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Essay 9 Myths to Live By
Why do words matter to us? It is important to answer this question if we are to understand how myths have affected us throughout the ages. Is the effect of myths upon us easily described? Probably not, considering two important variables, namely, the long period over which they have existed and the simultaneous evolution of our human aesthetic and cognitive capacities. Theories of meaning have been proposed by various schools of modern Philosophy but these have been proposed in the light of unanswered questions relating to our aesthetic and cognitive powers: questions best answered by the arena of debate we term “Philosophical Psychology”. The words of the oracles obviously were revered by even the Philosophers of Ancient Greece, and this response of awe and admiration bears witness to this question of the effect of words upon the mind. Mythology itself does not provide us with an account of word-meaning or word-effect or the general role that the power of language plays in the lives of men.
We know through the theory and practice of psychoanalysis in its early phase, therapy proceeded via hypnosis—an abnormal state of consciousness which is still responsive to language. This state of affairs also reminds us of reports that oracles could sometimes deliver their proclamations in a trance-like state. Freud discussed the issue of hypnotism in therapy and pointed to the suggestive effect of his words on his patients. This suggestive effect we also know is used by professional hypnotists to get people they have hypnotised to perform certain actions.
Freud relatively early on in this process abandoned hypnosis in his therapy in favour of more technical methods of accessing what he called the unconscious mind, claiming that being in a conscious state of mind when accessing material from this realm was important for the cathartic process that was occurring. Many different powers from different faculties of mind (sensibility, understanding, reason) are involved in this cathartic process, including that of memory when we are dealing with traumatically induced neuroses. In such cases it is important that traumatised memories are converted into normal memories that are not abnormally affected by high anxiety levels. Dream interpretation and free association were important specialist techniques that were used to provide information relating to what in the unconscious mind was having a deleterious effect upon the life of the patient. In this process there is an attempt to restore the function of the cognitive powers of the patient, thus enabling a more efficacious relation to the reality of everyday life. The principle guiding this procedure was termed by Freud “The Reality Principle”. What we are witnessing in such circumstances is a self-actualisation process which all humans experience, partly because of their long childhoods—their long period of dependency upon parental care.
An interesting question to pose at this point in the discussion is whether mankind has always possessed its current array of powers in its current state or whether, as some Psychologists, like Julian Jaynes maintains, we are dealing with an evolving state of affairs in which there may well be significant changes occurring which could be termed “vicissitudes of Consciousness”. Freud, in the context of this discussion, we ought to recall, spoke of Consciousness itself in terms of a “vicissitude of the instincts”. Julian Jaynes makes an important contribution to this discussion when he attempts, on the basis of his brain research, and available literary and archaeological evidence, to claim that the emergence of Consciousness could be dated to ca 1200 BC. This entailed, in his view, that prior to Consciousness emerging, there was a state of mind which he described as “bicameral mind”, where language was in fact situated bilaterally in the brain, but perhaps undergoing transition: owing to the ability of some people to both read and write, they may have been transitioning faster than those who were illiterate. This reflection suggests that the power of language played an important role in this process. Julian Jaynes in his work “The Origins of Consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind”(Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1976), discusses an important mechanism of change operating in our usage of language, namely metaphor:
“For metaphor….is the very constitutive ground of language. I am using metaphor here in its most general sense: the use of one term to describe another because of some kind of similarity between them or between their relations to other things. There are thus always two terms in a metaphor, the thing to be described which I shall call the metaphrand, and the thing or relation used to elucidate it, which I shall call the metaphier…..It is by metaphor that language grows.”(Pages 48-9)
Jaynes notes further that the human body is an often used metaphier:
“The head of an army….the face of the clock…the eyes of needles, storms targets, flowers or potatoes….the arm of a chair or the sea.”(Page 49)
This account is in accord with Aristotles account of metaphor in which it is asserted that when we are dealing with the names of things, metaphor takes us into a realm of experience that is unnamed, thus creating a new usage of the term. Julian Jaynes also connects language to evolving levels of consciousness:
“Language, Jaynes argues, began as an expressive phenomenon partly connected to events of importance in the external world (e.g hunting, gathering etc.,). By a charted series of functions this developmental sequence eventually reaches the level of representative thought in which we find the names for animals, developing into a more complex stage in which names are given to individual people. At this stage it would be fair to say that we are definitely thinking something. As group life evolved we then find language evolving into more complex forms via the use of sentences with subject-predicate structures which illustrate the fully mental power of thinking something about something, which Heidegger called the veritative (truth-making) synthesis. This however is not the final level of the Mental, which is achieved only when the Principles of Logic and Truth Tables begin to constitute and regulate the field of sound argumentation—the field of rationality. (The World Explored, the World Suffered: A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action, Volume 4, James, M,.R.,D., 2022)
This initial excursion into the interior mechanism of language-use and its evolution is meant to complement Campbell’s account of Mythologies of War and Peace especially when put into relation to the “power of suggestion” that is contained in mythological language. One thing that can be immediately noted in this context is that the power of words in the rhetoric associated with war, has been more effective in Ancient times than it is now. This is not to deny, however, that even in our modern era, two countries historically have sought to promote the solution of war to many diplomatic problems where rational discourse might have been used instead, namely the Soviet Union and the USA. This is not a new phenomenon and may lie behind the reason why Historians have adopted the practice of naming wars after the country or region that has been attacked, suggesting that morality is playing some kind of role in the discipline.
