Horus: A New Hope, A Wise Past

August 4th, 2011   by   Andrew

Horus, Jacob, Jesus — Three Sons, Three Stories

Chapter 10 of the series Myths and Dragons

Part 1 – Horus: A New Hope, A Wise Past
Part 2 – Jacob – Never Surrender, Never Learn
Part 3 – A Change Worth Dying For, A Culture Always Challenged

Setup:
If we are to take stories as maps of behavior then we need to identify with the characters. Horus, Jacob and Jesus provide three unique maps about the relationships between a father, a mother and a son. They also demonstrate three  steps in the mythological consciousness that frames our cultural heritage. We can read these three stories and examine what they say about how the individual relates to the social order that surrounds them and to the unknown world outside that protective social order.

The posts are made up of three parts:  an introduction, a story, and one  explanation (or midrash).

Questions for readers: Can you identify with the hero’s situation?
Is this story a good map for how we should behave?


Introduction

I believe many of us are more Horusian than we admit. The story of Horus is a part of the Egyptian creation myth, and how the culture of Egypt was established. Below is my version of the story. (You can find other versions on the net, like here, or here.)

The Story

Osiris was the oldest child of the sky and the earth. He married his sister Isis and ruled over gods and humanity. He taught his subjects how to make bread and how to live by laws. Everyone held him in the highest respect except his brother Set. Few cared for Set at all, and his loneliness and jealousy turned him into a terrible monster. Filled with rage, Set killed Osiris and cut up his body. He spread the pieces far and wide and then claimed himself king over everything.

Isis wept over the loss of her husband, and decided she would gather up the pieces of Osiris so that he could live long enough to father a child. With the help of her sister, Isis found all the parts of Osiris’ body except for his eyes and his phallus. Isis made a new phallus for him from what was his favorite weapon, a spear. She then breathed over the body and Osiris was resurrected. Isis soon became pregnant and Osiris, whole once again, was able to descend into the underworld. There, his honor and nobility grew until he became king and ruler.

Isis named her child Horus for he had the eyes of a hawk. Horus was bright-eyed and curious about everything in the world. Isis told him about his father, and about Set. Horus decided that he must contact his father. Now that Osiris ruled the underworld, he wasn’t able to send all of his wisdom to Horus. But Osiris taught his son and tested him, and with each lesson he grew more proud of his son. He taught Horus how to make a long spear and told him to keep it handy should Set ever attack him. When Horus was old enough, he challenged Set before the court of the gods. “I am the rightful king,” he declared. There was a great argument that settled nothing, and so Set schemed to challenge Horus to a series of contests.

Set cheated at first and thought himself clever, until Isis caught him. She set a trap, but let him go when Set begged for his life. When Horus found out, he became angry at both Set and his mother. Isis scolded him though, and reminded him that he can trust his mother even if he cannot understand everything she did. The gods decided there would be one last contest and Set decided to make this one very difficult. They would race boats made of heavy stone.

Horus, now realizing the nature of these contests, conspired with his mother and made his boat of a light wood she found for him. They covered it with limestone plaster concealing its construction. Set, in his haste, used the cap of a mountain, but it sunk to the bottom of the river. The other gods laughed at him. Set grew so angry he turned into a monster again. He dove into the water and hid on the mountain cap until Horus came by in his boat. Set jumped out of the water at Horus and tore an eye out of the face of the bright-eyed prince. Horus swallowed the pain and plunged his long spear into the water, pinning Set to the mountain cap. Set writhed in anger but as long as Horus held the spear, Set could not get free.

The gods were then amazed, and saw Horus would be the just ruler of the world. Set had come to the throne by murder, but Horus had only trapped the evil Set in the water with the spear.

Horus gained much power and skill as king, but knew his work was not done. He dove into the water, and searched for his eye. When he found it he went straight to the underworld to find Osiris. Horus then offered his father the eye so he might see again. Horus and Osiris ruled as father and son until Osiris had to return to the underworld. Horus ruled all his life but Set did manage to get free of the spear and out of the water. Horus and Set still have their contests and try to direct all of us in each their own way.

