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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I'm Christian Seger. Here

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Speaker 1: on Stuff to Blow your Mind. We talk about myths

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Speaker 1: from lottop on mythology either, you know, sometimes it's directly

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Speaker 1: tied into a topic. Sometimes it's just kind of the

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Speaker 1: icing on the cake, you know. Yeah, you'll hear us

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Speaker 1: often refer to mythos a lot, like in the background,

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Speaker 1: especially like if we bring up topics like I don't know,

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Speaker 1: pop culture, uh HP, Lovecraft type stuff that we we

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Speaker 1: talked about often. So we're applying both myth as like

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Speaker 1: the large general sense of the term, and then mythos

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Speaker 1: as like these sort of like fictional shared universes with

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Speaker 1: histories to them. Right. Yeah, So it's it's something we're

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Speaker 1: always talking about. So it seemed fitting to do an

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Speaker 1: episode where we say, hey, let's talk just a little

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Speaker 1: bit about mythology now, would Don't worry, We're not gonna

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Speaker 1: attempt to do a like complete overall of world myth cycles.

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Speaker 1: What we're hoping to do here is to, uh it,

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Speaker 1: to provide you some of the basic tools to to

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Speaker 1: roll through some of the different ways that we look

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Speaker 1: at myth, the different ways that we dissect myth and

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Speaker 1: understand what they mean to us and what the power

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Speaker 1: of myth really is. Yeah, this is like very much

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Speaker 1: like a bare bones intro. And I imagine that if

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Speaker 1: there are people out there who have done any kind

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Speaker 1: of cultural or anthropological studies of myth before, you're gonna say, oh,

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Speaker 1: but what about this detailer, what about this thing that

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Speaker 1: you missed? And you know, there was only so much

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Speaker 1: that we could fit into a one hour episode, right,

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Speaker 1: And likewise, when it comes to examples, we're gonna We're

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Speaker 1: gonna not We're probably not gonna use a lot of

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Speaker 1: examples in here, but we are going to end up

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Speaker 1: using some of the basic Greek examples that most of

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Speaker 1: our listeners are gonna be familiar with. This is not,

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Speaker 1: in a by any means intended to slight any of

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Speaker 1: the fascinating cultures out there, but we're probably going to

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Speaker 1: draw cards from the deck that most people familiar with,

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Speaker 1: and probably some cards from the decks that we've you know,

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Speaker 1: built ourselves out of things that interest us. Yeah, in particular,

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Speaker 1: like I should probably just state this upfront, like I

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Speaker 1: if you listen to the show before, you know that

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Speaker 1: I'm a comic book nerd. You know that I like

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Speaker 1: superheroes and have done research on superheroes in the past.

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Speaker 1: In particular, like the research I did when I was

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Speaker 1: at a university was about mythology, rhetoric, and Captain America ironically,

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Speaker 1: because that Captain American movie just came out. Um, And

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Speaker 1: so yeah, I have a lot of like superhero type

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Speaker 1: examples or pop culture examples that will probably come to

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Speaker 1: mind as we're talking about this, but also I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: try to stay on target. Yeah. Likewise, I've been reading

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Speaker 1: a lot of Chinese mythology recently, and so some of

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Speaker 1: my examples are going to draw from that, just because

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Speaker 1: it's fresh on my mind. But all of it is

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Speaker 1: going to be intended to to to provide you with

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Speaker 1: the tools to to go through these different ways of

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Speaker 1: looking at myth and uh and you know, provide something

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Speaker 1: that that the listeners of the show can't take with

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Speaker 1: them as we explore other mythologies, even as a tangent

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Speaker 1: in the future. So I have a challenge for us

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Speaker 1: and a challenge for you the listener as well as

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Speaker 1: we proceed, Um. Let's also consider, right, this is a

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Speaker 1: science podcast, and as we've been we've been, we've been

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Speaker 1: sort of inching our way towards this over the last

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Speaker 1: i don't know, two or three months with episodes like

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Speaker 1: we Could Problems and cargo cult science and things like that.

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Speaker 1: But let's consider is it possible that some form of

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Speaker 1: science is used today as mythology for our present culture?

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Speaker 1: Because I think that's something that there might be something there. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and if so, how is it? And then just for funzies,

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Speaker 1: who are our scientific deities? Uh? You know, Robert and

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Speaker 1: I have joked many times before on the show about

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Speaker 1: how like we're putting together was slowly putting together a

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Speaker 1: psychedelic Avengers of all these psychedelic scientists that we talked

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Speaker 1: about on the show. But in general, like I feel

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Speaker 1: like there are some scientists when you refer to them,

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Speaker 1: they're referred to with the reverence that people used to

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Speaker 1: refer to Zeus or thor with. Right, It's like Carl

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Speaker 1: Sagan can do no wrong or Einstein. You know, well,

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Speaker 1: they these are legendary individuals and science. And we'll get

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Speaker 1: into the connections between myth and legend here. As we

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Speaker 1: roll all right, So we'll keep that in mind, but

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Speaker 1: let's hit it all right. So let's start with the basics.

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Speaker 1: Just the word mythology. What does it, What does it

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Speaker 1: come from? Well, myth an ology, myth and logos myth

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Speaker 1: being the proto Indo European root move is involved. Here

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Speaker 1: is then to murmur and from this we get the

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Speaker 1: Greek mythos, meaning word or story. So this is gonna

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Speaker 1: be very important because as we go through this, you're

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Speaker 1: going to see that you know, and and this sounds

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Speaker 1: like a no type thing, but there's an inherent connection

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Speaker 1: between myth, mythology and human language and how that defines

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Speaker 1: both culture and how we understand the world. Right, So

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Speaker 1: of course it would be named after murmuring and words.

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Speaker 1: All right. So that's the word mythology. And certainly I

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Speaker 1: think when most when when a lot of us here

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Speaker 1: the word mythology, the first thing that enters your mind

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Speaker 1: is maybe just a you know, a quick glance at

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Speaker 1: the Greek pantheon. Yeah, I think I like a clash

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Speaker 1: of the Titans. Yeah, like old old gods, stories that

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Speaker 1: have a very human aspect to them. Um. And it's

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Speaker 1: one of those things that it makes it difficult then

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Speaker 1: to talk about myth in other areas such as like,

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Speaker 1: for instance, been talking about Christianity to talk about myth.

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Speaker 1: People here you say myth and they take it as

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Speaker 1: an insult because they think, oh, myth is a thing

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Speaker 1: that's not true and that is just mildly amusing in

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Speaker 1: big budget sandals movies exactly exactly, And that's something I

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Speaker 1: think we should try to dispel today too, is like

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Speaker 1: that myth is is larger than just these ideas we

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Speaker 1: think of them today as being fictionalized stories, right, But

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Speaker 1: to the Greeks and the Romans that worshiped those gods,

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Speaker 1: they were just as real to them as uh Einstein

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Speaker 1: and Carl Sagan are to us. Yeah, and it in

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Speaker 1: mythology as well. Discuss here is a powerful force. And

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Speaker 1: even though you might you might think of Greek gods

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Speaker 1: and whatever is just you know, mirror window dressing is

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Speaker 1: just something that's just aesthetically pleasing. We are all living

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Speaker 1: in the shadows of mythology. And yet at the same time,

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Speaker 1: the human experience cast the shadow of mythology. So keep

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Speaker 1: it very nice to keep that word shadow in mind

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Speaker 1: for when we get the good old Carl Young, Oh, yes,

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Speaker 1: all right, So under this heading, though, is there anything

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Speaker 1: that we can agree upon this kind of universally considered. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's what a myth is, generally speaking about. The only

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Speaker 1: thing we can everyone agrees on is that mythologies are stories,

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Speaker 1: their narratives. There's a lot of disagreement on whether those

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Speaker 1: narratives are inherently sacred, you know, which is to say

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Speaker 1: they involve gods in the supernatural. Can you have a

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Speaker 1: myth that doesn't involve a god or god like being? Well,

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Speaker 1: that's an issue of discussion and another thing to consider here.

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Speaker 1: This is from just the basic definition in the Salem

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Speaker 1: Press encyclopedia is that myths are stories, beliefs, fables, legends,

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Speaker 1: whatever you wanna call them. We're gonna sort of slice

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Speaker 1: that pie up a little bit later. But they reflect

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Speaker 1: the culture of the people who write and listen to them,

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Speaker 1: right So, and what they're often trying to do is

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Speaker 1: provide explanations for how the world works. Ironic, because we

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Speaker 1: are working for How Stuff Works this is How Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works podcast. So, uh, you know, while we provide explanations

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Speaker 1: for how stuff works, uh, the old way of doing

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Speaker 1: so was to say, well, the reason why that lightning

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Speaker 1: struck that tree over there was because Zeus was angry, right,

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Speaker 1: something like along those lines. Uh. So, for example, it

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Speaker 1: was natural phenomena that human beings didn't quite understand yet,

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Speaker 1: and so they told stories of heroes that were up

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Speaker 1: against good and evil steaks to explain those things. So

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Speaker 1: they explain our place in the world, or at least

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Speaker 1: they try to write to us. It's it's that old

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Speaker 1: like sort of very meta thing of like the stories

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Speaker 1: are us looking at ourselves Like fiction mythology is just

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Speaker 1: like uh, us creating an eyeball that's looking right back

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Speaker 1: at ourselves and then trying to explain ourselves to us,

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Speaker 1: which is is a weird thing to think about. Um,

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Speaker 1: but it's everything from creation myths like well, how the

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Speaker 1: world start? How? How why am I here? Who rules

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Speaker 1: the world? What's the afterlife? Like? Like? All of that

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Speaker 1: stuff stems from mythology, and there's so many shared similar themes.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna see that throughout all the things we talked

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Speaker 1: about today, from virgin births to great floods. Uh, they're

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Speaker 1: constantly being reinvented and passed down. And I would argue

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Speaker 1: even into today's you know, a huge popular culture epics

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Speaker 1: of whether it's your superhero movies or your Lord of

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Speaker 1: the Rings or Star Wars or whatever, we see these

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Speaker 1: played out in similar ways. They're uh anthropolo just in

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Speaker 1: cultural critics have been trying to trace these connections for centuries,

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Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about some some like key

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Speaker 1: points I would say in the last what like two

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Speaker 1: hundred years of mythological study. But it's complicated, uh, and

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Speaker 1: nobody has like a singular answer, so I kind of

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Speaker 1: want to dispel that right away, Like there's no this

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Speaker 1: is how it is right there. There are certainly interpretations

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Speaker 1: that are more popular. For instance, the etiological explanation that

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Speaker 1: you just mentioned, the idea that myths are about explaining

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Speaker 1: what the world is and how the world works, like

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Speaker 1: that is one that a lot of views say, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that that is one of the powers of myth, that's

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Speaker 1: one of the reasons for myth. But there are a

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Speaker 1: number of different ways to look at it, and a

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Speaker 1: number of these different ways to look at them are

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Speaker 1: tied to specific um uh, specific areas of study, specific

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Speaker 1: academic approaches. Yeah, and like it's easy to trace that

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Speaker 1: back to like very simple things that we feel like

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Speaker 1: we have a grasp on now, like the changing of

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Speaker 1: the seasons or something like that, right, but at the

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Speaker 1: time it was explained through mythology. Al Right, Before we

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Speaker 1: roll into some of the views on mythology, let's take

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Speaker 1: a few minutes just to talk about the formal features

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Speaker 1: of prose narrative as they relate to myth, legend, and folklore,

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Speaker 1: because these are three terms that are often used interchangeably,

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Speaker 1: but they really kind of refer to different things. Um. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I think to like, uh, we should point out

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Speaker 1: that the distinctions that we're about to give come from

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Speaker 1: a book on Chinese mythology by is it in Barrel?

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Speaker 1: I believe so. Yes, Yeah, it's a book I've picked

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Speaker 1: up recently, and in addition to being just a great

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Speaker 1: exploration of Chinese mythology, it has a wonderful some wonderful

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Speaker 1: introductory material that summarizes some some key stuff about mythology. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and this is great stuff, but it's also like, I

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Speaker 1: think that we should also question some of the definitions

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Speaker 1: too as we go. Yeah, I mean that's the that's

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Speaker 1: the thing when you like something to keep in mind

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Speaker 1: with any any of this one we're talking about mythology,

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Speaker 1: like mythology is almost a It exists outside of our

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Speaker 1: attempts to neatly categorize it. And so there's a and

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Speaker 1: throwing too many classifications at it. But but I I

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Speaker 1: tend to like this idea of just sort of breaking

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Speaker 1: it up so it's nice myth, legend, and folk tale.

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Speaker 1: There's there's a table in this book, um that that

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Speaker 1: lays it out in terms of like, what's the conventional opening?

