The Might of Myths

I've been thinking of writing about the topic of myth for a while. What are myths and why are they so significant to humans?

In the old days, myths involving stories of warriors, gods and heavenly creatures are intertwined with the everyday lives of people. They explain the success and failure of crops, the rise and fall of nations, the life and death of humans, who have very little control over the mysterious forces of nature, which governed their destinies.

Part of the appeal of religion are the myths about their founders and their conception of eschatology--the destiny of believers and unbelievers when the end of times come. Myths have the power to imbue human lives with a kind of cosmic meaning.

In modern day usage, the word myth has acquired some negative connotations: it implies some amount of falsehood. When someone says, 'it's a myth'--that means it's factually untrue. But we've not outgrown our need for myths even though we have gained some mastery over nature with our knowledge of science and technology. Myths have now incarnated into conspiracy theories and urban legends. And they are amplified virally over cyberspace, blurring the lines between reality and falsehood.

But why do myths have such an enduring appeal to us? I think it's related to what I discussed last week: the mind latches on to anything that is 'interesting'. The mind cannot store isolated facts well--they need to be woven together into stories. Then only do they stick.

Myths are like software architectures or frameworks. Programmers are familiar with that. For example, web programmers know about the Model-View-Controller architecture or MVC. By adhering to the principles of MVC, your code is more organized, easier to scale and maintain. It is a kind of self-discipline, which helps to organize complexity. So are myths.

Religion rely on myths to guide and inspire the conduct of its believers. Not many Christians would be able to grasp the Neo-platonistic concepts in St Augustine's writings but almost everyone can identify with story of the Passion and the many parables of Jesus' teachings. Myths have an emotional appeal. It is the most effective form of mass education.

Any interesting anecdote that is recounted many times have the potential to become a myth. After a while, people do not care where it originated. All myths belong to the public domain. They lodge in the collective unconscious forever. Myths are the clothes-line that allow 'facts' to hang together.

All master mnemonists apply the same trick: to remember a long string of items or numbers, they turn them into visual objects and invent a narrative to weave the sequence of things together. People remember things well not because they have good memory brain-cells but simply because they have a good imagination for inventing stories.

That is power of myths. Once absorbed by the mind, they are like a drug that's injected into the bloodstream. They determine the course of our future actions. So take stock of your myths. Remember, myths are always mightier than facts.