Leave it to the mystics to ruin a good myth. Taking myth at face value, actually believing in the stuff, is missing the point. What you are supposed to believe in is the ghostly image of your own reality; The shimmering path of destiny (your garden walkway), the all seeing eye of God (the sun), and the quest for the holy trifecta - truth, justice and beauty (your day job and family life).
The heroic narrative, such as we find in "The Lord of the Rings" or "Harry Potter: Whatever", is supposed to overlap with our own life and make it magical. I don't mean this in, pardon the puns, a literal sense, but a transferred (or maybe transcendental) sense. Myth, or modern narratives, heighten our imagination. It makes the unmagical come alive, and transposes our emotion onto everyday things.
These stories find their way into our everyday life. Objects, even those we only keep for their utility, are granted many symbols from the mythical realm. Take, for instance, the saying; "The Pen is Mightier than the Sword!" No it's not. Try wielding a pen against a person with a sword - you'd die 99 times out of a hundred. But the myth of the pen makes our work holy, beautiful, true - just! The pen is a feeble object, without any real power. The power comes from the potency of the imagination of the wielder.
Only the person who really believes in the might of the pen succeeds in transferring it into that weapon. It is the myth which grant the pen it's fateful power. A power which another myth can take away. When Eichmann deleted people by the millions with his pen - he didn't see himself as a wielder of great power. He was, according to himself, merely the instrument of another person. A cog in the machine. It was Hanna Arendt's triumph and sorrow that she discovered this myth built into the system and upbringing around Eichmann - a myth she dubbed "The Banality of Evil". Eichmanns true fault was that he was unable too look beyond himself, and control the myths of his life. That he could not turn the cog in his heart into a mighty pen.
But there is always two sides to any dichotomy, what about "real life's" effect on myth? During the twentieth century Europe saw an incredible growth in population, and at the same time a "rationalisation". More potent beurochrasies were needed to organize society, and at the same time the was a trend of secularisation. Personal power was lost , not because the myths were different, but because our real power was in fact diminished. For every citizen born, the value of the vote is lessened - and with that the "rights" which allow us to do so. Eichmann's claustrophobic myth of being a small person in a big bureaucracy wasn't merely a fantasy - it was also reality. What truly incapacitated his ability to resist, according to Arendt, was his total mediocracy - his inability to see himself as anything but that cog in the machine.
So where does the actual power lie. With myth or reality? Actual power is a treacherous word. What is more powerful, that which "moves" or that which "transcends", that which is "hidden" or that which is "veiled", the "leader" or the "pope". In fact, as we well know, the two are inseparable. The actual power lies in realizing that they are inseparable, and through that knowledge either manipulate others, or stop oneself from being manipulated.
There seems to me to be two camps if misunderstanding, the sceptics and the mystics. Of these two I mostly identify with the sceptics. They try to look to what is real, and disregard that which is veiled. Mystics, on the other hand, try to see the "true" truth behind the "veil". What the mystics fail to see is that there is no truth behind the veil. What the sceptics fail to see is that the veil is, in itself, true.
From here it gets a little complicated. (Digging downwards in the bog of ideas. The bottom layer is always pete - words appearing in clusters - impossible to separate. Before going any further, arm yourself with a cup of coffee.) (Coffee is a fun word to write. Coffee, Coffee, Coffee.)
There is, in fact, a truth behind the veil. It is our own fear. The word "protection" means to "cover up". Mystical veils cover our weaknesses. Hinders us from seeing that which destroys, ruins, disfigures and starves us. The horrible. The irony of life is that justice is not blind, but that truth is. Truth does not care of it is just, it disfigures reality for all of us in equal measure. Only justice can save us from ourselves. And I mean it. Justice is a social system which divides human conduct into the good and the bad. The bad is that which we fear, and the good is that which we like. Justice protects personal goods, life and health. But what is justice, really?
Justice is maybe the ultimate protective myth - but oh so true. Humanity's strong belief in justice is perhaps our best defining characteristic. A belief which has helped keep it for thousands of years. Some of civilizations oldest writing are codes of law, such as the code of Hamurabi, written definitions of justice to set things right for all, or at least firmly crooked.
Justice, however, is not a fundamental part of this world. (In fact, as fundamentals go, very little is. As Searle puts it; "Particles in fields of force.") Break a lawbook apart and grind it down to the finest powder. Then look at it with the strongest microscope. You will not find a shred of justice. Justice is something we add to that book of law through cultural practice. To say it with Karl Popper. There are two kinds of law. Natural law (such as gravity), and conventional law. And justice, is part of the latter. The sceptic must admit that there is no justice - and no meaning to this world other than that which we create ourselves.. He might, as I have, fall prey to nihilism - to truly believe Nietzsche's maxim "Nothing is true, everything is permitted".
The sceptic is caught by his belief that nothing has meaning - but he tricks himself. A meaningfull understanding of reality is inescapable for humans. The very idea that there is "nothing which is true", is a statement about the value of truth. There is no non-mythical standpoint from which to view the world. What I presented as a paltry dualism is really a dimension, a continuous line held together by interwoven terms - spread over the bread of life as so much jam. We mythologize reality, and we observe myth from the real world. The two are interdependent and inseparable - and transcend one another.
Let us arm ourselves with the words of struggle, and ground our feet in reality. Let us "really see" that christmas is wonderful, and believe there is a tomorrow with a space for us in it. And let us do it armed with a true sense of myth and reality.