(One) Explanation

In this story, the tyranny of the rage-filled monster of Set compelled Isis to have a child to renew the hope of restoring the old kingdom. A son sought out the wisdom of his father, learned how to beat a tyrant at the tyrant’s own game, and became a wise and gracious ruler like his father. After a long preparation, he came before the gods and faced his challenger openly and honestly. Unfortunately, he never does triumph over the tyrant completely, but he is strong enough, wise enough and well armed enough to protect the world regardless of what the future may bring.

The Father’s kingdom cannot be fully restored. It is a thing of the past. But by mining the past and using the gifts it has to offer, a new leader can flourish, prepared for any trouble that may lie ahead. As well, a kingdom ruled by jealousy, rage and emotional outburst is not a healthy society. Horus learns even from his enemy. Set shows that rage can obtain power. He also shows his destructive power against nature with the mountain and the water. But most importantly, he demonstrates he is not a good king, just as we should not be ruled by such behavior or emotion.

The Mother’s resources and talents are beneficial, and even crucial, in restoring order. However, in this story, Isis makes her own decisions in reassembling Osiris, letting Set go once he’s caught, and helping Horus with his boat. The natural world, in its complexity, does not always commit to one side of a conflict or one course of action. It can create, it can trap, it can provide, and it can be a great teacher, but it will not be ruled over. Horus accepts this, and also imitates this by trapping his enemy, Set, but ultimately not destroying him.

What do you think?
Can you identify with the hero’s situation?
Is this story a good map for how we should behave?


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Posted in Behaviour, Beyond Belief, god, myth, psychology, Religion, story | 4 Comments »


The Knower

July 25th, 2011   by   Andrew

Chapter 5 of the series Myths and Dragons
[Part 1- The Known, Part 2- The Unknown, Part 3 - The Knower]

Mythology often portrays the hero as male. Some ancient cultures do make some obvious attempts to balance the genders. For example, there are sets of girl and boy twins in Greek mythology. In Celtic mythology there are female goddesses of war. But this balance doesn’t hold in every culture, even though the stories of every culture do rely heavily on the relationships between male and female characters.

Joseph Campbell received a fair dose of criticism for portraying the Hero’s Journey as universal when in many respects it seemed to show only a pattern of male experience. Campbell’s reply seemed to be little more than a hand-waving. He  said that ancient story-telling was done mostly by the men and so the interests of men became the more widespread. “The women were too busy; they had too damn much to do to sit around thinking about stories.”(1)

This is a cute response but a little dangerous. What could be more infuriating to women than acknowledging male laziness, male manipulation and male story-telling, but then  do nothing much about it?

At one point Campbell went so far as to say that females already take part in the universal journey due to the physical change from child to child-bearing women. It happens naturally for them, where boys have to become men through trials and journeys and changes of attitude.(2)

This is the same attitude, thinly veiled, as  some ancient cultures — women become treasures to acquire, and then they are fitted into the rigid role of child-rearing for the purposes of their gallant, ignorant and story-telling men.

As swift and charming as Campbell might have been, he didn’t know everything about women.

Jordan Peterson tries to hand-wave this problem away too by shifting the focus. Instead of a ‘hero’ journeying through a cycle, there is a ‘knower’ or a student that must face both the ‘known’ and ‘unknown’ worlds. The ‘knower’ learns something that he or she can share which improves the social order of the world. Peterson went back to those ancient stories for examples just as Campbell did, and unfortunately, found a lot of archetypal male characters moving from the reality of their social order to the reality of the complex natural world (and then back again). Peterson named this male character the Divine Son.

He could have labeled the character the Divine Child. What do you think?

Where the known is represented by both the Great and Terrible Father, and the unknown is represented by both the Great and Terrible Mother, the knower is represented with a dual nature as well. The third element of myth then would be The Hostile Brothers – both the hero and the villain, the triumphant victor or the tragic loser.

It’s a small quibble, but would it have been too much to call them the Hostile Siblings? What do you think?

