🇸
100%. It is a damn good fight.
The myths are truth but break when we force them to be true. But that wasn't their purpose. They are there to teach us how to be human.
Hammering the paradox again. Love it.
You keep using that word, Paradox... and I love it!!
https://thesingularitychronicles.com/shop/paradox/paradox-book-one-of-the-singularity-chronicles/
What is the American myth?
It is not an Arthur, but I submit that it is more akin to Sweden's Twelve Knights described below. A community.
For it is The People who currently sleep. (see: Jefferson: Declaration of Independence; Jefferson again: "The Tree of Liberty . . .")
The Myth is of "The People."
It is "The People" who sleep and wait.
And someday "The People" will set things aright.
But alas, for better or for worse, it is not for us individually to choose the time:
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/o2CiL-0QU4A
All who drop videos of Gandalf the Grey are welcome. I have a metal Gandalf silhouette covering my living room wall, daily motivation comparable to nothing else.
It's obvious that Tolkien was writing for a British audience, but there are so many of us Westerners who resonate with his mythmaking.
It seems to me that Galndalf is not the hero, but rather the heart, core and soul of the ark of the Myth.
I’m here for it—this is a thought worth savoring.
I meant "arc" . . . but perhaps given the times, ark works equally well.
Thank you for sharing your work here.
It is inspiring.
Both arc and Ark are good to go. You're more than welcome.
Your whole excellent essay (one of your best for conciseness and impact) swings on this hinge:
“For the most part, we find fact-making strength in easy times, and myth-making strength in hard times.”
I appreciate the way you extol the value of mythic/heroic living without minimizing the value of the fact-based paradigm (aka science). You get the both/and just right!
Rock on, Baird, thank you. It is a war for the balance. And I do believe the delusion piece is also crucial. Allowing ourselves the chance to really be wrong, mess things up, explore a new idea—this is crucial to the balance as well.
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.
"There are many things that even a powerful telescope cannot see." This is an aphorism that ought to be shared widely. Thank you.
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.
Yes—the more Elendil, the better. Phenomenal connection.
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.