Campbell claims paradoxically in this chapter that wars are agents of the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection resulting in the telos of the “Survival of the Fittest”. Continuing on the theme of his reference to animals, Campbell notes Spenglers reference to man being a “beast or prey” that has triumphed over his vegetarian victims, because, it is claimed, of his superior intelligence.
Campbell claims that no primitive mythologies depict war as an evil but there are interesting ideas that may be related to why this is so, such as “there is no such thing as death”. Death appears, on these views, to be but a punctuation mark in an ongoing narrative where life is reborn again and again:
“the beast will return next season to yield its temporal body again.” (Page 171)
“Likewise, after episodes of battle special rituals are enacted to assuage and release to the land of spirits, the ghosts of those that have been slain.” (Page 171)
War mythologies are based on the assumption that some humans are subhuman monsters and it is heroic to slay such monsters. Campbell notes that there was no problem during such primitive times in persuading people to become warriors, and this might have been due to the suggestive power of the language of the myths in contexts where the recipients may or may not have full conscious control of the instincts. When, however, stronger egos developed, perhaps partly because of the evolution of language, there may well have developed simultaneously inhibitory mechanisms such as interrogative thought processes: “Should I do X?” and this eventually may have made the rhetorical persuasion process more difficult. Culture also plays an important role in the way in which consciousness chooses to categorise and see the world. The Ancient Greeks, for example, through their balanced view of the opposites friend-enemy, may well have been less inclined to war given their more nuanced view of the relation between what is holy and what is just. This, it can be argued, was the beginning of a secularisation process that began with the Socratic/Platonic attempt to provide us with a Philosophical theory of the relation of Justice to what is Holy. This process also appears to be associated with cosmopolitanism or globalisation, with the caveat that this latter may be more associated with military objectives than the commonwealth of ideas. Whether the plot of the world-play we are watching is a tragedy, in accordance with the oracular proclamation that “Everything created by humans is destined for ruin and destruction”, or whether we are instead watching the Kantian Enlightenment “play” in which it is claimed that the “plot” of the civilisational process is following a “hidden plan” where in the last scene of the last Act we find ourselves living in a Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends, leading a good spirited flourishing life, remains to be seen. It is interesting to note, however, that the Ancient Greeks maintained a psychic distance to strangers which accorded them, a respectful status. Campbell also notes in the context of this discussion the “modern” national problem of persuading the youth to fight wars on behalf of their communities. Perhaps this might be one more sign that an increased conscious awareness and a more complex language has strengthened our egos with the determination to establish “Perpetual Peace” (A Kantian ideal)
Campbell points out that not all primitive peoples have been warriors. The settled village people of the tropics for example, may not exactly promote a culture of warfare but in their various rituals we nevertheless encounter a savage bloodthirstiness which testifies to a lack of respect for human life perhaps because of a fundamental belief in the process of organic life renewing itself from an inorganic non-living base. Campbell claims that this supports the idea that killing, (e.g. headhunting) actually enhances the process of the renewal of life (P 172). He also notes that:
“it is in fact exactly in those parts of the world that the most horrible and grotesque rituals of human sacrifice obtain even to this day…It is in these areas that the headhunt flourishes.” (Page 172)
Campbell also refers to the continuous practice of human sacrifices by the Aztecs.
