Constructed Myths and Man’s Purpose
Since Nietzsche declared that God was dead, science and mankind have begun a twofold search. Nietzsche’s declaration asserted that the need for God in the society’s constructed identity no longer existed. The understanding of the times was that the scientific method could break down any problem into is components, and uncover both the purpose and the source of all of mankind’s desires, tangible and intangible alike. The accompanying hopes for a utopian society would also be ushered in by modern thought. Modern, logical and rational thought would be able to replace oppressive superstition, religious, and myth of ignorant and uneducated people who used religious beliefs to explain those elements of life which previously could not be understood. Since the publishing of his work, along with Jung, Kant and a myriad of others, the social sciences have searched to identify the purpose of religious life within the context of community.
The ongoing survival of religion in the cultures around the world long after God’s widely reported death has created problem for sociologies and theologians alike. Sociologists like Claude Levi-Strauss have correctly identified that myth, the scientifically defined synonym for religious thought and belief has continued across all cultures. But in their efforts to define the purpose of myth and how it gives real and concrete meaning to individuals and communities, sociologist are at somewhat of a loss.
If God is dead, why do individuals and collective cultures still seek to identify a religious system of beliefs, and integrated these beliefs into our daily lives? Why is it that atheist societies have failed, and those cultures which identify themselves with a strong religious ethic have remained a dominant influence in the history of our world? Why is mankind’s experience shown that the only communities and cultures which do not have an active religious / myth system are those which have been ruled under the military law? When a socially accepted myth is absent, and replaces by military dictatorship, citizens were under penalty of death if they surrendered to their superstitious nature and followed a religious / mythological order. Nietzsche claimed that God was dead. Maybe his is the myth, and the presence of continued religious thought and life in diverse cultures is the proof of his error.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s statement is built from his two postulations:
That the development of human knowledge has brought mankind to a point at which belief in God is no longer rational.
That without belief in God, the concepts of objective truth, order, and morality must also be relinquished.
Nietzsche’s assertions have left the world struggling under the search for individual and social identity. Without God, atheism’s alternative to replace God’s place in the belief systems has a variety of sources, but none have produced a stable and lasting social order. One source is the rapid advancement of geological and biological sciences. Through the lens, all the mysteries of the universe could be explained. Therefore, according to the sciences, the purpose of God in the social construct also disappeared.
In the wake of his teaching, sociologists have been left with two unanswered questions.
If God is dead, and the need for a god identity longer exists, then what are the mechanisms by which religious beliefs, now termed ‘myths’ have been developed within the construct of community life?
If God is dead, why does fervent religious belief continue in cultures across the globe, and even in modern western society, still remain a vital part of the social conscious identity?
In response to the scientific mindset which swept the western culture in the 19th century, the clergy and epistemological leaders attempted to build a case for God on a similar rational foundation. Surely if science declared that God was no longer needed, and the basis of their argument was the realm of scientific reasoning, then through rational thought, God’s existence should also be able to be supported. Their failure to prove God’s existence culminated in Hume’s declaration that the existence of God cannot be proved or even given much rational support. While the appearance of design or order in the world around us suggests the possibility of an intelligent creator, this similarity does not offer unequivocal proof for the existence of God and his involvement in man’s daily affairs.
As consequence to the failure of religious leader to adapt an argument for God’s existence in scientific terms, man’s continued desire to connect with a ‘higher being’ was reduced to the idea of myth. Thus construction of the myth has absorbed much of sociologist’s activities for the last half century. How and why man creates belief systems for something that is not real poses a problem to the scientific mind. If God does not exist, then within mankind there must be internal desires which create the longing and psychological need for attachment to an ethical system, or moral compass. Another hypothesis is that within the social construct of a community, there exists a collective need for the group to find identity with a ‘higher order.’
