Let me start by explaining what I call the Subject as Symbol. The subject as Symbol is a “self” inherently representing oneself. It creates a symbol or a conception of ONESELF in order to mediate between one’s inner and outside world. But most importantly, the thing that this subject assumes is a notion of oneself. A general image of one’s body, one’s brain, and one’s soul as one.
Similarly, cosmic myths, which belong to a science called cosmology, the study of the order of the universe, require the subject to fully insert oneself as One into the narrative. Subject to subject representations are integral to the conscious image of a self. According to German philosopher and cognitive scientist Thomas Metzinger consciousness requires a notion of time, having a past, present and future, in order for the subject to be able to identify and predict certain events. In other words, memory is required in order to have a consciousness. However, all of this is an illusion if you consider that the present and a presence, in the Now, is already a mode of representation in itself.
Of course representation is necessary, in a way the only way we know the world is through representation. Our vision of reality and knowledge has been and still is based through the representational model. Yet, consciousness, which as discussed, functions through the representational model, is without an actual center that can be pinpointed. It is a dynamic, relational and multidirectional process that does not occupy a fixed location. This perspective can help us to further unravel and demystify these appearances by seeing them as functional representations, rather than as things that have their own given nature.
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So, what are the ethics behind disrupting the narrative of myths?
The division between politics and ethics has always been a blurred one, especially when concerning the subject. In the 90’s there was a view of interpreting the subject through multiplicity. This view started as a promising one, one that attempted to lie outside binaries and exclusionary practices where we would see and live the world outside or without a Universalist truth. Nonetheless, this attempt was in my opinion a failure, since the neoliberal market took advantage of this mode of thought and adapted it to suit its economic needs, causing the subject to celebrate and reproduce a plurality of identities with no concern on the ethics or history behind each one of these cultures.
We always tell stories, to others and to ourselves. As the famous phrase by the American novelist Joan Didion says “we tell ourselves stories in order to live.” There is a deep relationship between myths and the self through language. It is in our cosmologies, (the myth-making) that we have established ourselves at center of space and time. Maybe it is one of the powers of myth that arises from its skill of articulating an existential need for identity, of situating the I. The narrative of the myth resolves question like where do we come from? Why are we here? What should we do? In other words, questions that are related to our “origin”, meaning, morality and destiny have no possible objective answer. Maybe it is unavoidable to stay away from the representational model, still I would like to encourage more efforts of spontaneity in order to help decenter ourselves from space and time.
A creation myth establishes a reason for being; it establishes our significance. Professor David Adams Leeming writes concerning myths function in history “As such it is often used to help individuals or groups to regain health or order. When we are broken, we return to our origins to become whole again, whether on the psychiatrist couch or in the shaman’s hut.” This is absurd; you are telling me that in order to become “whole” I need to return to my origins, but if we understand anything, is that no one can return to the past, we can only remember it, and although remembrance is in the now, it is always a recreative selection made according to hunches or principles that refer back to us as the central character. So why would I participate in this? Why would I give authority to a verbal construct of the past?
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A book is more than an object or a material reality. Literary critic Georges Poulet argues that through the act of reading, or rather through the absorption of reading, our subjectivity is altered and possessed by someone or something else, in particular the author.
Due to its linear narrative, the myth similar to Poulet’s theory of the act of reading as a double consciousness, where another self, the author takes over, performs a similar but opposite relationship. The creative function of the myth allows the subject to insert him or herself in the narrative as the mythmaker. Its re-creative power allows the I to insert oneself in the infinite I AM. In this sense, each person’s understanding of the mythological world becomes an active re-vision, rather than a passive taking-in. After all, this allows one to position oneself as a world creator, where the boundaries between the self and the world are potentially suspended.
Lemming writes, “When the patient sits in the sand painting and has the creation myth recited over him by the shaman, he is returning to the womb of nature in the hope of being reborn into nature’s wholeness, of reenacting the creation myth in his own life.”
If by reciting a myth one were able to see, feel, and understand oneself fully related to the world, then wouldn’t one to an extent become the mythmaker and the world his myth? Isn’t this mythmaker tendency visible in religion? For instance, in Christian religion at the end of the congregation, in what is called the Eucharist, the priest drinks the wine, which is symbolic to the blood of Christ and you eat the bread that is symbolic of the body of Christ. This whole rite has also a certain re-creative power similar to that of a creation myth. A myth requires the human being to constantly re-create it. It is not a rehearsal; it is re-enacting a narrative that acts through speaking, writing and ultimately acting-out.
The problematic that resides in re-enacting such a linear narrative or a symbolic representation, beyond their questionable validity is that they are easily adapted as a doctrine for truth. In Poulet, I am possessed and thus I am replaced. But maybe by making the mythic narrative somehow obtuse, I stop to be constrained in this way. I still must create my world, to frame it somehow to understand my inner world in connection to the outer world, but maybe not as a given. This is the political or ethical promise that resides in language and possibly also in the fragmentation of origin myths.