Like my last two posts, below is a list of associated representations in mythology for the knower (taken again mostly from Peterson’s Maps of Meaning). I’ve tried to organize them into setting or environment, characters, plot events, and abstract ideas. When one comes up in a story, it could mean any and all of the other things associated with it. Myth works mostly in worlds of association. Any story that makes allusion to any of these things involves all of them.

The knower is the creative explorer, the sun, the I, the eye, the plow, the subject, the trickster, the fool, the hero, the coward, the deceiver, the adversary, the spirit, the child, the siblings, the son of the unknown and known, the one that undergoes change, the hostile brothers, the competing sisters (my addition), the way, the illuminated one, the enlightened one, the eternal opposition to the light, action, the transformer, the ego, consciousness, the present and the Tao.

The character portion of this list is much bigger than the others, and that’s because the ‘knowers’ are often the ones doing things in the story, either changing the world or changing how they look at the world. And, we tend to identify and empathize with characters more than just things when we read stories.

Peterson gives a rather lengthy description of the polarized attitudes inherent in these hostile siblings. I’ve tried to summarize them below.

The child, male or female, is a common and recurring role in story and again has this dual nature. Ask any parent and they will tell you a child can be heroic or villainous.  If you think of the word, “Child”, which one of the below fits with what you think the word means?

1. The child/hero faces the unknown with hope and promise (see post: Structure of Behavior). The hero ‘believes’ the unknown can bring renewal and redemption and so voluntarily enters into the exploratory world and the world of change (physical or mental). Once insight or reward is found, transformed heroes return to share what they have found or practice what skill they have earned.

(Mithras or Itu, mediator between God and humanity, sometimes described as “The Way”)

Here is a modern example (sorry, I just couldn’t resist…)

2. The child/villain faces the unknown as though it holds only threat and anxiety (see post: Structure of Behavior). The villain ‘believes’ the unknown brings destruction and confusion. He or she shrinks from any contact with the exploratory world and becomes fearful, rigid and fixed (physically and mentally). Once change or conflicting information is unavoidable, the villain tries to suppress it or thwart it, which can lead to death or hatred of life.

(Lucifer, held fast at the waist, in Dante’s Inferno)

Here is a modern example:

I’m pretty sure I’ve adopted both attitudes from time to time.

Now, I’ve picked four examples in this post, but they are all male examples. Even I have fallen into this trap. What would be some good examples of female heroes that face change or explore the known and unknown worlds (modern or ancient)? And, do they display either of the two attitudes from above?


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1. J. Campbell. Pathways to Bliss

2. J. Campbell and B. Moyers. The Power of Myth

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The Efficiency of Myth – Part 1

July 18th, 2011   by   Andrew

Chapter 4 in the Series Myths and Dragons
[This post got too long, so I split it into 2 parts, and provided a summary]

Summary:
Three things make Myth incredibly efficient:

  1. Myths can be broken down into three basic elements that everyone can relate to due to a time-worn foundation of common experience.
  2. Myths can use those three basic elements in a near infinite combination of ways to express examples of both good, correct action and poor, mistaken action, by illustrating events – behavior and consequences of behavior.
  3. Myth doesn’t separate an object from it’s meaning or significance. And often enough, Myth does not separate a subject from an object.

A Time-Worn Foundation of Common Experience

Have you ever felt like you had to do something, even though you weren’t sure what it is you should do?

Myths are maps of behavior. They show us how to act when we are faced with a situation in which we don’t know the outcome, we don’t know how to deal with new things, we can’t predict what might happen, and yet we feel compelled to act.

If you were going to tell a story that speaks to the widest possible range of common experiences, would it not have to say something about how to face these moments of uncertainty?

Myths are so efficient they can sort out these episodes of uncertainty with only the minimum tools of story. A myth can (almost always) be broken down into three basic elements(1):

  • The known – explored territory, expected behavior or events
  • The unknown – unexplored territory, unexpected behavior or event
  • The knower – the subject, the one doing the exploring, or the one compelled to act and experience

These three elements can be used to describe any situation in which someone faces the feeling of uncertainty while having to do something. They are so general, and yet they are so valuable in their ability to tap into that common experience we share.