Levi-Strauss’ conundrum regarding myth
In his book Structural Anthropology, Claude Levi-Strauss (CLS) begins to create order out of the chaos and conflict which the devolving arguments of the modern age have left behind in the area of sociological myth identification. In his chapter on the structure of myth, CLS begins by discussing how those who are now engaging the arguments regarding myth are doing so from the broken remnants of what has been left over of the theories of the past two decades. CLS puts it this way:
Despite some recent attempts to renew them, it seems that during the past twenty years anthropology has increasingly turned from studies in the field of religion. At the same time and precisely because the interest of professional anthropologists has withdrawn from primitive religion, all kinds of amateurs who claim to belong to other disciplines have seized this opportunity to move in, thereby turning into their private playground what we had left as a wasteland. The prospects for the scientific study of religion have thus been undermined…” (Jacobson and Levi-Strauss, 1963, p. 215)
For CLS, maintaining current outlooks on the expanding study of myth is imperative to arriving at a current and accurate understanding of the process of myth creating. Thus accurately identifying the structural aspect of myth creation must be rooted in throwing out the theories which have been found faulty, and replacing them with new theories that have not yet been found faulty. For CLS, those who labored in the wasteland which anthropologist had deserted were men such as Frazier, or Durkheim who approached the subject of myth creation from a psychologically oriented position.
CLS disagrees with this approach because of the inherent contradiction which it leaves in the theory. A psychological approach to myth creation is ultimately anchored in the personal experiences of the individual. Trying to build a structural understanding of myth creation from a psychological basis creates an inherent weakness in the structure. CLS quotes Hocart so profoundly noted in his introduction to a posthumous book recently published, (Hocart, 1915) that psychological interpretations were withdrawn from the intellectual field. Hocart added “the inherent defects of the psychological school… (is).. The mistake of deriving clear-cut ideas… from vague emotions.” A psychological interpretation of myth creation had to be rooted in the experiences of the individual people, or group. Thus one could expect that depending on the experiences of the group, the myth would be significantly different from one another across different cultures. And herein lies the problem. According to CLS, myths across cultures are significantly similar. When one studies a number of myths across a wide spectrum of cultures, times, and global regions, one can find striking similarities between them, rather than stark differences. Thus, CLS insists that a psychological approach to myth creation works counter productive to the developing field. “Instead of trying to enlarge the framework of our logic to include processes which, whatever their apparent differences, belong to the same kind of intellectual operation, a naive attempt was made to reduce them to inarticulate emotional drives, which resulted only in hampering our studies.” (Jacobson and Levi-Strauss, 1963, p. 217)
CLS continues this theme in his book Myth and Meaning. He complains that the ongoing debate regarding mind vs. experience is an inadequate means by which to undertake building a structuralist perspective of myth creation. The elements of mind and personal experience do not give way to a uniform code, or a similar set of construction components by which to develop a structuralist point-of-view. (CLS, 1979, p. 8) CLS refers to his education first as a scientist, and then as a graphic artist. His goal was to develop theories regarding science, or drawings for the theater, from basic building blocks which were understood in the fields. His job was to identify the components of proper design, and communicate them so they could be replicated.
He approaches the idea of myth and meaning in the same way. He believes that the substance of the structure which builds similar myths across a wide spectrum of cultures cannot be based in experience, or feeling. For CLS, the structural components of myth creation must rest in somewhere in between the experience and the mind. HE writes:
this whole problem of experience vs. mind seems to have a solution in the structure of the nervous system, not in the structure of the mind or in experience, but somewhere between mind and experience in the way our nervous system is build and in the way it mediates between mind and experience.” (CLS, 1979, p.8)
Renowned speaker and anthropologist Pascal Boyer also had pursued research in the direction if understanding the need for myth in the human creature from a biological point of reference. Pascal Boyer has engaged the discussion at a time when the world of anthropology is casting off the traditional constraints, and looking, like CLS, for reasons which are rooted in a universal constant which exists across cultures.
The ideas that moral values, religions, or myths have an absolute foundation in a ‘god’ who is essentially ‘other’ than our selves, to whom we are ultimately responsible, have been replaced in the minds of this generation. The treatise of the day is that of relative values – that I am responsible to, and am the progenitor of my own sets of morals, and ethics. So for Boyer, as for CLS, the continued existences of organized religions present a distinct sociological problem. If there is no ‘god,’ what is the continued source of religious beliefs? According to Boyer, “Culturally successful religious concepts are the outcome of selective processes that make some concepts more likely than others to be easily acquired, stored and transmitted. Among the constructs of human imagination, some (persons) connect to intuitive ontological principles in such a way that they constitute a small catalogue of culturally successful supernatural concepts.” (Boyer, 2000, p. 2)
Tradition therefore is a central concept in these social sciences. Boyer combined much of his research about social traditions with physiological research into the form and function of the brain in order to identify the structuralist support behind the transmission of religious beliefs. For Boyer, religious beliefs are the vehicle by which oral traditions are transferred and contribute to social order. The are the serum which deliver the vaccine, the serum being religious beliefs, and the oral traditions being the valuable germ which inoculates society from fragmentation and meaninglessness.