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Speaker 1: Can you tell this story after dark? Is this scene

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Speaker 1: as a factor of fiction? What's the setting, like the

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Speaker 1: attitude the principal character. So I'm not gonna roll through

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Speaker 1: the whole list, but for instance, in a myth, you're

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Speaker 1: you're generally talking about a non human character. A legend

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Speaker 1: is going to be more of a human character, and

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Speaker 1: then a folk tale can be either one. Um, A

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Speaker 1: myth definitely has a sacred feel to it, you know

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Speaker 1: that the gods, superhumans, godlike entities. Legend can be either

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Speaker 1: sacred or secular, and then a folk tale tends to

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Speaker 1: be secular in terms of setting. Uh, myth and legend

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Speaker 1: are just sometime in some place where folk tales are timeless. Uh,

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Speaker 1: as far as belief goes, myth and legend are essentially facts,

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Speaker 1: and that's kind of a that's a problematic term, but well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: let's address that in a second. You go, Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: the myth and the legend as it is told it

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Speaker 1: is real in some way, shape or form, whereas the

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Speaker 1: folk tale is just pure fiction, like nobody is actually believing,

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Speaker 1: you know, in the Boogeyman, nobody thinks Johnny Appleseed I

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Speaker 1: actually walked all across actually with apple seeds. Yeah. So,

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Speaker 1: so these are just some of the ideas to keep

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Speaker 1: in mind to flesh this out a little bit. Let's

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Speaker 1: roll through some examples. First of just straight up myths.

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Speaker 1: So I think the the Greek examples that come to

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Speaker 1: mind most easily, probably you know, stuff having to do

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Speaker 1: with the origin of the universe though, the fall of

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Speaker 1: the Titans, the rise of the gods, that sort of thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's like the go to I think most of us. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And it's interesting, I wonder why that's the one like

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Speaker 1: mythological pantheon that, especially in Western culture we still like

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Speaker 1: really gravitate too. But I loved reading stories about that

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Speaker 1: and Norris mythology to a certain extent when I was

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Speaker 1: a kid. Well, those tales have been They've been told

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Speaker 1: and retold so many times as part of Western literature

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Speaker 1: that that they're that they've just been carried and held

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Speaker 1: on a pedestal this whole time. One of the interesting

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Speaker 1: things about looking at Chinese mythology is that you don't

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Speaker 1: see that case. There's not there's not a homer that

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Speaker 1: is that is retelling these things necessarily, So you have

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Speaker 1: we have less of our tradition of the mythology being

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Speaker 1: upheld by the scholars throughout the ages um. In the

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Speaker 1: Christian world you have Adam and Eve, the whole you know,

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Speaker 1: Garden of Eden, that the origins of Man, the Origins

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Speaker 1: of sin Um certainly classifies as as mythology um elsewhere

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Speaker 1: in the world Um. Chinese mythology, for instance, there's an

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Speaker 1: archer by the name of Ye and shoots down the

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Speaker 1: extra nine sons in the sky, so that the world's

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Speaker 1: not we don't need so many sons. So this is

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Speaker 1: a good segue into me talking about superheroes for a second,

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Speaker 1: because you just wrote a fantastic piece on Chinese mythology

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Speaker 1: connecting to the world of superheroes. Uh, and in particular

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Speaker 1: you wrote about a recent d C comics uh team

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Speaker 1: called the Great Ten that we're based on Chinese mythology.

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Speaker 1: So listeners, I highly recommend, uh you go and find

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Speaker 1: that piece. It's on now dot how Stuff Works dot com, right, yeah, uh,

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Speaker 1: and and go take a read because Robert does a

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Speaker 1: great job with that. But I will segue from that

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Speaker 1: from Chinese myth into superheroes and into Western superheroes. I

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Speaker 1: will make the argument throughout this episode that, especially like

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Speaker 1: our big budget uh d C comics, Marvel comics, superheroes

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Speaker 1: are archetypes for myth in the same way as like

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Speaker 1: the Greek gods were, right, so real quick, like think

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Speaker 1: of like pretty much every myth has like some kind

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Speaker 1: of solar deity, right, well, that's Superman. They've always got

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Speaker 1: an Earth Mother, it's wonder Woman. Wonder Woman was made

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Speaker 1: of clay in one of her origin stories. You've got

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Speaker 1: the death Slash Underworld deity, Batman, right yeah, and then

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Speaker 1: there's always like the Trickster, the Joker. So like it's interesting,

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Speaker 1: like and I'll keep coming back to this, uh, but

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Speaker 1: there are like paar ups like you can apply these

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Speaker 1: models of these archetypes across both you know, whether it's

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Speaker 1: thousands of years old Greek Roman pantheons or modern day

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Speaker 1: like comic books or even like I'm kind of wondering

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Speaker 1: with this this example of science, like who's our science Zeus?

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Speaker 1: Is it Nicola Tesla mm or Ben Franklin. It's not.

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Speaker 1: I don't think it's been Franklin. So but you know,

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Speaker 1: things like that to consider anyways. So that's that's my

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Speaker 1: spiel about comics to start off with. And I'll be

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Speaker 1: I think bringing it into yeah, an important fact to

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Speaker 1: night because much like the gods, what you walk around,

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Speaker 1: say to deaths in an office space and you see

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Speaker 1: the action figures on people's death totally in many cases

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Speaker 1: they are superheroes. Are superhero characters? What are they but

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Speaker 1: the the the avatars for little gods that are the amulets,

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Speaker 1: the protective presence. Yeah, and I would you know, i'd

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Speaker 1: also point out to that, like in our sort of

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Speaker 1: breakdown of of how myth, legend and folk tales work out, right,

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Speaker 1: like we said myth is considered to be fact, Well,

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Speaker 1: nobody actually considers, you know, Superman to be fact, right,

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Speaker 1: Nobody thinks that he's a real person, or at least

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Speaker 1: most people don't. Uh. And but the caveat being there

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Speaker 1: is that there is such an intense devotion to the

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Speaker 1: cannon that's within these myth myth mythologies of whatever shared

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Speaker 1: universe it is, whether it's Star Wars or Marvel or whatever. Right,

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Speaker 1: but there's constant arguments about what is true and what

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Speaker 1: is not within the canon. Uh. It doesn't necessarily explain

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Speaker 1: how the world works to us, but it represents how

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Speaker 1: we think it works and how we want it to work. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And it represents our ideologies too. Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's Superman. Even though no one is gonna gets into

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Speaker 1: the whole idea of hyper real religions that we've covered

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Speaker 1: in a previous that absolutely and that this thing that

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Speaker 1: is certainly fictional still takes on mythological even religious uh

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Speaker 1: power to the individual two large groups of people. So

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Speaker 1: if anyone out there is thinking, oh, you mentioned Superman

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Speaker 1: and Adam and even the same breath that is insulting

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Speaker 1: or whatever, um, I encourage you not to take it

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Speaker 1: that way and to listen to the rest of the

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Speaker 1: podcast as we explore the power of myth and I

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Speaker 1: think I would also say watched the last two Superman

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Speaker 1: movies very carefully because there's a lot of christ imagery

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Speaker 1: in there. There's a lot of him in cross like poses,

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Speaker 1: him being back lit by the sun in the same

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Speaker 1: way that Jesus is back lit in certain painting. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of that stuff going Alright. So onto legends,

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Speaker 1: as we discussed, you know, might be sacred, might be secular,

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Speaker 1: but you have more of a human character, there's more

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Speaker 1: of a grounding and reality, um, though there are still

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Speaker 1: mythic elements to it. So in the Greek world, the

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Speaker 1: example that came to my mind is Alexander, the great

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Speaker 1: legendary figure, but definitely a real guy that existed with

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Speaker 1: some possible uh fiction, you know, springing off on the edge.

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Speaker 1: It still allows for big budget movies to be made

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Speaker 1: about him, right, And it's and it's more, um, it's

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Speaker 1: not in like pure mythic time like it's it's it's

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Speaker 1: more relatable to the present. Likewise, in the Christian and

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Speaker 1: Christian traditions, you have various martyrs. You can maybe even

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Speaker 1: make a h an argument for some of the apostles.

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Speaker 1: These are definite historical figures, like st When we talked

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Speaker 1: about Stigmata on the Shadow before. Some of those guys

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Speaker 1: that is definitely an example of Christian legend. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: then elsewhere in the in the world. One example from

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Speaker 1: Chinese histor three is the Yellow Emperor who reigned from

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Speaker 1: two thousand six to UC Definitely a real ruler, but

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of additional information he's taken on extremely

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Speaker 1: lifendary status. Yeah. My experience, um, living in Southeast Asia

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Speaker 1: as a kid too, is that Chinese mythology and legend

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Speaker 1: is popularized in pop culture and movies and television just

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Speaker 1: as much as like our Alexander the Greats or superheroes

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Speaker 1: or Greek gods are Um, are you familiar with the

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Speaker 1: Ones upon a Time in China series? Um? Yeah, Well

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Speaker 1: I've never seen it, but I'm familiar with it. It's

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Speaker 1: this like martial arts Woushia series of movies starting Jetly,

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Speaker 1: and it's ostensibly about the history of China at the time,

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Speaker 1: although there's a lot of argument about whether or not

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Speaker 1: it's been influenced by the state or not, and it's

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Speaker 1: sort of like a revisionist history. But it reminds me

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Speaker 1: of things like this, or like a lot of Jetly movies,

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Speaker 1: like what's that other one hero? Is that? What it's

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Speaker 1: called anyway, the Wuhia movies in general tend to play

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Speaker 1: around with these legends. They're like historical figures that they

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Speaker 1: make larger than life. And then finally we have folklore

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Speaker 1: and uh, certainly like in the Greek tradition they have

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Speaker 1: they have their boogeyman, just as anybody else has a boogeyman.

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Speaker 1: Believe it's called the baboos. And then you could maybe

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Speaker 1: make an argument that a sub's fables count as folk

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Speaker 1: floor you know what I mean, nobody, I mean they're

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Speaker 1: almost like extreme folklore, like nobody's believing one of these

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Speaker 1: stories with these interactions between animals briar rabbit. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: they're but they still they carry weight, and that that's

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Speaker 1: um Christian tradition. You have an inherited pagan folk tales.

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Speaker 1: You have stuff about witches, there's a lot of Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and that's an interesting example where fable can become something else,

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Speaker 1: starting to find the world for us in a way

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Speaker 1: that isn't necessarily accurate. Yeah, and then elsewhere in the world,

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Speaker 1: what you have vampire? Do you have fox, spirits, beast men,

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Speaker 1: all in that manner of of supernatural entity that it's

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Speaker 1: just a folk tale, you know, it's like it doesn't

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Speaker 1: have legendary and mythic status. So let's talk about the

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Speaker 1: like how sacred some of this stuff has to be? Right?

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Speaker 1: Like again like sticking to Uh, that's that table of

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Speaker 1: splitting up myth, legend and folklore. Well, it says right

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Speaker 1: here myths are always sacred. So how sacred are they? Well?

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Speaker 1: I think it's definitely hard to find examples of older

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Speaker 1: myths that are that are secular. Like most mythology as

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Speaker 1: as we experience, it is going to be sacred. But

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Speaker 1: the comic book examples really bring to mind a possible

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Speaker 1: example of of of secular mythology, you know, in a

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Speaker 1: kind of hyper real fashion. So um. Interesting side note here.

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Speaker 1: Often mentioned writer on the show, Grant Morrison. I don't

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Speaker 1: know if you're you've ever read his run on The

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Speaker 1: Justice League of America happened. Uh. He's given many interviews

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Speaker 1: where he said, well, his version of writing The Justice

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Speaker 1: League was he saw it as, oh, this is the

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Speaker 1: mythological pantheon of our times, and he set it up

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Speaker 1: so that his roster of who was on the team

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Speaker 1: uh lined up are typically with all of the Greek

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Speaker 1: and Roman gods uh. And he had like this infamous

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Speaker 1: breakdown of how that all worked out, how he chose

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Speaker 1: who would be on on the team. Like, you know,

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Speaker 1: you have your usuals like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.

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Speaker 1: Then when you add somebody like plastic Man, like why

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Speaker 1: is he there? And Morrison says, well, everybody needs a Dionysius. Interesting, yea,

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Speaker 1: And of course Morrison also responsible for Alright. So here's

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Speaker 1: the thing with with myth is we're discussing it now

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Speaker 1: and and again. This gets down to the problems of

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Speaker 1: classifying it. Myth is like a narrative mold that grows

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Speaker 1: over our lives, and it grows over everything from big

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Speaker 1: cosmological questions to what's on the dinner table. So you

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Speaker 1: can think of it as as mold growing over a

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Speaker 1: statue of a man or a woman, and that body

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Speaker 1: is kind of a physical symbology for our concerns. Or

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Speaker 1: if you're so inclined, you can think of chakras on

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Speaker 1: a figure. Okay, So myth grows over the heart and

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Speaker 1: the mind that it goes over all the senses of

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Speaker 1: the head. It grows over the sex, organs, the breasts,

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Speaker 1: the gut, It covers the dreadful scars of battle and

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Speaker 1: the ever humor as buttocks. Uh, and is the butt

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Speaker 1: sacred or secular? Humans will always disagree on that one.

