Wow I honestly had no idea you only had 400 subs. I've been subbed for awhile and the quality of your content just made me assume you were around 100k at the very least. I'm excited to see your channel grow, you very much deserve much more recognition. CRIMINALLY underrated.
Aww thanks so much!! I know I'm small right now but I'm so proud of the growth I've made and am just happy to produce videos people find good and interesting. I'm glad you like what I do, and thanks for supporting!
Your points about the pieces which reflect, or perhaps deepen, our understandings of the world being the ones that grip us was a really interesting thought to me! It made me wonder, following another idea you brought up, if there are patterns to the pieces of popular culture that have stuck around over the decades, centuries, and millennia. What aspects of the human existence have those pieces captured and do they tend to be the same pieces over and over or do they change with the times?
Personal opinion, things change over time, though it may not be overly obvious. My background is in structural anthropology, so maybe I'm biased, but I think when our social worlds shift a little over time, so do the ways we reflect this in our art. There's a term called 'jongerlie' which I've used a few times, which refers to the ways people juggle various identities which can conflict, and in doing so they actively make changes to their stories. I think this happens a lot with our stories, we change things both actively and incidentally to reflect the alterations to our worlds. Though it may not always be super obvious.
There are different kinds of myth, but their unifying characteristics is an attempted to explain something (or everything) in terms of symbols or archetypes. But this is not a scientific explanation, which must necessarily be provisional and falsifiable, nor is it a commonplace description of what something is or how it works because these do not need to operate as myths. The purpose of explaining something with a myth is to reconcile the contradictions in man's nature, the world, and man's limited understanding of itself and the world so as to create a sustaining metaphor that allows society to function as a cohesive unit. This is what a myth is when it is credible and believed by a society as it's sustaining metaphor. But what we commonly call "mythology" is typically a collection of discredited myths from the ancient passed that exist in a kind of fossilized state in records and archeological evidence but which no longer have any believers. This is true of many of the world's religions in a sense because a living myth i.e myths people actually beileve in or observe as a tradition, must necessarily adapt in order to meet the needs of the society it sustains. Religions that fail to adapt in this way become discredited and a new sustaining metaphor -- a new myth -- is adopted to take its place. There is no such thing as a society that does not beileve in a myth as myth is an inherent quality of human psychology: "Man cannot live on bread alone." As such, the kind of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc. which existed around the time these faiths were founded are distinct from, if not contradictory to, these same religions as they are held to today on in the more recent past. A fictional mythology shares all of the same features as a real myth, but they bear the same relation to us as an audience as the myths of the ancient Greeks do; they my appeal to the archetypal patterns within our minds and my express some form of truth in that respect, but a myth that one can beileve is accepted as the unwavering truth: we can suspend our disbelief for a mythological story in a modern work of fiction, but a flat earther cannot detach from his belief in the conspiracy of the round earth. Any evidence to the contrary is assumed to be fake, preserving the circular non-reason that keeps his sustaining metaphor from being discredited. Individuals may have personal myths that they hold to with a similar conviction. Just as a religious myth sustains a society, personal myths, often derived from rather than being completely identical with collective myths, exist to sustain the integrity of personality i.e to keep one sane. If you or I walked outside and found objects floating around in open contradiction to the law of gravity, we might try to pinch ourselves to prove that we are dreaming. The idea that the universe conforms to the laws of physics is a myth we all generally hold to without thinking about it, but upon inspection, the laws of nature are scientific observations and do not in fact govern how our world works. The law of gravity cannot prevent things from floating off into the sky for no apparent reason because it is an abstraction that never ad any physical reality in the first place. We just haven't seen it happen. -- But if it did, this entire perspective of how the world functions would be contested and we might feel somewhat disturbed and confused. This is a bad example, since the only reason we have any hold on what a myth is at all is because there is an empirical mode of thinking which appears to be distinct from it and is what makes epistemology possible. It would be more accurate to say that naturalistic determinism is a myth derived from the success of the scientific myth and this creates this sense that the laws of physics have some grounding in ontology. A myth may convey truth to a detached observer, but for the purposes of an adherent, they must necessarily be a composite of truth and falsehoods. A myth must have a kernel of truth so as to have pragmatic applications and credibility, but cannot be completely true or it would not be able to serve it's functions of smoothing over contradictions with paradoxes (these two things are not the same) and answering the needs of the believers. If the truth were sufficient to meet the people's needs it then, again, what we are talking about is not a myth. Myths always leave paradoxes because although they neutralize contradictions from a psychological or phenomenological standpoint by leveraging the capacity of the unconscious to unify opposites, they cannot change what is real, only make it easier to accept an live with even if this means obfuscating reality with delusion or ignorance. The promise of an afterlife in particular is a very effective image in particular for encouraging social cohesion and discipline, so as to avoid hell, while at the same time compensating hellish conditions in the live people already have with promises of Heaven. A myth, then, is a kind of psychological singularity that brings together good and evil, consciousness and unconsciousness, truth and lies, life and death, mind and body. But rather than pulling things in it, like a symbol, is a transformer of psychic energy which takes the inhospitable mess of life and brings some form of comprehension and wherewithal to it. But the purpose is not truth. Myth only conveys truth to the unbeliever. For a believer to find truth he must disavow his belief. Only then is it profitable for him to beileve again.
Wow I honestly had no idea you only had 400 subs. I've been subbed for awhile and the quality of your content just made me assume you were around 100k at the very least. I'm excited to see your channel grow, you very much deserve much more recognition. CRIMINALLY underrated.