Dr. Boyer insists that social anthropology requires a theory of tradition for its constitution. Boyer’s recent work, Tradition as Truth and Communication seeks to answer the question regarding the origin of myth and religious concepts. He states that: “previously intractable questions are now a matter of empirical, experimental inquiry. What brought about this remarkable change is substantial progress in our understanding of how human minds work. This allows a naturalistic account of cultural representations that describes how evolved conceptual dispositions make humans likely to acquire certain concepts more easily than others.” (Boyer, 2000, p. 4, Tooby and Cosmides, 1990)
According to Boyer, “there is no instinct for transcendence in human beings, since the most frequent religious beings are ancestors who are assumed to be as real as the living, only more elusive. You cannot explain religion as moral coercion combined with promised rewards, since in many places the soul needs no salvation and will in due time become an ancestor.” (Bray and Thompson, 2002, p. 1) Backed up by other researchers, Boyer seeks to replace this framework of “inherited vs. acquired” traits regarding religious constructs in the human mind with a ‘structuralist, or systems’ approach. Susan Oyama eloquently described this approach to myth in her book The Ontogeny of Information this way: “(it) is not that genes and environment are necessary for all characteristics, inherited or acquired (the usual enlightened position), but that there is no intelligible distinction between inherited (biological, genetically based) and acquired (environmentally mediated) characteristics’ (Oyama 2000, p. 1).
Thus, when the idea of instinct is set aside, researchers are free to say that some myths and religious concepts, particularly those in well developed contemplative traditions, may very well have to be explained in relation to a human striving for ‘transcendence’ that can be culturally maintained and transmitted from generation to generation. (Donaldson, 1991) But Boyer and CLS disagree with Donaldson. For these researchers, religious beliefs are neither inherited, nor genetic
Boyer insists that myth is the result of natural brain functions, just as CLS hypothesized regarding the same 20 years prior. The human mind is not a single system designed to produce an accurate representation of the world – rather, the mind is composed of multiple systems geared to representing and predicting various parts of the environment, or guiding action in different domains according to overlapping principles. None of these evolved systems is about religion per say – but some of them may be activated in such a way that concepts of religious agents and precepts have a high probability of transmission. (Boyer, 2000)
Humans are greatly dependent upon cooperation and information and have a set of strategic capacities that handle these problems. Some supernatural concepts are represented in such a way that they activate strategic mental and social capacities. As a result, these trigger events are more likely to generate high commitment within the group, and other psychological and social effects typical of ‘religion’ and religious concept of intuitive ontology. (Boyer, 2000)
In other words, mankind is made for, and perfectly designed in a genetic or neurological level for the development of myths – religious ontological beliefs. “Moral rules are easily acquired by human minds because of a host of computational predispositions, as a consequence of our dependence upon others’ cooperation.” (Boyer, 2000) As CLS mused, Boyer has supported that mankind needs the oral traditions in order to make social connections with other humans. Mankind needs myth in order to experience / build social and anthropological communities, and myth – religious ontology is that which suits transmission of these social traditions the best. Boyer cited research in his book which supports mankind’s advanced ability to build religious ontological constructs by remembering short narratives involving heroic deeds, and struggles of ‘good’ vs. ‘evil’. (Barret, 1996, Barrett and Keil, 1996).