Another common experience we share is family. Not all families are the same, obviously, but in general, it is commonly understood what is behind the meaning of Father or behind the meaning of Mother. We have developed no sustaining cultures (that I know of, at least) that did not use these two roles as necessary to their foundation.

Myth again uses this common understanding and maps parental figures onto these elements. The known, explored territory tends to take representation in the Father. The unknown, unexplored territory tends to take representation in the Mother.

Both Great and Terrible

Even a bad example can be a useful example. Each of the three elements of myth can be represented positively or negatively.

The known can be understood as the social world or culture – the customs, beliefs and practices that are in place to ensure we know how to behave around one another productively and predictably. This force can be both nurturing and oppressive but certainly guides and governs much of our actions. In myth, the known is represented usually as a ruler or controlling hierarchy. Rulers can be nurturing and fostering. They can inspire growth and comfort. But they also can be the opposite— cruel and debilitating. Because culture can be both benevolent and tyrant, the known is represented as both the Great and Terrible Father.

The unknown can be understood as the vast, complex natural world we live in. We only ever know it partially, through our bounded frame of experience and limited knowledge, but there is always something more to it, something more bountiful and more dangerous than we ever fully comprehend. It can be the source of our death and the source of our treasure or transformation. We can turn away from it afraid, or we can voluntarily face it and explore what new complexities lie within. This is represented as both the Great and Terrible Mother.

The knower is the ultimate point of reference for action. Depending on the knower’s attitude and behavior, this character can be either Hero or Villain. In story, there is often the use of twins, or hostile brothers, or competing sisters. The consequences of the attitude or behavior are not always controllable by the knower, but the actual attitude and behavior tend to be made by choice.

These three characters are fluid and adaptable. With a little creativity and imagination, they can successfully take the form of any part of story — setting, environment, plot events, gods, humans, or even creatures. But all the more important, they can represent both the positive and negative aspects of an experience at the same time. Everything has a plural nature, in a sense. In myth, anything can be good or evil or neutral. Anything can be useful, beneficial, dangerous or meaningless, much like the nature(s) of reality.

(Separate posts will go into further details for each of these elements. Links:  The Known, The Unknown, and The Knower)


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(1) From J. Peterson’s ideas on the metamyth

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The Structure of Behavior – Or, the Importance of the HHGtotheG

July 16th, 2011   by   Andrew

Chapter 3 in the series Myths and Dragons

This figure(1) represents, in a simplistic form, a model for normal everyday life. We wake up to What IS. We then choose our behavior based on motivations that lead us towards changing What IS into What SHOULD BE. This can be considered normal goal-directed behavior.

Often enough I wake up hungry. There are a lot of things I could do, a lot of possible behaviors, but I tend to choose what to do based on the motivation to deal with my hunger. I grab a bowl, some breakfast cereal, and some milk, let’s say.

This figure represents a situation in which something happens in the middle of a chosen routine of action (2). If it seems likely I will satisfy my hunger, I can continue with my plan. But if my desired outcome comes into doubt due to novelty, I might have to think up a new course of action if I wish to pursue my original goal. I could also change my goal.

I find a bowl, some breakfast cereal, but open the fridge and find no milk. My goal of eating is now threatened. I wrinkle up my nose and grumble. But then I notice we still have some yogurt. I could have a banana and yogurt. If we have bananas. My attitude improves.

Now, what happens if there are no bananas in the house? Or, no food at all in the house? Or, what happens if something so compelling is found in place of What IS that my original goal is no longer a priority?

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide the Galaxy, Arthur Dent woke up hoping to have a cup of tea. He found several bulldozers about to smash his house down for a new expressway. Well, that was unexpected. His morning became a place of chaos. What do you do when you are still in your pajamas and robe while your house is about to come down around you?

Arthur tried lying down in front of the bulldozers. This type of behavior is not something he normally does around dozers.  He is not acting much like Arthur Dent. His friend Ford came along at that point and told him to get up because they had even bigger problems. The whole planet, in fact, was about to get bulldozed.