Aww thanks so much!! I know I'm small right now but I'm so proud of the growth I've made and am just happy to produce videos people find good and interesting. I'm glad you like what I do, and thanks for supporting!
I agree! I'm surprised! Gotta check out the rest.
Your points about the pieces which reflect, or perhaps deepen, our understandings of the world being the ones that grip us was a really interesting thought to me! It made me wonder, following another idea you brought up, if there are patterns to the pieces of popular culture that have stuck around over the decades, centuries, and millennia. What aspects of the human existence have those pieces captured and do they tend to be the same pieces over and over or do they change with the times?
Personal opinion, things change over time, though it may not be overly obvious. My background is in structural anthropology, so maybe I'm biased, but I think when our social worlds shift a little over time, so do the ways we reflect this in our art. There's a term called 'jongerlie' which I've used a few times, which refers to the ways people juggle various identities which can conflict, and in doing so they actively make changes to their stories. I think this happens a lot with our stories, we change things both actively and incidentally to reflect the alterations to our worlds. Though it may not always be super obvious.
Your video essays are very informative. More people need to see this!
Thanks so much!!
great video, thanks for sharing and educating! never thought i'd see Journey and Keeping up with the Kardashians juxtaposed in that way
Glad you enjoyed it!
This channel is super underrated! Also, what's the font used in the thumbnail?
Thanks! The font is called Badhorse - rad name for a rad font
Interesting thoughts and great content!
Thanks!
This is really interesting!
Subscibed.
Thank you!
There are different kinds of myth, but their unifying characteristics is an attempted to explain something (or everything) in terms of symbols or archetypes. But this is not a scientific explanation, which must necessarily be provisional and falsifiable, nor is it a commonplace description of what something is or how it works because these do not need to operate as myths.
The purpose of explaining something with a myth is to reconcile the contradictions in man's nature, the world, and man's limited understanding of itself and the world so as to create a sustaining metaphor that allows society to function as a cohesive unit.
This is what a myth is when it is credible and believed by a society as it's sustaining metaphor. But what we commonly call "mythology" is typically a collection of discredited myths from the ancient passed that exist in a kind of fossilized state in records and archeological evidence but which no longer have any believers.
This is true of many of the world's religions in a sense because a living myth i.e myths people actually beileve in or observe as a tradition, must necessarily adapt in order to meet the needs of the society it sustains. Religions that fail to adapt in this way become discredited and a new sustaining metaphor -- a new myth -- is adopted to take its place. There is no such thing as a society that does not beileve in a myth as myth is an inherent quality of human psychology: "Man cannot live on bread alone." As such, the kind of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc. which existed around the time these faiths were founded are distinct from, if not contradictory to, these same religions as they are held to today on in the more recent past.
A fictional mythology shares all of the same features as a real myth, but they bear the same relation to us as an audience as the myths of the ancient Greeks do; they my appeal to the archetypal patterns within our minds and my express some form of truth in that respect, but a myth that one can beileve is accepted as the unwavering truth: we can suspend our disbelief for a mythological story in a modern work of fiction, but a flat earther cannot detach from his belief in the conspiracy of the round earth. Any evidence to the contrary is assumed to be fake, preserving the circular non-reason that keeps his sustaining metaphor from being discredited.
Individuals may have personal myths that they hold to with a similar conviction. Just as a religious myth sustains a society, personal myths, often derived from rather than being completely identical with collective myths, exist to sustain the integrity of personality i.e to keep one sane. If you or I walked outside and found objects floating around in open contradiction to the law of gravity, we might try to pinch ourselves to prove that we are dreaming. The idea that the universe conforms to the laws of physics is a myth we all generally hold to without thinking about it, but upon inspection, the laws of nature are scientific observations and do not in fact govern how our world works. The law of gravity cannot prevent things from floating off into the sky for no apparent reason because it is an abstraction that never ad any physical reality in the first place. We just haven't seen it happen.
-- But if it did, this entire perspective of how the world functions would be contested and we might feel somewhat disturbed and confused.
This is a bad example, since the only reason we have any hold on what a myth is at all is because there is an empirical mode of thinking which appears to be distinct from it and is what makes epistemology possible. It would be more accurate to say that naturalistic determinism is a myth derived from the success of the scientific myth and this creates this sense that the laws of physics have some grounding in ontology.
A myth may convey truth to a detached observer, but for the purposes of an adherent, they must necessarily be a composite of truth and falsehoods. A myth must have a kernel of truth so as to have pragmatic applications and credibility, but cannot be completely true or it would not be able to serve it's functions of smoothing over contradictions with paradoxes (these two things are not the same) and answering the needs of the believers. If the truth were sufficient to meet the people's needs it then, again, what we are talking about is not a myth.
Myths always leave paradoxes because although they neutralize contradictions from a psychological or phenomenological standpoint by leveraging the capacity of the unconscious to unify opposites, they cannot change what is real, only make it easier to accept an live with even if this means obfuscating reality with delusion or ignorance. The promise of an afterlife in particular is a very effective image in particular for encouraging social cohesion and discipline, so as to avoid hell, while at the same time compensating hellish conditions in the live people already have with promises of Heaven.
A myth, then, is a kind of psychological singularity that brings together good and evil, consciousness and unconsciousness, truth and lies, life and death, mind and body. But rather than pulling things in it, like a symbol, is a transformer of psychic energy which takes the inhospitable mess of life and brings some form of comprehension and wherewithal to it.
But the purpose is not truth. Myth only conveys truth to the unbeliever. For a believer to find truth he must disavow his belief. Only then is it profitable for him to beileve again.
Promo`SM