Personal ‘needs’ for a god identity myth
One of the need bases formerly identified by researchers to explain the continued desire of man to build cultural myths is the need to explain those events which are beyond the scope of man’s control. Indian cultures created a pantheon of spirits which they believed had control over specific areas of nature in order to satisfy their craving to understand the world around them. This assumption, however, was spawned from the same hypothesis that decided God was dead. If god was deemed unnecessary by the advancement of rational, modern thought, then the converse should also be true. God and myth should only be needed in the absence of rational thought and in the setting when man could not explain actions or activities occurring around him. However, this is not the case, because organized myth exists and flourishes in modern, scientific communities in the same way it exists in primitive people groups. Although the myths are different across different social groups, themes stay relatively the same, as so many of the morals or lessons presented. This is the reason which CLS discards this theory as he looks for a structuralist framework in which to build the understanding for the need of myth.
Thus in his evaluation of the process of myth construction, CLS sought to examine the process by which myth is built within a community by determining the structure of the myth itself. CLS looked for the commonalties between the construction of myths, and the return which mankind received by being a part of a myth structure? The underlying assumption is that if there was not a need or identifiable benefit from the myths, then men would discontinue their use. This was the core of Nietzsche’s hypothesis.
Yet the continuance of constructed myth in mankind’s societal belief systems is similar to the ongoing need for grease in a wheel bearing. Without the myth, social orders to not function well, as has been recently demonstrated by communist politic structures which seek to build a social order without myth. Atheistic communism has fallen, and social discord often follows in nations which attempt to outlaw the exercise of religious beliefs. Like a thin coating grease on sliding metal parts, the myth must serve some purpose.
Myth Definition
According to John Knox, (1964) a myth first and foremost is a belief that by nature is not true. Regardless of the amount of people who belief the myth or give life to its ongoing existence, myths are not provable facts. Therefore myths are considered by nature and substance to be essentially untrue. Although hesitant to define a myth, Knox identified a number points by which to evaluate myths.
A myth is an imaginative narrative dealing with a cosmically significant act of God, or some superhuman being. By cosmically significant act, Knox refers to any act that is decisively important to the world, or to the environment which constitutes the ‘immediate world’ of the social group affected by the myth. A mythical story must also include the response of men as part of the essential action. Even though the tale may take place in a prehistorically setting, current time frame, or post historical epoch, the events must make a pivotal impact on the social order.
The narrative must have its basis in the common understanding of the people, and arise from everyday events so that the people can apply the story to their lives. The myth will bear the marks of the culture, and will have elements derived from the culture embedded in the myth, and these cultural elements must be identifiable in the culture over a long period of time.
The community will hold the story in high regard because the myth will suggest, give answers to, or explain something that is distinctive and important about human existence as experienced by the community. The myth must be attached to something specific that the community identifies as part of its own composition.
Because of the elements listed above, a myth will be assigned a level of importance within the community, and become part of the essence of the community. It will become in fact an inseparable part of the community’s life, and will likely become an irreplaceable symbol within the community.
The myth is a narrative of events, regardless of how allusive the events are, or how figurative the language may be.
The essential nature of a myth is to affirm as actual fact an occurrence whose concrete content cannot be literally expressed, yet an event which is universally accepted within the community as history, and fact.
While communities may have many stories, only those which fit all the above descriptors, which become an indispensable part of the community, are worthy of the title myth. The myth must be indispensable to the community life if it is to be believed, and have an influence on the community. (Adapted from Knox, 1964)
Boyer identified a similar list of what he called activation points around which the oral tradition is elevated to the level of a myth. The activation points for Boyer are the complex set of circumstances which men and women can experience for which they must find meaning. These events are often in need of an explanation that resides in an external locus of control because the event itself resides in an external locus of control.
According to Boyer’s research, these anthropological and sociological experiences trigger a specific physiological ethos in the brain. The brain is therefore, as CLS described, wired to provide the basis for mythical traditions which explain these experiences. According to Boyer, chance and evolution alone are the reasons that the myth is the best framework to give these experiences a cohesive meaning. For Boyer, these points include:
Religious notions are supernatural in nature; we need a belief system which can explain the unexplainable.
Religious concepts are about agents: Since we identify persons as active in our world, there must be supernatural ‘agents’ who promote activity in the supernatural world, or from the basis of the supernatural world which affects our own.
Religious concepts are natural consequences of the human desire for moral footings: Because we develop moral codes, the idea of myth reasoning for that code is natural.
Myth and religious concepts exploit our intuitions about misfortune – which man needs to affix responsibility on a person or being for specific actions.