Arthur doesn’t know what to do. He is in a place and in a situation where he can no longer predict outcomes, and can’t really direct his behavior normally.

What does he do?

He listens to his friend Ford, and follows The Guide.

This figure is the Hero’s Journey (3). In a sense, What IS is replaced with the KNOWN World and What SHOULD BE is where things end up if the journey around the circle is completed. Each stage in the circle, however, offers another encounter with novelty. The characters’ actions in the face of each moment of novelty lead to consequences.

I’ve picked the HHGtotheG as an example in this post for a couple of reasons. The story holds pretty closely to the above model.

Arthur Dent, in the HHGtotheG, moves quickly from the Call to Adventure (bulldozers) to Refusal of the Call (lying down, complaining) to Help from a Mentor (holds on to Ford for dear life). And just as quickly he encounters Tests in the form of Vogon bureaucracy and Vogon poetry. He proves to have some skills (he baffles the Vogons for a moment with brilliant, empty compliments) and also some vulnerabilities (the Vogon chief eventually puts Ford and Arthur into an airlock and then the vacuum of space). And for the most part, Arthur keeps up a firm attitude of not believing how reality has changed around him. As a result, he moves from one emotionally stressful situation to another.

Interestingly enough, the love of his life, a woman by the name of Trisha he met just days before at a party, comes to his rescue. At that party, right before Arthur’s very eyes, another man (claiming to have a spaceship and offering her a good adventure) swept her away and off the planet.

Arthur and Trisha illustrate two polarized ways to deal with novelty.

Arthur goes through a series of moments he sees as threats. He then descends into deep anxiety as he bumps and falls from one place to the next. He refuses to accept how What IS has changed and he ceases to function normally. Arthur displays all of the right-operating-system characteristics (from the last post)– he’s afraid to act, he desperately tries to make sense of his surroundings, and he feels terribly uncomfortable all the time.

Trisha immediately responds positively to the Call to Adventure, seeing it as something filled with promise and hope. She says “Yes!” to the strange guy with the spaceship and has an amazing time. She gets to experience awe at how cool things can be. She accepts the change of What IS and begins creative exploratory behavior – she plays with new toys almost like a kid, she tries to be friendly and helpful with her new robot friend, and she even changes her own identity. She gives herself a new name, fit for space travel – Trillian!

Your attitude and your path of behavior, in a situation that is new or novel or unpredictable, can determine your success, survival, or destruction. And this happens to you almost everyday, in little micro-moments as well as in reality-shattering moments of change. Stories don’t always tell you which attitude or action is best. We do have to figure out some things for ourselves. Sometimes one attitude might work well while other times it could be disastrous. What stories do tell us is that our choice of action and attitude can have consequences. We might not have much control over the consequences of our actions, but we just might have some say in our actions.

What would have happened if Arthur had not listened to his friend Ford? He would have been bulldozed, along with all the rest of his planet. Instead, he trusted and followed a good mentor. At least he got that right. And eventually, he does get a few other things right too.

There’s something else about the HHGtotheG that should be mentioned. It doesn’t have one version. It’s been a radio show, a trilogy of five books, a series on television, and a movie. And each one tells the story differently; each one changes the story a little bit from the last.

You know, that’s really important too.

What do you think?

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1. and 2.The figures are adapted from J Peterson’s Maps of Meaning.

3. This figure is adapted from J. Campbell.

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Posted in Behaviour, Beyond Belief, book review, humour, myth, psychology, story | 2 Comments »


The Psychology of Myth

July 14th, 2011   by   Andrew

Chapter 2 in the series Myths and Dragons

We might look at myth with curiosity and respect, but dismiss the collected masterpieces of our ancestors as “superstitious proto-theories, lacking the rigor of experimental thought”(*). But we should still ask: how could vast empires and civilizations develop, flourish and survive for hundreds of years if they were based on nonsense? And maybe just as important, why do ideologies that grew out of the empirical process seem to fall apart in mere decades?