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Speaker 1: But but myth is ultimately poly functional, so it grows everywhere.

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Speaker 1: It takes on various meanings. And that's not just the

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Speaker 1: nature of of myth as as a whole, from you know,

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Speaker 1: as just in general. I mean we're talking about individual tales. Uh,

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Speaker 1: that mean a host of different things. Uh. The human

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Speaker 1: experience exists, again, is the shadow of myth, but it

426
00:23:44,840 --> 00:23:48,680
Speaker 1: also casts the very shadow. So I think polly functional

427
00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:51,919
Speaker 1: is a good um description to keep in mind as

428
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:53,840
Speaker 1: we talk about all of these, because the more you

429
00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:56,200
Speaker 1: try and pin it down and say, oh, well, this

430
00:23:56,200 --> 00:23:58,959
Speaker 1: this myth is about your obsession with your mother, that

431
00:23:59,080 --> 00:24:01,640
Speaker 1: is to limit the power of mythology to this one

432
00:24:01,680 --> 00:24:05,119
Speaker 1: specific thing, when it really is more amorphous than that.

433
00:24:05,240 --> 00:24:07,040
Speaker 1: And that's what we see in a lot of the

434
00:24:07,119 --> 00:24:10,399
Speaker 1: attempts and conflicts over what myth means over the last

435
00:24:10,480 --> 00:24:14,399
Speaker 1: you know, hundred two hundred years of academic inquirery. I

436
00:24:14,440 --> 00:24:16,800
Speaker 1: guess is sort of like attempts to constrain it and

437
00:24:16,840 --> 00:24:19,920
Speaker 1: then attempts to balloon it back outwards again. Yeah, because

438
00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:22,600
Speaker 1: you end up with say a psychologist or an anthropologist,

439
00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:26,040
Speaker 1: story or a historian. They're coming in. They're taking their

440
00:24:26,080 --> 00:24:29,520
Speaker 1: discipline applying it to mythology, and it's going to be

441
00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:31,880
Speaker 1: sort of the vision of mythology that fits to their

442
00:24:31,880 --> 00:24:34,000
Speaker 1: discipline well. And the funny thing is, too, is like

443
00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:36,760
Speaker 1: they're human beings and they're just a subject a myth

444
00:24:36,800 --> 00:24:39,800
Speaker 1: as the rest of us, and they want their answer

445
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:42,400
Speaker 1: to be the one answer, right Like they all think

446
00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:45,560
Speaker 1: like young thought like his answer was the answer, and

447
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:49,199
Speaker 1: so did I don't know, Roland Bard or uh, you know,

448
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:53,000
Speaker 1: the Claude leavestros whoever, Like all these people were going

449
00:24:53,040 --> 00:24:56,000
Speaker 1: to talk about today, they wanted to be the ones

450
00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:58,639
Speaker 1: with the answer in just the same way as the

451
00:24:58,680 --> 00:25:02,880
Speaker 1: people who u uh talked about Zeus as being responsible

452
00:25:02,960 --> 00:25:06,560
Speaker 1: for storms wanted that to be the one true answer.

453
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:10,560
Speaker 1: So we have a lot of different interpretations and one

454
00:25:10,600 --> 00:25:13,080
Speaker 1: individual will come back around to him at the very end.

455
00:25:13,080 --> 00:25:15,720
Speaker 1: But there is a religious study scholar and mythologist William G.

456
00:25:15,920 --> 00:25:20,280
Speaker 1: Dotty nine. He's still around, but he's retired. To understand,

457
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:24,119
Speaker 1: he identified no fewer than fifty definitions of myth and

458
00:25:24,119 --> 00:25:26,320
Speaker 1: this was in the nineteen eighties. And again this is

459
00:25:26,359 --> 00:25:30,440
Speaker 1: due to just all the anthropologists, psychologists, religious studies, uh,

460
00:25:30,480 --> 00:25:35,399
Speaker 1: individuals of theo theologians, etcetera, chiming in on mythology. All right,

461
00:25:35,400 --> 00:25:36,960
Speaker 1: so we're gonna take a quick break and when we

462
00:25:37,040 --> 00:25:39,920
Speaker 1: come back we will roll through some of these big

463
00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:50,480
Speaker 1: ideas concerning the nature and power of myth. Okay, so

464
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:53,119
Speaker 1: here we go. Let's first talk about sort of this

465
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:57,640
Speaker 1: nineteenth century universalistic theory approach. One of the key individual

466
00:25:57,840 --> 00:26:01,960
Speaker 1: visuals here Frederick Max mu There eighty three nine hundred,

467
00:26:02,320 --> 00:26:05,880
Speaker 1: generally known just as Max Mueller, German born English philologist

468
00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:10,000
Speaker 1: and orientalists. As the term of the was used at

469
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:13,160
Speaker 1: we probably wouldn't call him that, not not today, but it's, uh,

470
00:26:13,280 --> 00:26:14,919
Speaker 1: it's it's a good description to keep in mind in

471
00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:19,160
Speaker 1: terms of the attitudes towards uh uh, you know, other

472
00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:23,359
Speaker 1: people's belief systems and mythological roots. He argued that overtime

473
00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:28,280
Speaker 1: humans lost the original meanings of words such as sun, moon, thunderstorms,

474
00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:31,399
Speaker 1: you know, the basic terms we used to describe the

475
00:26:32,119 --> 00:26:34,680
Speaker 1: cycle of things in the world around as planets. Yeah,

476
00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:37,720
Speaker 1: and that we gradually misunderstood them as myth figures and

477
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:42,160
Speaker 1: incorporated them into superstitious and religious world views. Yeah, it's

478
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:44,640
Speaker 1: no coincidence that we named all of our planets after

479
00:26:44,760 --> 00:26:48,960
Speaker 1: God's right. Uh. In fact, like our solar system has

480
00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:53,200
Speaker 1: its own sort of pantheon of characters and archetypes as well.

481
00:26:53,480 --> 00:26:56,399
Speaker 1: That there you go again, science the application of science

482
00:26:56,400 --> 00:27:00,359
Speaker 1: to myth. H. Yeah. So with Mueller's in particular zs

483
00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:02,600
Speaker 1: of language thing, this is something we're going to see

484
00:27:02,640 --> 00:27:05,159
Speaker 1: come up over and over again. That language is like

485
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:08,160
Speaker 1: the culprit of myth. It's where it all originates. Right,

486
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:12,399
Speaker 1: Like if we were uh without language speaking animals, feral

487
00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 1: children for instance, feral children would maybe not need mythology,

488
00:27:17,080 --> 00:27:20,639
Speaker 1: right anymore than like a squirrel would. Uh. And it

489
00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:26,240
Speaker 1: goes a long way towards understanding again human cultural communication,

490
00:27:26,760 --> 00:27:31,120
Speaker 1: all our differences and our similarities, and especially how we

491
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 1: other other people. So I'm talking about capital, oh other

492
00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:40,360
Speaker 1: uh and how we understand the world in general. Right.

493
00:27:40,440 --> 00:27:44,800
Speaker 1: So uh, Muller seems to think more about nature as

494
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:49,600
Speaker 1: being personified as supernatural characters, right, But he's also talking

495
00:27:49,640 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 1: about language as being the step that leads us there. Right.

496
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:56,920
Speaker 1: And I think this is a great example to kick

497
00:27:56,960 --> 00:28:00,239
Speaker 1: off with because certainly if you took this as the

498
00:28:00,280 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 1: only explanation from myth. That would be a very limited

499
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:07,080
Speaker 1: understanding of mythology. But you consider, I can certainly see

500
00:28:07,080 --> 00:28:09,199
Speaker 1: where this would be a part of the overall energy

501
00:28:09,280 --> 00:28:13,800
Speaker 1: of myth as it exists in human history. Um up, next,

502
00:28:13,960 --> 00:28:17,760
Speaker 1: let's talk about the evolutionist school. One of the key

503
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:21,440
Speaker 1: individuals here Edward B. Tyler, that's T. Y L. O. R.

504
00:28:22,720 --> 00:28:26,200
Speaker 1: Through nineteen seventeen English anthropologist. So he was a cultural

505
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:31,120
Speaker 1: evolutionist and he saw myth as expression of primitive philosophy.

506
00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:34,120
Speaker 1: So this is another example of myth as considered by

507
00:28:34,160 --> 00:28:39,240
Speaker 1: individuals immerged in a specific discipline. In time, evolutionary theory

508
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:41,440
Speaker 1: was changing the way we think about the world. On

509
00:28:41,520 --> 00:28:43,760
Speaker 1: the Origin of Species by Darwin came out in eighteen

510
00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:49,160
Speaker 1: fifty nine. So there's there's another science, mythological and Darwin

511
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:52,120
Speaker 1: and origin. I'm not sure which superhero here, Yeah, I

512
00:28:52,120 --> 00:28:55,240
Speaker 1: don't know, but you know, so some went in this,

513
00:28:55,560 --> 00:28:59,040
Speaker 1: Some individuals picked up on the evolution craze and they

514
00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:03,200
Speaker 1: went and decidedly racist and xenophobic directions with this. But

515
00:29:03,280 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that the Tyler at least believed that

516
00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:10,239
Speaker 1: human minds had the same global capability, regardless of their

517
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:14,240
Speaker 1: position on what he saw as the ladder of cultural ascension.

518
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:17,800
Speaker 1: So he saw myth is an attempt to explain the world. Again,

519
00:29:17,840 --> 00:29:20,080
Speaker 1: getting back to the ideology that we're talking about earlier,

520
00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 1: he saw it as a proto science. He also saw

521
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:26,160
Speaker 1: ritual as an application of myth, just as technology is

522
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: an application of science to exert control. So myth is

523
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 1: our understanding of how the world works, and ritual is

524
00:29:32,360 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 1: our attempt to exploit that understanding for control. Yeah, ritual

525
00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 1: is in his sense, the application of how we're trying

526
00:29:39,520 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 1: to control outcomes in a totally chaotic world that we

527
00:29:43,040 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 1: don't know what's going to happen next. Right, there's gonna

528
00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:46,959
Speaker 1: be a storm that's gonna hit and kill my family,

529
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:50,360
Speaker 1: or maybe it won't rain and my crops won't grow.

530
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:52,719
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna perform these rituals to try to make

531
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:55,400
Speaker 1: these particular things happen. I want to change the outcomes

532
00:29:55,400 --> 00:29:57,560
Speaker 1: of reality. Okay, And you know it's it's interesting to

533
00:29:57,600 --> 00:29:59,680
Speaker 1: try and like apply that to the previous theory. So

534
00:29:59,720 --> 00:30:02,200
Speaker 1: you can imagine, like this this thing we see in

535
00:30:02,240 --> 00:30:05,200
Speaker 1: the sky, we we give it a certain amount of

536
00:30:05,240 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: personality and then as we reach out to it, as

537
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:10,320
Speaker 1: we you know, at a loss of anything else, you know,

538
00:30:10,360 --> 00:30:13,360
Speaker 1: amid say that the ruins of our village, we might

539
00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 1: ask it for help and then therefore personify it more

540
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:21,240
Speaker 1: and create more narrative energy for it. And this brings

541
00:30:21,280 --> 00:30:24,760
Speaker 1: us to the myth as ritual school and one of

542
00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:28,240
Speaker 1: the key individuals here Jane Ellen Harrison eighteen fifty through

543
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:32,760
Speaker 1: who was a British classical scholar, linguist and feminist. Harrison

544
00:30:32,800 --> 00:30:35,280
Speaker 1: expanded on this notion of ritual and myth as the

545
00:30:35,480 --> 00:30:40,160
Speaker 1: spoken correlation of the acted right, the thing done and uh.

546
00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:41,880
Speaker 1: And this reminds me of some of the views that

547
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:46,400
Speaker 1: will discuss from Mercelle Elliotti in the country here. And

548
00:30:46,480 --> 00:30:50,280
Speaker 1: up next we have the ipeological interpretation of Andrew Lang.