Religious concepts are about community interaction: Religious beliefs of myths that are attached to something ‘greater than ourselves’ is a perfect vehicle for transmitting those oral traditions. (Boyer, 2000)
Boyer’s research has earned him the reputation among some as the next Darwin, because he has matched physiological, evolved traits in the brain functions which are specifically acclimated to the acceptance and continuance of myth. Boyer’s approach of combining physiological research with the experience of myth construction, and CLS belief that the basis for myth lies somewhere between the perception of the event in the brain and the experience of the event, brought them both to the same conclusion as Morton Kelsey who wrote: “Studies in communication show that it is easier to reach a man through images and stories than by logical argument. A story will be remembered, while the logical ideas flow in one ear and out the other.” (Kelsey, 1974)
Myth Construction
The basis or purpose for developing a myth is to understand the existing social order in terms of things that are familiar to the members of the society. According to myth construction theory, the myth will be designed from experiences of the people, and formatted in a way which the people already understand the physical reality. For example, a foundational common experience behind many of the laws and social institutions in the United States are the understanding which the American colonists possessed then they came to the new world. Raised in a culture of kings, monarchs and lords, the cultural understanding of rulers was one who declared laws, and enforced them in the world. Therefore the Christian myth, built upon an understanding that the “king of kings, and lord of lords’ was also designed around this same cultural understanding. The Christian god is someone who made laws, and enforced them in the minds and lives of men. The entire Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions are built upon a universe which is “a system of order which is imposed by spiritual force from above, and to which we therefore owe obedience.” (Watts, 1970)
CLS reaches beyond this simple sociological and experiential understanding of myth creation. He builds on the observed myth traits that myth often have multi-layered meanings, and different influences which are designed to be communicated in the story. Complex myths, such as the Greek story of Oedipus, constructed for the listeners a host of moral imperatives which the story is meant to encourage in the social order, as well as warn against. For CLS, the myth is constructed in a matrix, with different factors being able to be understood through differing approaches to the story. For example, a myth can be understood linearly, with one set of events preceding and causing another. However, on a larger scale, underlying moral issues pervade the entire story, as do the need for the society to make moral determination from the myth. Thus a story is also understood as a struggle of good against evil or positive moral traits against self defeating behaviors. These larger moral constraints, which must be understood by the culture, influence the entire story and all the events in a non-linear, overarching manner. (Pennar, 1998)
Myth’s purpose
These are the two common frameworks which classical mythologist used to understand the construction of myth. The first was that belief systems were attempts to give the person a sense of control over that which is larger than self. The second purpose of myth was to allow the person an understanding of themselves, and the world around them. For example, Nietzsche needed an understanding and a means by which to interpret why organized religions had been at the heart of European armed conflict for centuries. Therefore his explanation was that a loving God, the dominant image of God of the time, could not possibly exist. From the death of God rose the understanding that the carnage of the Middle Ages, and religious sectarianism which surrounded the common experience was the creation of men, not of God.
Jung believed that myth was that outworking of the inner subconscious mind. The human mind, according to Jung, needed myth in order to externalize inner desires, fears, and carried beliefs. For Jung:
myth functions to reveal the existence of the unconscious Myths are original revelations of the preconscious {collective} psyche, involuntary statements about luscious psychic happenings…. Modern psychology treats the products of unconscious fantasy – activity as self-portrait of what is going in the unconscious, or as statements of the unconscious psyche about itself. Whoever takes myth literally ‘thinks’ that it is revealing the existence of something eternal like the godhead and the immaterial world, but in fact it is revealing the workings of the unconscious (mind).” (Segal, 1999)
Jung’s assumption, like Nietzsche, was that man could be set free from the need of oppressive religious beliefs once he realized that his need for myths was based not on an external reality, but on internal psychodynamic functions.
Author Rick Warren has found through religious studies another purpose for myth in the world. Warren writes in his book The Purpose Driven Life that mankind is created for a specific purpose. Warren says that mankind is custom designed for a relationship with a living supernatural being, and that we are designed for a purpose which is to know the supernatural being who designed us, and watches over us. Boyer has discovered that which CLS surmised, that in the anthropological, social, and neurological details of our life, our emotions, individual and corporate psyche, and in our biological composition, we have been designed to walk in that psychological construct which includes finding meaning through myth. Like a Compact disk that is designed to store and retrieve data, mankind is designed in specific ways to seek the Designer.