The codified scientific process of isolate, observe, test and verify has been incredibly effective at telling us what is. But with that objective power there has been a sacrifice. It can’t tell us anything about how to value things unless we insert and address subjectivity and bias.

In the excitement to describe what is, ideologies left little room for how to deal with things that didn’t fit. The usual response is either ignorance (capitalism will ignore environmental effects until they are put into some scarcity/opportunity/profit model) or eradication (Communism created a totalitarian state killing millions to demonstrate just how right it was) or argumentation (contain the vexing problem in the frame of an argument, a competition instead of a consolidation or development).

Why not address the thing that does not fit? Why not learn from it, rather than let it consume and destroy you?

Mythological consciousness recognized long ago a very important lesson ( a lesson some empirical disciplines have learned very well, actually) –  the very thing that doesn’t fit your thinking is the very thing to pay attention to the most. It could hold both your doom and your paradise.

In a sense, human beings have two systems for emotional and behavioral regulation. When we are in familiar territory (and can predict what will happen if we do something), what kicks into gear is the regulatory system that seems linked to positive feelings, initiation of activity, and attention to finer details. But how do we know what to do when in unfamiliar territory? What kicks into gear then is the regulatory system that seems linked to negative feelings, restriction of behavior, and attention to more general patterns. In a loose way, this can be linked to the left and right sides of the brain.

It’s kind of like having two operating systems that boot up depending on the environment and situation.

The left seems to work best when what is and what to do are not pressing questions. Whatever has already been practiced, successful, and relatively positive (or at least productive), allows the left operating system to run smoothly.

The right can be booted up very quickly, almost instinctually, when a stimulus demands our attention.  When something unexpected comes up, we tend to go through a pattern:

1. Stop whatever it is we’re doing.
2. Pay attention to the unexpected
3. Cautiously begin creative exploratory behavior

This dual-boot operating system of the brain has given us enormous advantages. Without it, we would likely not survive too well in a world made of unfamiliar situations. But it has created some interesting quirks in terms of how we sense things and categorize things.

Categorization is an essential part of how we think. But when we do categorize, we draw lines or cut the world into specific objects that are not necessarily separate things. They are not objects-into-themselves. For example, we can look at a single human being as what is contained by the skin. We can look at the human being as a collection of  molecules too numerous to count, giving off and taking in material almost constantly. We might give a child a name when it is born. However, by the time the child has grown a few years, it may have a completely different body, different health and consciousness (we would hope), and a different behavior pattern (again, we hope). The child might even have a nickname, a different identity. The integrity of what we think is a singular child under that category of a given name depends a lot on things within and without its material make-up.

Thinking is more than perception at certain resolutions or recognizing relationships between things. Thinking also has to do with specifying value, or specifying significance. And so when we categorize something as a single thing, we are not merely examining the thing’s material. It’s grouped as a singular thing according to its significance, and according to what implications it has to behavior.

When we face the unknown, or when we don’t know what to do, two emotional states tend to emerge. If the strange thing contains a recognizable pattern, or essentially can be managed, the usual response is hope. If the strange thing makes no sense to us, or creates a serious impasse, the usual response is anxiety.

With hope, we tend to continue or draw closer. With anxiety, we tend to stop or draw away. If we didn’t categorize in terms of significance, then we likely would not survive. And just as important, if we only responded to the unknown with only one emotional state, we likely couldn’t survive or flourish.

If objects had specific meanings or objective value, we wouldn’t have to think. The world, filled with complexity, dangers and environmental pressures, would have likely taken care of it. But if things have opposite, competing and maybe even plural meanings, we have to think and categorize and decide on significance and act.

What can almost always be trusted to make us act? Our emotions and our decisions around what things are significant.

The mythological mind may not have been able to articulate much of this, especially in today’s vocabulary or today’s supposed objectivity. But through the misty years of supposed ignorance, the mythological mind did recognize the importance of these parts of our mental make-up. It perceived the unknown to be a thing of both threat and promise. It understood the importance of adopting a proper attitude when faced with the unknown. It understood that the unknown could be more important than every material thing or ideological belief you cling to so tightly. And it knew that once an object was categorized, it became inseparable from its significance.