549
00:30:50,400 --> 00:30:53,480
Speaker 1: He was a Scottish poet and anthropologist lived eighteen forty

550
00:30:53,560 --> 00:30:56,560
Speaker 1: four through nineteen twelve. Yeah, and so you know, as

551
00:30:56,560 --> 00:30:59,600
Speaker 1: we we mentioned this earlier, but aedeological means assigning or

552
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:02,160
Speaker 1: seek to assign a cause to things. It's the study

553
00:31:02,600 --> 00:31:07,040
Speaker 1: of causation in myth in particular, we're talking about origin stories, right,

554
00:31:07,120 --> 00:31:10,560
Speaker 1: how how did this thing happen? Why is it happening? Yeah,

555
00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 1: Lane wrote, Uh, wrote a book Myth, Ritual and Religion,

556
00:31:14,520 --> 00:31:17,360
Speaker 1: Volume one, And this is like a number of these

557
00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:19,480
Speaker 1: older text is available and full online if you just

558
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:22,320
Speaker 1: poke around for him. Um, but I wanted to read

559
00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:24,520
Speaker 1: one line from it to give you sort of a

560
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:26,440
Speaker 1: sense of some of the some of the attitudes that

561
00:31:26,480 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 1: were thrown around and trying to figure out what myth

562
00:31:29,880 --> 00:31:32,120
Speaker 1: is and what its power is. Uh. And he was

563
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:36,840
Speaker 1: talking about some Greek and um and Sanscrit writings about

564
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 1: about myth. Here he says, quote, we conclude that in

565
00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: Greek and Sanscrit, the myths are relics, whether borrowed or

566
00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:49,000
Speaker 1: inherited of the savage mental status. Yeah. So now we're

567
00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:53,200
Speaker 1: getting into Uh, this is that period of time where

568
00:31:53,200 --> 00:31:57,040
Speaker 1: I think like a lot of uh philosophical thought was

569
00:31:57,240 --> 00:32:00,440
Speaker 1: struggling with what we now view as i'd say, quasi

570
00:32:00,520 --> 00:32:04,440
Speaker 1: racist territory in terms of, like, you know, whether these

571
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:08,280
Speaker 1: theorists see themselves as being superior to quote unquote primitive

572
00:32:08,320 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: people's but then not exactly applying the same lens to

573
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: themselves in terms of like how we understand culture and

574
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 1: how we use myth. Right, Yeah, it's kind of like,

575
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:18,880
Speaker 1: let me, I guess is there a term for this,

576
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:23,600
Speaker 1: like white splain you or the colonial splain you. I mean,

577
00:32:23,680 --> 00:32:25,920
Speaker 1: what I keep thinking of is like, and you see

578
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 1: this in a lot of these guys, is the idea

579
00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:31,360
Speaker 1: of the quote noble savage, right, Like the the idea

580
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:34,720
Speaker 1: that um particular primitive peoples have these two aspects of

581
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:37,360
Speaker 1: themselves and once we crack the code, we can figure

582
00:32:37,360 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 1: out what makes them tick. And it's it's um kind

583
00:32:41,120 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 1: of grossly elitist. Yeah, it's it's like, there's this beautiful

584
00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:48,040
Speaker 1: thing about your whole situation. You're blind to it, but

585
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:50,520
Speaker 1: I I am. I am far enough at the ladder

586
00:32:50,560 --> 00:32:52,680
Speaker 1: that I can I can reach in there and figure

587
00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:56,080
Speaker 1: it out for exactly. So, Yeah, there's sometimes you get

588
00:32:56,080 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 1: into that that kind of itchy area with some of

589
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:01,880
Speaker 1: these especially some of the early writings on the subject um.

590
00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 1: Up next, we're going to briefly discuss friends bows. He

591
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:08,160
Speaker 1: had this um this interesting take that was that has

592
00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:12,840
Speaker 1: been referred to but as autobiographical ethnography, all right, and

593
00:33:12,920 --> 00:33:16,520
Speaker 1: that that was a description that was thrown out in

594
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:20,160
Speaker 1: that book I mentioned earlier by and Beryl about Chinese mythology.

595
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:24,640
Speaker 1: He was a German American anthropologist lived fifty eight through two,

596
00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:27,320
Speaker 1: and the basic idea here was that the specifics of

597
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 1: a primitive culture can be deduced from kind of a

598
00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:34,520
Speaker 1: postmortem of its myths um, which you know, sounds like,

599
00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:36,720
Speaker 1: in a sense, kind of an oversimplification and maybe and

600
00:33:36,760 --> 00:33:41,320
Speaker 1: that's probably an oversimplification of his work, but you know,

601
00:33:41,960 --> 00:33:43,640
Speaker 1: I can I can see the value in it. Like

602
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:45,960
Speaker 1: if you look at a person at a people's mythology,

603
00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:48,560
Speaker 1: then you're going to learn certain things about who and

604
00:33:48,600 --> 00:33:52,000
Speaker 1: what they are. Yeah. So Bois is an interesting contrast

605
00:33:52,040 --> 00:33:53,720
Speaker 1: to Land because I think both of them are in

606
00:33:53,760 --> 00:33:57,360
Speaker 1: this sort of weird period of time or like intellectuals

607
00:33:57,400 --> 00:34:00,920
Speaker 1: saw themselves as like defining quote pre bit of people's right.

608
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:03,320
Speaker 1: But at the same time, if you look into Bois,

609
00:34:03,400 --> 00:34:07,200
Speaker 1: like he was pretty staunchly against what he called white

610
00:34:07,240 --> 00:34:10,839
Speaker 1: prejudice and racial superiority, uh, and that he didn't think

611
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:13,080
Speaker 1: that it was like the job of anthropology to sort

612
00:34:13,080 --> 00:34:15,800
Speaker 1: of apply that mindset to other people's. But at the

613
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:19,600
Speaker 1: same time, like there's it's complex, Like I think it's

614
00:34:19,600 --> 00:34:21,760
Speaker 1: too complex for us to get into in this episode,

615
00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:23,960
Speaker 1: especially since we're trying to tackle such a big subject

616
00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:26,880
Speaker 1: to begin with, it might be worth returning to Bois

617
00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:30,839
Speaker 1: in a future episode. But just this contradiction between like

618
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:34,320
Speaker 1: not wanting to, as we're calling it, like white splain

619
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:38,479
Speaker 1: uh to these particular peoples, but then at the same

620
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:41,560
Speaker 1: time like saying like, oh, yeah, I get you figured out,

621
00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:43,880
Speaker 1: like once once I look at your rituals and your myths,

622
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:46,440
Speaker 1: like I know what's going on here. Yeah. Yeah, it

623
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:49,319
Speaker 1: is difficult because on the other hand, you have individuals

624
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:52,920
Speaker 1: in a different culture with a different language trying to

625
00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:56,360
Speaker 1: understand individuals in another culture in a different language, and

626
00:34:56,400 --> 00:34:58,360
Speaker 1: speaking about it within their own culture, within in the

627
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:01,359
Speaker 1: own language, within their own discipline. And yeah, it gets

628
00:35:01,600 --> 00:35:04,720
Speaker 1: it gets complicated pretty quickly. There's something going on here

629
00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:08,880
Speaker 1: too about using myth to understand the world that also

630
00:35:09,080 --> 00:35:12,200
Speaker 1: leads us to our fear of other people in like

631
00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:14,400
Speaker 1: different ways of which we can try to apply that

632
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 1: and make sense of it. Uh. And I think you

633
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:18,719
Speaker 1: see a little bit of that here, But Bois was

634
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:22,759
Speaker 1: obviously trying to push against it all. Right. Up next

635
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:27,399
Speaker 1: we have Polish anthropologist Brunus Law Malinowski lived eighty four

636
00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:31,920
Speaker 1: through nineteen forty two, and Uh, his whole thing was

637
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:35,400
Speaker 1: that that myth is a sociological charter. So, in other words,

638
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:38,560
Speaker 1: if you want to know what's morally acceptable within a society,

639
00:35:38,680 --> 00:35:42,080
Speaker 1: look to their myths, which end up reflecting and informing

640
00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:45,120
Speaker 1: these standards. They spell out the important values, the rituals

641
00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:49,799
Speaker 1: of behavior. Um claude. Levi Strauss, who we're gonna get

642
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:52,600
Speaker 1: to in a second, described this as myth is a

643
00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:56,239
Speaker 1: charter for social action, and then Levi Strauss expanded on

644
00:35:56,280 --> 00:36:00,640
Speaker 1: this view with a a structural analytical approach. The highlights

645
00:36:01,120 --> 00:36:05,400
Speaker 1: the binary oppositions in myth that bring the reader, listener,

646
00:36:05,480 --> 00:36:07,799
Speaker 1: or the individual to a place of deeper meaning. So

647
00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:11,640
Speaker 1: you're kind of narratively juggling the notions of social action

648
00:36:11,719 --> 00:36:14,200
Speaker 1: in a way that a mere you know, a mere

649
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:17,640
Speaker 1: set of rules, carbon and a piece of stone cannot. Yeah.

650
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:20,920
Speaker 1: Levi Strauss is one of sort of the you know,

651
00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:24,919
Speaker 1: first major thinkers in the last century to do that

652
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:30,160
Speaker 1: uh language application thing here, and in particular he's considered

653
00:36:30,200 --> 00:36:33,359
Speaker 1: a father of structuralism, which we've talked about recently on

654
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:35,640
Speaker 1: the show. Some people have asked us to please do

655
00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:39,839
Speaker 1: an episode on structuralism or post structuralism. We might it's

656
00:36:40,120 --> 00:36:45,160
Speaker 1: such an incredibly complex, uh theory that I don't know

657
00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:47,120
Speaker 1: that we could do justice to it. Well, sometimes what

658
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 1: you have to do is just to dip your toes,

659
00:36:48,719 --> 00:36:52,440
Speaker 1: and maybe we'll do that. But in the case of Strauss,

660
00:36:52,560 --> 00:36:56,799
Speaker 1: he wrote a four volume study called Mythologies. Uh And,

661
00:36:56,800 --> 00:36:58,799
Speaker 1: and the the idea here was that he followed a

662
00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:02,640
Speaker 1: single myth as it traversed from South America all the

663
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:04,400
Speaker 1: way up to the Arctic Circle, sort of like how

664
00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:07,640
Speaker 1: we are tracing the origins of cannabis in that episode

665
00:37:07,640 --> 00:37:10,120
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago, right, So he's tracing its

666
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 1: cultural evolution. Uh And. In particular, he has an essay.

667
00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:15,319
Speaker 1: He has multiple things he's written about this, but there's

668
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:17,840
Speaker 1: a widely read essay that is free on the internet

669
00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:20,440
Speaker 1: if you just google it, the Structural Study of myth

670
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:23,120
Speaker 1: in which he says, and keep in mind this is

671
00:37:23,160 --> 00:37:27,239
Speaker 1: sixty years ago. Myths are interpreted in conflicting ways, right,

672
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: So he's looking at all the different ways that all

673
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:32,600
Speaker 1: these other theorists are trying to interpret them, whether it's

674
00:37:32,600 --> 00:37:35,600
Speaker 1: through collective dreams or ritual or play or archetypes. All

675
00:37:35,640 --> 00:37:38,000
Speaker 1: these things that we're we've either talked about already or

676
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:41,360
Speaker 1: we will talk about. None of them go beyond what

677
00:37:41,440 --> 00:37:45,360
Speaker 1: he calls quote a crude kind of philosophic speculation. So

678
00:37:45,400 --> 00:37:47,600
Speaker 1: he kind of looked down on them, right, But then,

679
00:37:47,680 --> 00:37:49,600
Speaker 1: like any good academic, he was like, well, I have

680
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:53,120
Speaker 1: the one single answer and here um, he says, well,

681
00:37:53,160 --> 00:37:55,920
Speaker 1: the paradox is that myth is both full of elements

682
00:37:55,920 --> 00:37:59,120
Speaker 1: that contradict one another. Right, anything can happen in a myth,

683
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:03,320
Speaker 1: but the same time between different cultures in different regions

684
00:38:03,400 --> 00:38:07,920
Speaker 1: that seemingly haven't interacted at all their similarities between their myths. Uh.

685
00:38:07,920 --> 00:38:10,160
Speaker 1: And one of the examples he uses is the Native

686
00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:14,319
Speaker 1: American trickster myth. As an example, he says, well, it's

687
00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:17,680
Speaker 1: a it's a meditation on both life and death, right,

688
00:38:17,719 --> 00:38:20,560
Speaker 1: and it's a it's symbolized by both like a raven,

689
00:38:20,680 --> 00:38:22,600
Speaker 1: and I think it's either a coyote or a wolf.