Joseph Campbell has long been admired for his work in identifying mythical themes in literature and art. His work centers around uncovering these themes, and identifying them for individuals to used an extrinsic examples of human behaviors. Campbell says that there are typically 4 functions which are served by myths.
Mystical, or metaphysical: The reconciliation of individual’s consciousness with the preconditions of his own conditions. Man needed a system of beliefs by which he could reconcile those element of his life which were outside his control to the life which he lived, and had experienced. He needed an answer for the question “Why” and a means to eliminate a foreboding sense of guilt regarding conditions of life over which he had no control.
Cosmological: The individual needs a means by which to make sense of the universe, through the sciences and cosmological understanding if the time.
Sociological: Humans needed to validate and anchor in society some level of social order, and authorize its moral code in a way which is beyond question and criticism of the members of the social order.
Psychological: The individual needs a framework by which to carry himself from birth to grave, (Campbell, 1970, p. 138-140)
However, Joseph Campbell has dislodged his theories from the common building blocks previously discussed of structuralism, and hence he will be mentioned only in passing. Campbell seems to have become a narcissist in his approach to myth, and in response to a question as to the meaning of myth in the construct of social order, he replied:
People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that way we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That’s what it is finally all about” (Ellwood, 1999, p. 129)
For Campbell, who has long sense given up looking for a meaning behind the meaning, life is about living for self, and finding happiness in one’s own life. If myth is a part of that process, or the person feels the need for myth to be a part of the process, Campbell seems to give myth the same amount of import as a bottle of wine on a lonely Friday night. Narcissus would be proud.
The single most significant danger in pursuing CLS into his discarding of previous theories of myth in order to look for the most current approach to the discussion is the temptation to join Campbell. Having given up the pursuit of meaning, he has become complacent in the pursuit. Such a consequence is echoed in the final pages of Ellwood’s work. “Here lies the danger in applying mythic categories to contemporary affairs. The mythologists were aware of the danger, but not always sufficiently… The thereby came to peremptorily dismiss the world as hopeless of any kind of salvation but individual, or through some (equally hopeless) corporate reversion to the mythic world in a healthy sense… In summation, then, we need to listen to the mythologists in their wisdom, and make the world safe for myth and dream. But we need not expect to be saved by myth.” (Ellwood, 1999, p. 178) In other words, when it is all said and done, the mythologist have lead us around in a huge circle. According to Ellwood, we have found nothing, learned nothing, and are left with the somberness of still being alone in the world, searching for meaning.
Conclusion
The evolution of science and knowledge was supposed to bring about a utopian civilization. Knowledge, “no longer consisted in a manipulation of man and nature as opposite forces, no in the reduction of data to mere statistical order, but as a means of liberating mankind from the destructive power of fear, pointing the way toward the goal of rehabilitation of the human will and the rebirth of faith and confidence in the human person.” (Eliade, 1963) Gods were no longer needed, because we had replaced the sociological need for god with knowledge, and the scientific method, and personal enlightenment
However, in the wake of man’s self-enlighten, the striving for knowledge has left behind an unexplained vacuum in the minds and hearts of men to still remain connected to myth-belief systems. The expectation that modern thought would usher in a utopian existence in which all men lives together in harmony has only created a new level of discontent within social structure. The current post-modern mindset is a reaction against the modern expectancy. In the wake of expected unity, the modern scientific method has created disunity. Since the moral, mythical, religious cultural boundaries which were a part of society have been slowly dissolved in the stream of rhetoric and theory, modern man’s social consciousness has not become more utopian, but more self-centered, and often self-destructive.
So, in conclusion we find ourselves back at Nietzsche’s argument which left some ideas as presumptions which have not been adequately dispelled. These ideas are common across cultures who engage in myth construction as an integral part of their collective identity.