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Notes:
* From J. Peterson. Maps of Meaning. (Actually, many of the points in this post come from this source. The two images are based on figures from the book)

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Metaphor: An Inconvenient Tool, A Renewable Truth

April 14th, 2011   by   Andrew

The following is from a paper called “Complexity Management Theory”. Thanks goes out to David Chapman for the link to the paper. In some respects, the paper is a 30-page reduction of Jordan Peterson’s ideas. I encourage everyone to read it. Below are four quotes that summarize what I’m trying to say about metaphor, and they say it better than I could hope to (emphasis in the text is from me).

Our ancestors understood metaphorically at least five thousand years ago that the process of creative courageous encounter with the unknown comprised the central process underlying successful human adaptation, and that this process stood as the veritable precondition for the existence and maintenance of all good things. Such understanding, however, was implicit and low-resolution – at best, procedural, embodied, encoded in ritual and drama – and not something elaborated to the point we would consider explicit or semantic understanding today. We are constantly tempted to regard such understanding as superstitious, because of its continuing lack of explicitness, and to presume that our current modes of apprehension have rendered traditional beliefs superfluous. This attitude is predicated (1) on failure to recognize that empirical enquiry cannot provide a complete world description, because of the intractable problems of action, value and consciousness and (2) on an ignorance with regard to the content and meaning of pre-empirical or pre-experimental belief that is so complete, profound and unfathomable that its scope can barely be communicated.

And,

The “kinship of the creative hero with deity” constitutes a phenomenon of tremendous import, as of yet radically uncomprehended: consciousness plays a world-constructing role, in a manner that is neither epiphenomenal nor trivial. It is for this fundamentally non-metaphysical reason that the individual cannot be sacrificed to the exigencies of social and political convenience, as those who live in western democracies have painfully come to realize: the “world-constructing capacity” of the individual must be respected and honored as something sovereign, lest the forces of chaos or complexity re-attain the upper hand, or the state rigidify and doom itself. The truly healthy individual comes to identify, over time, with the adaptive social structure generated by past heroes, by incorporating the hierarchical organization of that social structure into the self – but does not sacrifice his or her capacity for individual creativity, which is an “eternal and immortal” extra-social force, while so doing. This means not so much that the individual is protected against death-anxiety by the fact of culture as that the individual is provided with a dual means of coping with vulnerable mortality in a meaningful and functional manner – first, as a consequence of his identity with social order and, second, as a consequence of his ability to voluntarily face chaos, complexity and anomaly, recast the protective strictures of tradition, and prevail.

So what does this mean for each of us?

The individual must be willing to voluntarily face the consequences of the errors of the past, to mine the information embedded in the territory whose existence is revealed by those errors, and to reconstruct society and self, in consequence.

And what does this mean for our implicitly accepted views of the world?

Religious stories, occupying the necessarily metaphorical space at the base of our cultures of belief, provide the foundation for the dogmatic concepts and action patterns that structure our social interactions, and stabilize the territories that we all share. But this is not all protection against death anxiety. Much of it establishes the necessary “arbitrary” groundwork for shared social being, in the absence of real certainty, and instead of constant interpersonal conflict. More importantly, however, functional religious systems ensure that our shared beliefs are predicated on a concept of the individual that makes respect for the capacity of courageous, creative individual action in the face of complexity the most fundamental and ineradicable of values. This predication makes faith in belief as a state something necessarily subordinate to faith in courageous action as a process. This faith in process is a position that the totalitarian, who desires above all to be finally right, cannot tolerate, and attempts constantly to undermine and destroy. This faith in process is also a final answer, not to the problem of death, which cannot be solved, but to the more fundamental problem of complexity, and attendant vulnerability. Creative exploratory action in the face of anomaly and chaos generates, sustains and renews the world.

I’m not sure where to go next. I think I might do a series on mythology.

What do you think of all this?


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Posted in Beyond Belief, education, Philosophy, psychology, purpose, Religion, Science, story | 7 Comments »


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