690
00:38:23,239 --> 00:38:26,000
Speaker 1: And those seem like they would be diametrically opposed, but

691
00:38:26,040 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 1: they're not. And here's why. And I'm not going to

692
00:38:28,160 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 1: dive down the whole Levi Strouss thing, but you can

693
00:38:30,719 --> 00:38:33,799
Speaker 1: take a look. It's it's really interesting stuff. Um. He

694
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:36,440
Speaker 1: also used Oedipus as an example, and he said, since

695
00:38:36,520 --> 00:38:39,480
Speaker 1: myth is made of language, uh, and it can't be

696
00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:42,520
Speaker 1: told without human speech. This is why we need to

697
00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:46,600
Speaker 1: apply linguistics and structuralism to it in order to understand it.

698
00:38:46,880 --> 00:38:50,319
Speaker 1: He takes Oedipus and he breaks it apart, kind of

699
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:54,080
Speaker 1: like a musical arrangement, like an orchestral a score with

700
00:38:54,440 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 1: assigned beats to it, and he breaks up those beats

701
00:38:57,120 --> 00:39:00,880
Speaker 1: into four columns. Uh. And through this he tries to

702
00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:05,840
Speaker 1: discern what a myth actually means, right, what that means, meaning,

703
00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:10,239
Speaker 1: the etiological nature of that meaning, uh, by finding that

704
00:39:10,320 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 1: the fourth column is the universal characteristic of man. Okay,

705
00:39:14,640 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 1: so this is like his his prime answer to what's

706
00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:22,399
Speaker 1: going on with myth? Uh? And in particular, he also said,

707
00:39:22,440 --> 00:39:26,200
Speaker 1: there isn't one authentic version of a myth, but there's

708
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:29,600
Speaker 1: different manifestations, and we see this throughout all of them. Right.

709
00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 1: So even like in the examples of like that, I've

710
00:39:32,239 --> 00:39:35,120
Speaker 1: been giving modern day superheroes as being sort of mythic, right,

711
00:39:35,120 --> 00:39:38,440
Speaker 1: Like their continuity is constantly changing, and and it's you're

712
00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:42,160
Speaker 1: talking about Superman the Sun God or Superman the Reagan

713
00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 1: as figure and what the Dark Knight returns? Yeah, yeah,

714
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:48,560
Speaker 1: exactly right, So like they're interpreted in different ways and

715
00:39:48,600 --> 00:39:51,719
Speaker 1: applied in different ways. So he's like, he was trying

716
00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:54,520
Speaker 1: to figure out what the fundamental units of myths were,

717
00:39:54,560 --> 00:39:57,360
Speaker 1: and he called them my themes, which I like because

718
00:39:57,640 --> 00:40:01,520
Speaker 1: if you split it, it's my theme. Um. And I

719
00:40:01,560 --> 00:40:06,000
Speaker 1: believe this was before the conceptualization of memes too, but

720
00:40:06,040 --> 00:40:08,680
Speaker 1: there's there's something connected there as well. Uh. He tried

721
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:12,680
Speaker 1: breaking them down in this very strict structuralist linguistic manner

722
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:15,840
Speaker 1: to find out what those fundamental units were, and he

723
00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:18,120
Speaker 1: thought that there had to be some kind of universal

724
00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:20,440
Speaker 1: law to all of them. All right, so we have

725
00:40:20,520 --> 00:40:22,800
Speaker 1: some good material here. We have, we've were, We've already

726
00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:25,480
Speaker 1: rolled through a number of different ways to take apart

727
00:40:25,520 --> 00:40:28,040
Speaker 1: the myth and figure out what it means. So let's

728
00:40:28,040 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 1: talk about Sigmund Freud. Just a little bit about your mother. Yes,

729
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:37,000
Speaker 1: so Freud is mostly known for for psychoanalysis, but of

730
00:40:37,040 --> 00:40:40,399
Speaker 1: course myth was also hugely important to him. He would

731
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:43,400
Speaker 1: keep all these these different uh uh, you know, mythic

732
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:46,560
Speaker 1: depictions of God's just sitting around his office. And he

733
00:40:46,600 --> 00:40:50,160
Speaker 1: saw myths as reflections of our unconscious fears and desires.

734
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:54,279
Speaker 1: So he viewed ancient religious characters as the manifestations of

735
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:57,600
Speaker 1: submerged human desires, and therefore all religions is kind of

736
00:40:57,600 --> 00:41:00,279
Speaker 1: a mass delusion or maybe a paranoid for one of

737
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:03,440
Speaker 1: wish fulfillment. This is where we get our edipal complex

738
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:06,160
Speaker 1: and our electric complex room exactly. And so the idea

739
00:41:06,200 --> 00:41:08,759
Speaker 1: here is that in these religious figures you could find

740
00:41:08,760 --> 00:41:11,759
Speaker 1: the universal truth of the human condition. The edifice one,

741
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:13,399
Speaker 1: of course, is probably the big one, probably the most

742
00:41:13,400 --> 00:41:17,400
Speaker 1: well known one, the classic example drawn from the the

743
00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:21,040
Speaker 1: the actual myth here of edifice Rex mythical Greek king.

744
00:41:21,680 --> 00:41:24,000
Speaker 1: He's a solver of riddles that have to do with

745
00:41:24,040 --> 00:41:28,200
Speaker 1: the human condition. So, you know, Freud dug that. But also, uh,

746
00:41:28,360 --> 00:41:31,320
Speaker 1: the myth underlies the edifice complex, the idea that on

747
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:36,560
Speaker 1: and I'm and I'm summarizing super paraphrases, super paraphrasing, but

748
00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:39,400
Speaker 1: that this is like the dime store understanding of it,

749
00:41:39,480 --> 00:41:43,200
Speaker 1: but that all children want to kill their father and

750
00:41:43,440 --> 00:41:46,799
Speaker 1: marry their mother. Yeah, it's the Jim Morrison version, right,

751
00:41:47,360 --> 00:41:50,520
Speaker 1: So that that's that's kind of Freud's contribution in a

752
00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:54,640
Speaker 1: nutshell to our understanding of myth. Yeah. And then Freud's

753
00:41:54,680 --> 00:42:00,440
Speaker 1: contemporary and you know, sometime rival Carl Young had a

754
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:04,880
Speaker 1: psychological explanation for everything. All these guys, man, everybody's just

755
00:42:04,880 --> 00:42:07,680
Speaker 1: coming up with their universal laws. I've got it figured out. No,

756
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:10,520
Speaker 1: I've got it figured out. Here's my universal law. Uh.

757
00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:13,400
Speaker 1: Willam Reich, who we talked about in a previous episodes,

758
00:42:13,440 --> 00:42:15,719
Speaker 1: spun out of these two guys as well with his

759
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:19,359
Speaker 1: universal law of how everything worked out. So Young he's

760
00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:23,800
Speaker 1: all about collective unconsciousness, in particular archetypal patterns of thoughts

761
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 1: and symbolism. He thought that myths were projections of the

762
00:42:27,600 --> 00:42:31,120
Speaker 1: collective unconsciousness that we all share. Uh. And again like

763
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:34,399
Speaker 1: super dime store version of this is that there's like

764
00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:39,040
Speaker 1: this uh, shared imaginary space between all of us that

765
00:42:39,120 --> 00:42:42,360
Speaker 1: we're all pulling our ideas from. And it's it's natural

766
00:42:42,600 --> 00:42:45,560
Speaker 1: to humans, right Uh. And we can't quite define it,

767
00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:48,479
Speaker 1: but we're all pulling from that same space no matter

768
00:42:48,520 --> 00:42:50,920
Speaker 1: where we are in the world. And this seems to

769
00:42:50,960 --> 00:42:55,560
Speaker 1: explain why all these myths from varied locations are so similar.

770
00:42:56,280 --> 00:43:00,279
Speaker 1: So Young argues, well, like deities, for example, in mythology,

771
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:05,200
Speaker 1: those are expressions of these universal archetypes. Uh. And so

772
00:43:05,239 --> 00:43:08,759
Speaker 1: it's been done with Young's work, is the psychological archetypes

773
00:43:08,840 --> 00:43:12,200
Speaker 1: that he came up with are applied in a certain

774
00:43:12,239 --> 00:43:14,960
Speaker 1: kind of literary criticism. Uh, and you can pretty much

775
00:43:14,960 --> 00:43:18,640
Speaker 1: apply to any story, right. Uh, it's usually very basic.

776
00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:22,520
Speaker 1: One of my former advisors in grad school would refer

777
00:43:22,560 --> 00:43:25,440
Speaker 1: to it as the model fits kind of study, right

778
00:43:25,480 --> 00:43:27,960
Speaker 1: where you're just you're taking his model and you apply

779
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:29,880
Speaker 1: it to a text and you go, Yep, that works,

780
00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:32,760
Speaker 1: and that's you know, for for a lot of people,

781
00:43:32,800 --> 00:43:35,399
Speaker 1: that's good enough. For some people they want more meat

782
00:43:35,480 --> 00:43:37,959
Speaker 1: on the bone. But a lot of the young iun

783
00:43:38,040 --> 00:43:41,160
Speaker 1: criticism is done as such. So right, we've got examples

784
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:44,799
Speaker 1: like the hero, the animal and the animals, the mother,

785
00:43:44,920 --> 00:43:49,120
Speaker 1: the father, the child, the sage, the trickster, the fool.

786
00:43:49,239 --> 00:43:51,880
Speaker 1: Right there, These are all archetypes that show up in

787
00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:57,400
Speaker 1: in many of our texts, whether they're literary, mythological, or

788
00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:02,280
Speaker 1: or superhero movies. Right. A really good example I think

789
00:44:02,680 --> 00:44:07,000
Speaker 1: of how young and archetypes are applied in world building,

790
00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:09,839
Speaker 1: and like a fictional setting is Game of Thrones, Like

791
00:44:10,120 --> 00:44:14,239
Speaker 1: that's like reverse engineered uh mythology there right in that

792
00:44:14,400 --> 00:44:17,839
Speaker 1: like George R. And Martin like clearly he had either

793
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:21,040
Speaker 1: looked at this or other archetypal versions of mythology and

794
00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:25,399
Speaker 1: said Okay, Well, when I create my religion in this world, right,

795
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:28,480
Speaker 1: like we've got a God of Light and then the Seven,

796
00:44:28,520 --> 00:44:32,120
Speaker 1: there's like what there's like Maiden, Mother and Crone, and

797
00:44:32,120 --> 00:44:35,560
Speaker 1: then there's the Stranger Strange Ponification, and I would imagine

798
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:38,520
Speaker 1: the Stranger lignes up pretty well with the Young's version

799
00:44:38,520 --> 00:44:42,520
Speaker 1: of the Shadow, and the Shadow is this immoral remnant

800
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:45,480
Speaker 1: of our instinctual animal past. So it's sort of like

801
00:44:45,520 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 1: this weird, like dark side of ourselves that we don't

802
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:50,200
Speaker 1: want to admit to, but it's always with us. It's

803
00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:53,880
Speaker 1: always following us, right, like our shadows to um. And

804
00:44:53,960 --> 00:44:56,800
Speaker 1: so yeah, you can take this and you can PLoP

805
00:44:56,840 --> 00:45:00,520
Speaker 1: it on top of like almost any story and map

806
00:45:00,560 --> 00:45:03,040
Speaker 1: it out and it works. Uh. And in the same

807
00:45:03,080 --> 00:45:07,719
Speaker 1: way you can do that with Joseph Campbell's Heroes Journey,

808
00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:13,000
Speaker 1: which is another very popularized sort of explanation of mythology

809
00:45:13,200 --> 00:45:16,759
Speaker 1: in the last what fifty years. Yeah, I mean it's

810
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:20,719
Speaker 1: it's becomes synonymous with Star Wars, right absolutely. Yeah, so

811
00:45:21,160 --> 00:45:25,279
Speaker 1: Campbell is renowned today as a pop mythologist. Uh. And

812
00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:29,000
Speaker 1: it's similar to, uh, there's way more to it than this.

813
00:45:29,239 --> 00:45:33,440
Speaker 1: I we're really just diving in the shallow end here. Uh.

814
00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:35,840
Speaker 1: If you're interested in this, I highly recommend you go

815
00:45:35,880 --> 00:45:38,720
Speaker 1: out and read more about these these theorists and these thinkers.

816
00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 1: But yeah, we're providing you with the IKEA toolkit if

817
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:44,200
Speaker 1: you want to. If you want a real Alan wrench

818
00:45:45,160 --> 00:45:48,160
Speaker 1: for for extended use. Uh, there's a there's a different

819
00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:49,520
Speaker 1: tool kit out there for you. We're just giving you

820
00:45:49,600 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 1: the you know, a good overview. Campbell basically argues that

821
00:45:53,680 --> 00:45:58,560
Speaker 1: like almost every story follows this formula that he calls

822
00:45:58,600 --> 00:46:01,080
Speaker 1: the hero's journey and it play is out and Star

823
00:46:01,120 --> 00:46:03,760
Speaker 1: Wars is the one that everybody uses as an example

824
00:46:03,800 --> 00:46:06,400
Speaker 1: for this, not only because it fits it perfectly, but

825
00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 1: also because George Lucas himself claimed, oh yeah, I was

826
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:13,879
Speaker 1: influenced by Joseph Campbell, and I intentionally did all that stuff. Uh.