1. God as ground: In connection with moral truth, the concept of God embodies the idea of objective truth and moral order in the universe. The idea of objective truth represents the world as having a particular, identifiable nature which is independent of human subjectivity. Within this construct, objective truth is “what God knows,” i.e., the way the world is – independent of human (or other) concerns, interests, wishes, perspectives. The concept of an objective order which is created and given to mankind adds to this the notion of man’s purpose in the cosmos. Within this construct, everything that is exists for a reason, although man and mankind may not be capable discovering that reason.
2. Loss of ground: Some of Nietzsche’s writings characterize the change in world-view which was influenced by the advance of atheism. But without a foundation for truth and order, and that myth which is most commonly being understood as god, the world is suddenly formless.
3. God’s long shadow: The concepts such as an objective order and truth, however, still persist. In societies of the West whose culture has been long influenced by Christian and Jewish myth, and in the East which has developed Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist myth, the concept of an objective order which has been created by some force outside of our existence created safer, more secure-feeling within the community.
Resources
Barrett, J.L. Anthropomorphism, intentional agents, and conceptualizing God. Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University. 1996
EC. Keil Conceptualizing a non-natural entity: anthropomorphism in God concepts. Cognitive Psychology 31, 219-47. 1996
Blommaert, J. & J. Verschueren. European concepts of nation-building. In E.N. Wilmsen & P. McAllister (eds) The politics of difference: ethnic premises in a world of power, 104-23. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. 1996
Boyer, P. Traditions as Truth and Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992
FUNCTIONAL ORIGINS OF RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS: ONTOLOGICAL AND STRATEGIC SELECTION IN EVOLVED MINDS [*] Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 6. 2000
Religion Explained Random House (UK) and Basic Books (USA). 2001
Traditions as Truth and Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Campbell, J. Myths, Dreams and religions. New York: EP Dutton and Co. 1970
Donaldson, M. Human Minds: An Exploration. London: Penguin Books. 1991
Eliade, M. Myth and Reality. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. 1963
Ellwood, Robert. The Politics of Myth. New York: State University of New York Press. 1999.
Hammell, E.A.. Ethnicity and politics: Yugoslav lessons for home. Anthropology Today 13: 3, 5-9. 1997.
Harrison, S. The politics of resemblance: ethnicity, trademarks, head-hunting. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 8. 2002.
HOCART, A.M. “Chieftainship and the Sister’s Son in the Pacific,” American Anthropologist, n.s., XVII, 1915
Jacobson, C, and Levi-Strauss, C. Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, 1963
Kelsey, M. Myth, History and Faith. New York: Paulist Press. 1974
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Myth and Truth, an essay on the language of faith. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 1964
Levi-Strauss, C. Myth and Meaning. New York: Schocken books. 1979.
Oyama, S. The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution. Second Edition. Duke University Press. 2000
Pennar, Hans. Teaching Levi-Strauss. Georgia: Scholars Press. 1998
Segal, R.
Theorizing about Myth. Amherst: University of Massichusetts Press. 1999
Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. The past explains the present: emotional adaptations and the structure of ancestral environments. Ethnology and Sociobiology 11, 375-424. 1990
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Western mythology: it’s dissolution and Transformation. As printed in Myths, Dreams and Religion, Campbell, Joseph, (ed.) New York: E.P. Dutton, and Co. 1970.
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You determine when you get the paper by setting the deadline when placing the order. All papers are delivered within the deadline. We are well aware that we operate in a time-sensitive industry. As such, we have laid out strategies to ensure that the client receives the paper on time and they never miss the deadline. We understand that papers that are submitted late have some points deducted. We do not want you to miss any points due to late submission. We work on beating deadlines by huge margins in order to ensure that you have ample time to review the paper before you submit it.
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You fill all the paper instructions in the order form. Make sure you include all the helpful materials so that our academic writers can deliver the perfect paper. It will also help to eliminate unnecessary revisions.
Proceed to pay for the paper so that it can be assigned to one of our expert academic writers. The paper subject is matched with the writer’s area of specialization.
You communicate with the writer and know about the progress of the paper. The client can ask the writer for drafts of the paper. The client can upload extra material and include additional instructions from the lecturer. Receive a paper.
The paper is sent to your email and uploaded to your personal account. You also get a plagiarism report attached to your paper.
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Read moreEach paper is composed from scratch, according to your instructions. It is then checked by our plagiarism-detection software. There is no gap where plagiarism could squeeze in.
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