827
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:17,959
Speaker 1: So he claims that he intentionally applied this three act

828
00:46:18,120 --> 00:46:21,960
Speaker 1: structure that breaks down into seventeen sub acts. Uh. And

829
00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:23,759
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go through the whole thing here, but

830
00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:26,640
Speaker 1: you know, if you're familiar with sort of just like

831
00:46:26,760 --> 00:46:31,040
Speaker 1: generic uh film storytelling, it's going to be very familiar

832
00:46:31,040 --> 00:46:33,400
Speaker 1: to you in the way that, like, you know, stories

833
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:37,200
Speaker 1: have rises and arcs. There's calls to adventures. Uh, there's

834
00:46:37,239 --> 00:46:40,160
Speaker 1: particular challenges that they have to go through and then

835
00:46:40,200 --> 00:46:43,680
Speaker 1: they have to return with something. And in this particular

836
00:46:44,760 --> 00:46:47,719
Speaker 1: Joseph campbell formula. He always says that you have to

837
00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:50,640
Speaker 1: the the hero has to refuse to return back to

838
00:46:50,640 --> 00:46:53,239
Speaker 1: the real world, but then they eventually do on some

839
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:57,440
Speaker 1: kind of magical flight. Uh. It's it's interesting. And when

840
00:46:57,480 --> 00:46:59,960
Speaker 1: you again the model fits. You lay this on top

841
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:03,000
Speaker 1: of Star Wars and it works out perfectly, even even

842
00:47:03,040 --> 00:47:04,920
Speaker 1: more interesting, like you lay it on top of a

843
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:07,160
Speaker 1: New Hope and it works perfectly. And then if you

844
00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:10,040
Speaker 1: lay it on on top of like all of the

845
00:47:10,080 --> 00:47:14,640
Speaker 1: movies as well, the arc still works out. So okay,

846
00:47:14,640 --> 00:47:16,960
Speaker 1: I tend to believe George Lucas that he looked to

847
00:47:17,040 --> 00:47:22,000
Speaker 1: this quasi academic for you know, a narrative application. I

848
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:24,200
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but like when I've written fiction

849
00:47:24,239 --> 00:47:26,080
Speaker 1: before in the past, I've actually tried to play around

850
00:47:26,080 --> 00:47:29,759
Speaker 1: with Campbell's uh formula. Yeah I have. I have at

851
00:47:29,800 --> 00:47:33,160
Speaker 1: times the dipped into it for sure, because then, yeah,

852
00:47:33,160 --> 00:47:35,480
Speaker 1: I mean you have this ultimately, which is a great

853
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:39,120
Speaker 1: universal narrative arc too. I don't know which to follow

854
00:47:39,160 --> 00:47:41,640
Speaker 1: a mythic characters. Yeah, it's it's hard not to be

855
00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:43,279
Speaker 1: inspired by it, or at least to look at it

856
00:47:43,320 --> 00:47:44,960
Speaker 1: and say, all right, was this idea that I was

857
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:47,040
Speaker 1: thinking of? How do how does that match up with

858
00:47:47,080 --> 00:47:49,840
Speaker 1: the blueprint here? For me, it was like it was

859
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:52,400
Speaker 1: along the lines of like, okay, am I sticking to

860
00:47:52,480 --> 00:47:54,279
Speaker 1: this blueprint? All right? Like how do I break that

861
00:47:54,400 --> 00:47:56,840
Speaker 1: a little bit so that it's something that's the story

862
00:47:57,040 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 1: isn't so expected? Exactly? Yeah? Alright, So next we're gonna

863
00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:07,440
Speaker 1: discuss Mercella Eliade, who he mentioned earlier, um and he

864
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:10,080
Speaker 1: was influenced by myth as ritual school of thought as

865
00:48:10,120 --> 00:48:14,360
Speaker 1: well as union archetype concepts. He recognized the etiological aspects

866
00:48:14,400 --> 00:48:17,120
Speaker 1: of myth, but he saw it as a vital link

867
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:21,440
Speaker 1: between ancient sacred past in the modern profane present. So

868
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:25,560
Speaker 1: imagine this bridge or even though like a time portal

869
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:30,920
Speaker 1: between our modern linear experience and it's inherent terror of history,

870
00:48:30,920 --> 00:48:32,520
Speaker 1: which is a big deal over him. The idea that

871
00:48:33,560 --> 00:48:36,879
Speaker 1: you know, in brief that since we are experiencing time

872
00:48:36,920 --> 00:48:40,440
Speaker 1: as this linear progression, it's all the more horrifying when

873
00:48:40,520 --> 00:48:42,880
Speaker 1: we realize, oh well, we as as a as a

874
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:45,600
Speaker 1: species keep making the same mistakes over and over again,

875
00:48:45,640 --> 00:48:48,399
Speaker 1: and we're never gonna get him fixed. Uh, that makes

876
00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:51,120
Speaker 1: more sense in a cyclical mindset, which you would have

877
00:48:51,160 --> 00:48:54,799
Speaker 1: had in the in the ancient past. So imagine this

878
00:48:54,840 --> 00:48:58,000
Speaker 1: portal connects our modern world to an age in which

879
00:48:58,040 --> 00:49:01,080
Speaker 1: sacred time is cyclical. This means that the meaning of

880
00:49:01,120 --> 00:49:03,520
Speaker 1: life is in the circle of things, and in this

881
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:06,560
Speaker 1: ancient age, people are one with the cosmos and the

882
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:11,560
Speaker 1: cosmic rhythms, while modern humans, according to Deliade, they're connected

883
00:49:11,640 --> 00:49:14,440
Speaker 1: only with history. So myth is the portal. Myth is

884
00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:18,520
Speaker 1: that that bridge that brings these two worlds together. Plus

885
00:49:18,560 --> 00:49:20,399
Speaker 1: he also gets into some of the other ideas we've

886
00:49:20,400 --> 00:49:22,200
Speaker 1: discussed here. I just want to read a quick quote

887
00:49:22,280 --> 00:49:25,880
Speaker 1: from his his excellent book Um the myth of the

888
00:49:25,880 --> 00:49:30,640
Speaker 1: Eternal Return. Myth is a history that can be repeated indefinitely,

889
00:49:30,640 --> 00:49:33,200
Speaker 1: in the sense that the myths serve as models for

890
00:49:33,280 --> 00:49:37,480
Speaker 1: ceremonies and periodically reactualize the tremendous events that occurred at

891
00:49:37,480 --> 00:49:41,480
Speaker 1: the beginning of time. The myths preserve and transmant the paradigms,

892
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 1: the exemplary models for all the responsible activities in which

893
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:51,160
Speaker 1: men engage. By virtue of these paradynamic models revealed to

894
00:49:51,320 --> 00:49:56,880
Speaker 1: men in mythical times. The cosmos and society are periodically regenerated.

895
00:49:57,400 --> 00:50:00,359
Speaker 1: So uh at my encapsulation of that would be like

896
00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:03,520
Speaker 1: the Battlestar Galactica version of all this has happened and

897
00:50:03,560 --> 00:50:06,319
Speaker 1: it will happen again, right, that kind of thing. Yeah,

898
00:50:06,480 --> 00:50:09,080
Speaker 1: you can summarize it as saying that this linear experience

899
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 1: of reality, it works for us, but it's missing something,

900
00:50:13,520 --> 00:50:15,960
Speaker 1: and when the terror of history begins to creep in,

901
00:50:16,080 --> 00:50:18,480
Speaker 1: it's good to reconnect, to jump in that portal and

902
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:22,640
Speaker 1: reconnect with the sacred experience of reality. Well that's an

903
00:50:22,680 --> 00:50:27,000
Speaker 1: interesting segue into um, two guys who I feel like

904
00:50:27,040 --> 00:50:30,799
Speaker 1: we have to mention here there again uh connected to

905
00:50:30,840 --> 00:50:33,879
Speaker 1: the sort of linguistic aspect, but they're also uh sort

906
00:50:33,880 --> 00:50:39,080
Speaker 1: of along the lines of Mars Marxist philosophical thinking. Uh.

907
00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:42,200
Speaker 1: Roland Bart is the first one, and he is infamous

908
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:45,839
Speaker 1: for having written a book called Mythologies. Uh and man,

909
00:50:46,080 --> 00:50:48,480
Speaker 1: there's one chapter in there that I really think that

910
00:50:48,560 --> 00:50:52,560
Speaker 1: you would love. Mythologies is actually more about messages and

911
00:50:52,680 --> 00:50:55,000
Speaker 1: media than it is about myths per se. But he's

912
00:50:55,080 --> 00:50:59,480
Speaker 1: using Levi stress the same linguistic analysis and structuralism to

913
00:50:59,520 --> 00:51:03,160
Speaker 1: apply Marxist approach to myth and in particular media. So

914
00:51:03,440 --> 00:51:05,920
Speaker 1: he's writing this in the fifties late fifties, as the

915
00:51:06,040 --> 00:51:08,839
Speaker 1: rise of mass media is coming on. Uh. And he

916
00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:14,560
Speaker 1: interprets media with linguistic terms, applying them to socio political analysis.

917
00:51:15,320 --> 00:51:17,280
Speaker 1: So I think it'd be fair to say, like, without

918
00:51:17,360 --> 00:51:20,800
Speaker 1: Bart there would be like no Noam Chomsky. Okay, Uh.

919
00:51:20,840 --> 00:51:25,080
Speaker 1: And so he he does this, and it's interesting. He

920
00:51:25,160 --> 00:51:28,359
Speaker 1: finds that most of our modern myths are created by

921
00:51:28,400 --> 00:51:32,600
Speaker 1: a ruling class through media. Okay, now again again, like

922
00:51:32,600 --> 00:51:34,799
Speaker 1: I'm not going to dive deep down that rabbit hole

923
00:51:35,160 --> 00:51:38,040
Speaker 1: and make those arguments or or argue with them. But

924
00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:42,200
Speaker 1: there's a section in there that's all about wrestling, uh.

925
00:51:42,239 --> 00:51:47,000
Speaker 1: And it's uh one of the first sort of pro wrestling, right, well,

926
00:51:47,040 --> 00:51:49,560
Speaker 1: they didn't really have pro wrestling, but they had that

927
00:51:49,600 --> 00:51:52,040
Speaker 1: sort of narrative wrestling at the time that you could

928
00:51:52,040 --> 00:51:54,759
Speaker 1: still go watch. It's one of the first sort of

929
00:51:54,840 --> 00:51:58,120
Speaker 1: revelations of what we now call k fabe that I've

930
00:51:58,640 --> 00:52:02,080
Speaker 1: ever heard or read on the sport. Uh. And he

931
00:52:02,160 --> 00:52:06,120
Speaker 1: basically says, look, they're pantomim ing the archetypes of myth

932
00:52:06,200 --> 00:52:08,879
Speaker 1: in every single fight, and these are direct quotes from

933
00:52:09,120 --> 00:52:11,440
Speaker 1: the book. He says, the function of the wrestler is

934
00:52:11,440 --> 00:52:13,799
Speaker 1: not to win, it is to go through the motions

935
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:18,120
Speaker 1: that are expected of him in the same way as iLiads,

936
00:52:18,200 --> 00:52:21,239
Speaker 1: Like you know, history is repeating itself. We watched the

937
00:52:21,280 --> 00:52:24,439
Speaker 1: wrestling match. We have expectations of what will or will

938
00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:28,760
Speaker 1: not happen, and we experienced pleasure by seeing this enacted.

939
00:52:28,800 --> 00:52:34,040
Speaker 1: And he says that it's enacted through three archetypical acts suffering, defeat,

940
00:52:34,120 --> 00:52:37,319
Speaker 1: and justice. Uh. And it's fascinating. I actually in grad

941
00:52:37,360 --> 00:52:39,880
Speaker 1: school went to school with the guy who took this

942
00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:42,920
Speaker 1: and ran with it and wrote his dissertation all about

943
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:46,520
Speaker 1: modern day wrestling and mythology. Yeah, yeah, there's a there's

944
00:52:46,560 --> 00:52:48,319
Speaker 1: a lot of myth inet. You see it less, I

945
00:52:48,360 --> 00:52:53,520
Speaker 1: guess in the so the modern American models, But if

946
00:52:53,560 --> 00:52:55,719
Speaker 1: you look too, especially if you look to the more

947
00:52:55,760 --> 00:52:59,000
Speaker 1: traditional modes of Luca Libre in Mexico, you see like

948
00:52:59,520 --> 00:53:03,480
Speaker 1: straight up like by the by the books, um mythological

949
00:53:03,520 --> 00:53:06,359
Speaker 1: representations in many cases, to the to the point where

950
00:53:06,440 --> 00:53:08,719
Speaker 1: sometimes American viewers look at it and they're like, well,

951
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:11,200
Speaker 1: I don't understand, Like I knew that this the good

952
00:53:11,239 --> 00:53:14,240
Speaker 1: guy was gonna win. I knew that the the Technico

953
00:53:14,360 --> 00:53:16,040
Speaker 1: was going to defeat the Rudeau, and it played out

954
00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:18,840
Speaker 1: exactly like I expected. There was no surprise. That's the

955
00:53:18,920 --> 00:53:21,040
Speaker 1: kind of the point. Yeah, that's the myth, that's this

956
00:53:21,200 --> 00:53:25,040
Speaker 1: myth reenacted in the ring for you. Yeah. Uh. And

957
00:53:25,360 --> 00:53:28,560
Speaker 1: so then there's also Frederick Jamison and again disservice like

958
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:30,600
Speaker 1: this is going to be a very like bare bones

959
00:53:30,719 --> 00:53:35,360
Speaker 1: Jamison thing. But Jamison argues that myths actually attempt to

960
00:53:35,800 --> 00:53:40,480
Speaker 1: disintegrate history rather than repeat history, by emptying history out

961
00:53:40,480 --> 00:53:43,640
Speaker 1: of what their original meanings were and replaced them with

962
00:53:43,719 --> 00:53:47,040
Speaker 1: a narrative that seems like it's always been that way.

963
00:53:47,080 --> 00:53:51,640
Speaker 1: So my example, uh, from comic books would be, so

964
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:54,840
Speaker 1: comics had the comics code that tried to bottle realize

965
00:53:54,920 --> 00:53:59,120
Speaker 1: and regulate and ignore entire aspects of American life for decades,

966
00:53:59,239 --> 00:54:02,160
Speaker 1: right like ex and profanity, which is completely cut out

967
00:54:02,160 --> 00:54:05,399
Speaker 1: of comic book stories. So you have these superhero mythologies

968
00:54:05,640 --> 00:54:09,359
Speaker 1: without any of uh, like the real world that they're

969
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:13,200
Speaker 1: trying to explain within them, and these mythologies were pretending

970
00:54:13,800 --> 00:54:16,840
Speaker 1: like that wasn't an aspect of the American community and

971
00:54:16,920 --> 00:54:20,080
Speaker 1: acted like it had always been that way, right. Uh

972
00:54:20,160 --> 00:54:22,440
Speaker 1: So it's an interesting sort of take on it that,

973
00:54:22,560 --> 00:54:25,600
Speaker 1: like we're constantly revising history in the same way that

974
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:28,520
Speaker 1: we're constantly revising our mythologies. And again, like I come

975
00:54:28,520 --> 00:54:31,600
Speaker 1: back to these the scientist examples, right, like we think

976
00:54:31,600 --> 00:54:34,200
Speaker 1: of Einstein and our Einstein that we talk about, and

977
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:37,719
Speaker 1: Revere is kind of a fictional Einstein, right. Yeah. It

978
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:40,160
Speaker 1: just also brings to mind the earlier example of myth

979
00:54:40,200 --> 00:54:43,799
Speaker 1: as a as a moral instructional tool. So, yeah, you're

980
00:54:43,840 --> 00:54:46,959
Speaker 1: changing You're you're changing the comic book mythos and then

981
00:54:47,160 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 1: using it as a way to or an attempt to say, hey,

982
00:54:49,960 --> 00:54:52,319
Speaker 1: this is how you live, which is there's there's no

983
00:54:52,600 --> 00:54:55,960
Speaker 1: well there is sex, but sure you're trying to make

984
00:54:55,960 --> 00:55:00,000
Speaker 1: a moral stamount part of the mytholo morality of the readers. Yeah.

985
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:02,239
Speaker 1: So the last one that I wanted to throw in there,

986
00:55:02,320 --> 00:55:05,759
Speaker 1: and in particular because the thesis that I wrote when

987
00:55:05,800 --> 00:55:08,279
Speaker 1: I was in grad school was all about Captain America

988
00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:12,719
Speaker 1: and mythological applications to ideology and rhetoric. Uh. There's these

989
00:55:12,760 --> 00:55:15,680
Speaker 1: guys Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, and they've written

990
00:55:15,760 --> 00:55:20,280
Speaker 1: multiple books about something they called the American mono myth,

991
00:55:20,640 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 1: and they've argued that Captain America as a character is

992
00:55:24,040 --> 00:55:27,640
Speaker 1: indicative of this mono myth. Uh. They define it as

993
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:33,960
Speaker 1: an anti democratic fantasy where a superpowered everyman saves society

994
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:39,120
Speaker 1: by stepping outside of institutions to violently punish villains. There's

995
00:55:39,160 --> 00:55:40,560
Speaker 1: more to it than that. I mean, these guys have

996
00:55:40,560 --> 00:55:43,080
Speaker 1: written books and books and books on this, But look

997
00:55:43,080 --> 00:55:45,520
Speaker 1: at the last three Captain American movies. That's pretty much

998
00:55:45,560 --> 00:55:48,480
Speaker 1: what it is, right, Uh, Captain America, even though he's

999
00:55:48,480 --> 00:55:51,920
Speaker 1: an embodiment of America, he's always stepping outside of whatever

1000
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:54,680
Speaker 1: institution he's part of. Right. If he's part of the military,

1001
00:55:54,760 --> 00:55:57,040
Speaker 1: has to do something without them. He's part of Shield,

1002
00:55:57,080 --> 00:55:59,520
Speaker 1: he has to reveal that Shield has been co opted

1003
00:55:59,520 --> 00:56:01,799
Speaker 1: by Hyde or whatever. If he's a part of the Avengers,

1004
00:56:01,840 --> 00:56:04,439
Speaker 1: he has to step outside of the Avengers to set

1005
00:56:04,480 --> 00:56:06,759
Speaker 1: things right. It's kind of like this ideal for what

1006
00:56:07,000 --> 00:56:10,000
Speaker 1: the system should be, but he's not. Yeah, yeah, in

1007
00:56:10,040 --> 00:56:12,960
Speaker 1: a way. But it's also like incredibly violent and sort

1008
00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:16,799
Speaker 1: of fascistic as well. Uh. And so he's demonstrative this

1009
00:56:16,880 --> 00:56:19,359
Speaker 1: so much that they call it the Captain America complex.

1010
00:56:19,680 --> 00:56:22,640
Speaker 1: And much like with Young and his archetypes, you can

1011
00:56:22,680 --> 00:56:25,280
Speaker 1: apply the Captain America complex to a lot of pop

1012
00:56:25,320 --> 00:56:30,080
Speaker 1: culture examples and find that exact formula playing out. Especially

1013
00:56:30,400 --> 00:56:33,200
Speaker 1: I find in a lot of our like eighties action movies,

1014
00:56:33,600 --> 00:56:37,080
Speaker 1: the Captain America complex is pretty prevalent. Like lethal weapon

1015
00:56:37,239 --> 00:56:40,879
Speaker 1: or total recall, the stuff like that. Like it's always

1016
00:56:40,920 --> 00:56:43,920
Speaker 1: you know, some strong badass who has to step outside

1017
00:56:43,960 --> 00:56:46,719
Speaker 1: of authority to get things done, you know that kind

1018
00:56:46,719 --> 00:56:50,080
Speaker 1: of thing. Uh. And it's interesting they argue that it

1019
00:56:50,120 --> 00:56:53,239
Speaker 1: permeates not only our media, but our political language as well.

1020
00:56:53,280 --> 00:56:56,359
Speaker 1: And I would say, look at Donald Trump's campaign right now.

1021
00:56:56,400 --> 00:56:59,600
Speaker 1: That's why a lot of people are attracted to it

1022
00:56:59,680 --> 00:57:03,400
Speaker 1: is but because he steps outside of the institutions, right,

1023
00:57:03,480 --> 00:57:06,439
Speaker 1: or at least he claims to to save society by

1024
00:57:06,480 --> 00:57:09,160
Speaker 1: punishing the wicked. I do want to say, though, like, well,

1025
00:57:09,200 --> 00:57:12,200
Speaker 1: I think that there's something to this. Their evidence is

1026
00:57:12,239 --> 00:57:16,000
Speaker 1: only from like a few scattered, uh sources of at

1027
00:57:16,080 --> 00:57:19,000
Speaker 1: least in the Captain America case. Uh. And so that's

1028
00:57:19,000 --> 00:57:20,560
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I wrote the thesis. I

1029
00:57:20,600 --> 00:57:23,880
Speaker 1: did because I wanted to cover like the seventy years

1030
00:57:23,920 --> 00:57:26,800
Speaker 1: of American history that sort of goes on during the

1031
00:57:26,840 --> 00:57:31,360
Speaker 1: Captain America continuity. Uh. And one thing that's interesting with

1032
00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:33,560
Speaker 1: Captain America in particular, and I wonder if we're going

1033
00:57:33,640 --> 00:57:35,880
Speaker 1: to see this show up in these Marvel movies pretty soon,

1034
00:57:36,360 --> 00:57:38,800
Speaker 1: is he goes through these cycles where he's all of

1035
00:57:38,840 --> 00:57:42,760
Speaker 1: a sudden apathetic about everything. Uh. And in particular, he

1036
00:57:42,920 --> 00:57:46,120
Speaker 1: gives up his role as a national symbol because he

1037
00:57:46,160 --> 00:57:49,280
Speaker 1: no longer believes in the myths that define the nation

1038
00:57:49,400 --> 00:57:52,800
Speaker 1: that he believes in. Right, so he like, there's the

1039
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:55,520
Speaker 1: first big example of this is in the early seventies

1040
00:57:55,840 --> 00:57:58,920
Speaker 1: is this Captain America story that's crazy where like it

1041
00:57:58,920 --> 00:58:01,440
Speaker 1: turns out like the big villain behind everything is the

1042
00:58:01,440 --> 00:58:04,200
Speaker 1: President of the United States. Captain America storms into the

1043
00:58:04,200 --> 00:58:06,640
Speaker 1: Oval Office, confronts him in the in the President United

1044
00:58:06,640 --> 00:58:09,960
Speaker 1: States shoots himself in the face. And so after that,

1045
00:58:10,000 --> 00:58:13,880
Speaker 1: Captain America is like, America, I don't believe in this

1046
00:58:14,000 --> 00:58:16,920
Speaker 1: fantasy anymore. I am no longer Captain America. And he

1047
00:58:17,000 --> 00:58:19,800
Speaker 1: discards his costume and his shield. If he moved to

1048
00:58:19,840 --> 00:58:22,120
Speaker 1: Canada to so he joined Alpha Fi. He becomes a

1049
00:58:22,120 --> 00:58:25,680
Speaker 1: biker and he calls himself the Nomad and rides around

1050
00:58:25,760 --> 00:58:28,600
Speaker 1: on a bike and and is a vigilante that way,

1051
00:58:28,600 --> 00:58:31,920
Speaker 1: and then like eventually finds his faith in America again.

1052
00:58:32,240 --> 00:58:35,000
Speaker 1: Then it happens again in the eighties. It happened in

1053
00:58:35,080 --> 00:58:37,560
Speaker 1: the two thousands as well. Like this is like this

1054
00:58:37,680 --> 00:58:41,720
Speaker 1: recurring storyline with Captain America and kind of from a

1055
00:58:41,800 --> 00:58:44,000
Speaker 1: Christian perspective, like kind of like a harrowing of hell,

1056
00:58:44,080 --> 00:58:47,000
Speaker 1: maybe even the idea that even the Great Savior has

1057
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:50,240
Speaker 1: to fall and descend and then ride. Oh yeah, and

1058
00:58:50,240 --> 00:58:52,760
Speaker 1: it's in the hellish thing about it too, is right,

1059
00:58:52,840 --> 00:58:56,360
Speaker 1: Like he's never allowed to die or retire. Like every time,

1060
00:58:56,560 --> 00:58:58,960
Speaker 1: like you think Captain America is dead or he gets

1061
00:58:58,960 --> 00:59:01,320
Speaker 1: old or something, they replaced him with a new guy.

1062
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:04,560
Speaker 1: He inevitably comes back. It just happened like to three

1063
00:59:04,600 --> 00:59:07,560
Speaker 1: weeks ago comics again, like he'd been replaced by someone

1064
00:59:08,000 --> 00:59:09,960
Speaker 1: and then and he had he had turned really old,

1065
00:59:09,960 --> 00:59:12,000
Speaker 1: he was like ninety years old. And then you know,

1066
00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:15,919
Speaker 1: some science fiction anything happened and he's back. But yeah,

1067
00:59:15,960 --> 00:59:18,080
Speaker 1: he's gonna have to go through the whole cycle over again.

1068
00:59:18,640 --> 00:59:20,640
Speaker 1: All right, Well, um, you know, I just want to

1069
00:59:20,640 --> 00:59:23,520
Speaker 1: close out by mentioning William G. Dotty again. He's that

1070
00:59:23,560 --> 00:59:27,120
Speaker 1: religious study scholar, mythologist. Um, he summarized a lot of

1071
00:59:27,120 --> 00:59:29,680
Speaker 1: what we've talked we've talked about in this episode in

1072
00:59:29,960 --> 00:59:32,480
Speaker 1: what is, in my opinion, a highly effective kind of

1073
00:59:32,520 --> 00:59:35,320
Speaker 1: eightfold view. So he said that, and I'm just gonna

1074
00:59:35,360 --> 00:59:37,560
Speaker 1: roll him out here for you. Number one, myth as

1075
00:59:37,800 --> 00:59:42,000
Speaker 1: is an esthetic device. It is narrative literature. Okay, myth

1076
00:59:42,080 --> 00:59:44,360
Speaker 1: is a tale of God's in other worlds, it's number two.

1077
00:59:44,480 --> 00:59:48,280
Speaker 1: Number three is myths explain our origins. Number four is

1078
00:59:48,320 --> 00:59:52,080
Speaker 1: that myth is essentially mistaken or primitive science. Number five

1079
00:59:52,160 --> 00:59:55,120
Speaker 1: is that myth is a text for a right or

1080
00:59:55,280 --> 00:59:58,720
Speaker 1: ritual that application again. Number six is that myth is

1081
00:59:58,760 --> 01:00:02,560
Speaker 1: a means to make universal ideas or truths concrete and

1082
01:00:02,600 --> 01:00:06,320
Speaker 1: intelligible for the average consumer. Number seven, myths are all

1083
01:00:06,360 --> 01:00:10,560
Speaker 1: about explicating beliefs, collective experiences, or values. And number eight

1084
01:00:10,880 --> 01:00:16,280
Speaker 1: myths constitute spiritual or psychic expression, so that that would

1085
01:00:16,280 --> 01:00:19,200
Speaker 1: play out well with both like the sacred nature of myth,

1086
01:00:19,280 --> 01:00:23,600
Speaker 1: but then also Young's uh collective unconsciousness, which is sort

1087
01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:26,240
Speaker 1: of a psychic expression in a way. Yeah, And I

1088
01:00:26,240 --> 01:00:27,760
Speaker 1: think the big take com and one of the reasons

1089
01:00:27,800 --> 01:00:31,400
Speaker 1: I like like this approach is that that I feel

1090
01:00:31,400 --> 01:00:33,400
Speaker 1: like a lot of us can agree that myths are

1091
01:00:33,520 --> 01:00:37,720
Speaker 1: poly functional. You know, they have they have various functions

1092
01:00:37,720 --> 01:00:40,160
Speaker 1: that they're carrying out at the same time, sometimes to

1093
01:00:40,240 --> 01:00:43,640
Speaker 1: the same consumer, to the same you know, the same

1094
01:00:43,680 --> 01:00:46,760
Speaker 1: person that's listening to, viewing, or hearing the myth or

1095
01:00:46,840 --> 01:00:49,720
Speaker 1: just thinking about it in the back of their mind. Again,

1096
01:00:49,760 --> 01:00:52,480
Speaker 1: it's this, it's this weird thing because that we're all

1097
01:00:52,560 --> 01:00:54,520
Speaker 1: living in the shadow of myth, and we're casting the

1098
01:00:54,520 --> 01:00:57,680
Speaker 1: shadow of myth. Um. We may not think that that

1099
01:00:57,840 --> 01:01:01,960
Speaker 1: myths play a big role in our lives, but regardless,

1100
01:01:02,000 --> 01:01:04,920
Speaker 1: if we're talking about the Greek gods, uh, you know,

1101
01:01:05,000 --> 01:01:08,880
Speaker 1: the the Old Testament or just the pages of your

1102
01:01:08,880 --> 01:01:12,760
Speaker 1: favorite comic book, those uh, those that mythic energy is

1103
01:01:12,880 --> 01:01:15,200
Speaker 1: very much in play in our world. Yeah. I think

1104
01:01:15,200 --> 01:01:18,760
Speaker 1: if any lesson we can take from like this overview

1105
01:01:18,960 --> 01:01:21,720
Speaker 1: of all of these ideas about mythology, it's that there's

1106
01:01:21,760 --> 01:01:25,480
Speaker 1: no one universal law. Like a lot of these thinkers

1107
01:01:25,520 --> 01:01:27,480
Speaker 1: tried to say, I've figured it out. This is the

1108
01:01:27,560 --> 01:01:29,720
Speaker 1: key to the universe, and the key to the universe

1109
01:01:29,840 --> 01:01:32,400
Speaker 1: is figuring out how these stories about what the key

1110
01:01:32,400 --> 01:01:35,040
Speaker 1: to the universe is work right and in a way,

1111
01:01:35,080 --> 01:01:39,280
Speaker 1: they're creating their own mythologies. But there are applications that

1112
01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:41,880
Speaker 1: you can you can dip into from from many of

1113
01:01:41,920 --> 01:01:45,720
Speaker 1: these things and pull them out and think about uh,

1114
01:01:45,840 --> 01:01:50,000
Speaker 1: anything really in modern day settings, whether it's science, politics,

1115
01:01:50,200 --> 01:01:53,560
Speaker 1: pop culture, and you apply those and you can sort

1116
01:01:53,600 --> 01:01:55,960
Speaker 1: of pull out the strings and go, oh, wait a minute.

1117
01:01:56,320 --> 01:01:58,560
Speaker 1: This is like the sort of behind the scenes of

1118
01:01:58,560 --> 01:02:02,000
Speaker 1: how society works, right, or or at least how we're

1119
01:02:02,040 --> 01:02:04,840
Speaker 1: trying to make sense of the world. Still, we're still

1120
01:02:04,880 --> 01:02:07,400
Speaker 1: looking up at the sun and the moon and the

1121
01:02:07,440 --> 01:02:10,560
Speaker 1: planets and nature and the seasons and going I don't

1122
01:02:10,600 --> 01:02:12,840
Speaker 1: really know how this whole thing works. But this answer,

1123
01:02:12,960 --> 01:02:14,960
Speaker 1: this is the answer I'm gonna go by, and if

1124
01:02:14,960 --> 01:02:17,200
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to control it, I'm going to perform

1125
01:02:17,240 --> 01:02:20,360
Speaker 1: these rituals and everything will be fine. I'm gonna see

1126
01:02:20,360 --> 01:02:22,640
Speaker 1: what Batman has to say about it, and then I'm

1127
01:02:22,640 --> 01:02:26,560
Speaker 1: gonna touch back in with my my normal linear life.

1128
01:02:26,640 --> 01:02:31,120
Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah. I trust Batman every day over. Carl Sagan

1129
01:02:32,160 --> 01:02:35,120
Speaker 1: all right, all right, well there you have it again.

1130
01:02:35,280 --> 01:02:37,400
Speaker 1: We're just hoping to provide you with some tools, with

1131
01:02:37,440 --> 01:02:41,280
Speaker 1: some different perspectives on myth in your life, in your world,

1132
01:02:41,760 --> 01:02:44,600
Speaker 1: in the things that you consume. We'd love to hear

1133
01:02:44,640 --> 01:02:47,280
Speaker 1: back from all of you on this topic. How does

1134
01:02:47,360 --> 01:02:49,400
Speaker 1: myth factor into your life? How do how do these

1135
01:02:49,400 --> 01:02:52,760
Speaker 1: different ways of looking at myth factor into your belief systems,

1136
01:02:52,760 --> 01:02:55,760
Speaker 1: in your culture, etcetera. Yeah, and going forward to as

1137
01:02:55,800 --> 01:02:58,520
Speaker 1: we cover you know, we dive back into more science

1138
01:02:58,560 --> 01:03:00,680
Speaker 1: the topics as we continue with the show. You know,

1139
01:03:00,920 --> 01:03:04,720
Speaker 1: now we've got sort of a foundational framework for myth

1140
01:03:04,760 --> 01:03:07,320
Speaker 1: when it comes up again when we're talking about crazy

1141
01:03:07,360 --> 01:03:11,400
Speaker 1: space satellites or tiny bone worms that devour whales at

1142
01:03:11,400 --> 01:03:14,320
Speaker 1: the bottom the ocean. Right, So, uh, this is a

1143
01:03:14,400 --> 01:03:16,360
Speaker 1: nice way for us to have a framework, you know,

1144
01:03:16,680 --> 01:03:19,120
Speaker 1: as you're listening and myth pops up in your head

1145
01:03:19,160 --> 01:03:22,360
Speaker 1: again for a future episode as well, please let us know. Uh,

1146
01:03:22,480 --> 01:03:25,480
Speaker 1: let's synthesize some of this information together and learn together

1147
01:03:25,560 --> 01:03:27,919
Speaker 1: from it. The ways to talk to us about those

1148
01:03:27,960 --> 01:03:31,800
Speaker 1: things are social media. Now. You can find us on Facebook,

1149
01:03:31,920 --> 01:03:33,600
Speaker 1: you can find us on Twitter, you can find us

1150
01:03:33,600 --> 01:03:36,680
Speaker 1: on tumbler, and you can find us on Instagram. Where

1151
01:03:37,120 --> 01:03:40,280
Speaker 1: below the mind on all of those Uh, and just

1152
01:03:40,360 --> 01:03:42,720
Speaker 1: to reiterate, I say this on every episode, I think,

1153
01:03:42,720 --> 01:03:45,840
Speaker 1: but we don't just like post the podcast there, and

1154
01:03:45,920 --> 01:03:49,320
Speaker 1: that's it. Like we talk about what what we're working

1155
01:03:49,360 --> 01:03:51,920
Speaker 1: on outside of the podcast, whether it's writing or videos.

1156
01:03:52,120 --> 01:03:56,200
Speaker 1: We also share all this totally bizarre science and news

1157
01:03:56,240 --> 01:04:00,919
Speaker 1: information that we come across in our weekly endeavors. That's right,

1158
01:04:01,360 --> 01:04:02,800
Speaker 1: and be sure to check out stuff to bow your

1159
01:04:02,840 --> 01:04:04,560
Speaker 1: mind dot com. That's the mother ship. That's where we'll

1160
01:04:04,600 --> 01:04:07,960
Speaker 1: find all the podcast episodes, including the landing page for

1161
01:04:08,000 --> 01:04:10,080
Speaker 1: this this one, which one includes some links out to

1162
01:04:10,120 --> 01:04:13,640
Speaker 1: related content and perhaps some outside material as well. And hey,

1163
01:04:13,680 --> 01:04:15,600
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to us, if there is a way

1164
01:04:15,640 --> 01:04:18,440
Speaker 1: to rate us and review us, uh, do so. Give

1165
01:04:18,520 --> 01:04:21,200
Speaker 1: us some some positive feedback, give us some high ratings.

1166
01:04:21,440 --> 01:04:24,000
Speaker 1: That helps the show. That helps the various algorithms and

1167
01:04:24,120 --> 01:04:25,880
Speaker 1: play in a great way to support the show. We're

1168
01:04:25,880 --> 01:04:27,920
Speaker 1: on spending the money. We're on a bunch of new

1169
01:04:27,960 --> 01:04:31,040
Speaker 1: platforms now so uh in any way that you can

1170
01:04:31,080 --> 01:04:33,640
Speaker 1: help us kind of get a leg up so more

1171
01:04:33,680 --> 01:04:36,040
Speaker 1: people will listen to it would be much appreciated. We're

1172
01:04:36,080 --> 01:04:39,160
Speaker 1: on iTunes, from Google Play and Spotify. And as always,

1173
01:04:39,200 --> 01:04:41,200
Speaker 1: you can shoot us an email. G get in touch

1174
01:04:41,240 --> 01:04:43,120
Speaker 1: with us the old fashioned way and blow the mind

1175
01:04:43,200 --> 01:04:54,400
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot We more on this and

1176
01:04:54,520 --> 01:04:56,880
Speaker 1: basons of a good topics does it, how stuff works?

1177
01:04:56,880 --> 01:05:13,640
Speaker 1: Dot com last SEMy three ft four starts support