A new order of human life began to emerge in the eighth millennium BC: a form of life where grain planting and harvesting communities arose in the Ancient Near East (P.173). Fertility rites were embedded in the mythology and religion of the times. The warrior culture during this period of 1-2000 years was marginalised until archaeological finds uncovered walls which presumably were for the purpose of defending these peaceful communities from marauding bands of animal herders invading from the East and the South. The Bible records the above period of invasions in the OT. The Iliad from approximately this era also is a work of war mythology. The OT we know is about a chosen race and a partisan wrathful God in sharp contrast to the polytheistic pantheon of bipartisan Gods we encounter in the Iliad. The OT texts contain brutal recommendations relating to how one should treat strangers occupying territory one wishes to conquer, ( Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Kings). The Arabs too, Campbell argues, produced a war mythology of their own and there is no trace of the ethical and political dimensions of the kind we encounter in Ancient Greece. Campbell notes also that both of these war mythologies are operating even today in the Near east: one of the many powder kegs of the modern world.
The Aryan Persians, on the other hand, engaged in conquests with the intent to govern the territory they conquered more benevolently, allowing the local populations to retain their religious belief systems as well as their own local rulers (Page 182) (cf Alexander the Great from Ancient Greece). The mythology of Zarathustrianism was also to influence Christianity with its presentation of a creation myth in which the powers of light/darkness, truth/illusion-deception, life/death compete with each other. This mythology also contains and important reference to freedom:
“every individual, of whatever race or tribe must through his own free will choose sides and align himself with the powers either of goodness or evil in this world. If the former he will contribute through his thoughts, words, and deeds to the restoration of the universe to perfection.” (Page 187)
So, on this account the good will restores goodness to the universe and everyone is free to choose whether to do this good or not. Evil might, on some interpretations, be purely the refusal or omission to engage in this work of restoration and the maintenance of institutions, structures and systems designed to propagate good in the universe. Persian Kings, on this view were expected to be the representatives and will of the “Lord of Light”. (Page 183)
“And so we find that in the great multiracial and multicultural empire of the Persians—which, in fact, was the first such Empire in the History of the World—there was a religiously authorised imperialistic impulse, to the end that, in the name of truth, goodness and the light, the Persian King of Kings should become the leader of mankind to the restitution of truth.” (Page 183)
The eschatological dimension of the above account points to a dramatic battle between opposing forces which would rage for 40 years before saviour or Messiah emerged. It was in this period-in waiting that Christianity emerged, and the assumption of Jesus was that this battle had already occurred, and he was the emergent saviour. Christianity was intended as a mythology religion of peace:
“But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven: for he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rains on the just and the unjust (Mathew 5: 43-45)
This, it was anticipated, would be a revolutionary mythology because it is also claimed:
“For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Mathew 10)
On this radical account one should also give away one’s possessions to the poor and follow the Master, for so it is written. This is an anti-family Philosophy and perhaps also anti-secular in that it promotes also an ascetic form of existence which attempts to shift concern from the eschatological dimension of the future to the task of living in the present and finding God in everyday life at least insofar as the Gnostic Gospel was concerned (which Campbell quotes from). Those that live by the sword, it is claimed, shall die by the sword. The theory of Christianity appeared to be one thing whilst its practice became another, perhaps because of the enduring influence of the OT. Crusades against the Arab infidel became eventually an important project for monarchs who claimed as a consequence a divine right to rule.
Another mythology of peace was that promoted by the Jains of India whose teacher Mahavira was a contemporary of Buddha. (Page 189) . One of the messages of this mythology was that all forms of life (down to the vegetative, e.g. grass) possessed an absolute value which must not be violated. Buddhism shared this life-philosophy but on this account there is also an attitude towards the ego or the self which maintains that it must be banished: yet, in a certain sense this is consistent with the view that ones own individual life lacks significance. It is not absolutely clear, perhaps because of this last caveat, whether Buddhism, for Campbell can be categorised as a Romantic mythology.
As we move eastward, however to Japan and China, Campbell has no hesitation in categorising these as both peaceful and Romantic. Yin and Yang reminds us of Zarathustrianism but “The Way of all things, the Tao” is a virtue-based approach which is more reminiscent of one of the concerns of Ancient Greek Philosophy. This eastern approach focuses, however on “Resoluteness” as well as the idea that taking up arms is one of the last resorts of a wise man. (Page 192). This, as a matter of fact, has not been an approach manifested in the rules of a long series of Chinese tyrants who obviously did not embrace the way of the Tao. Campbell notes, instead that from this period two Machiavellian war-mongering historical documents have replaced this way of the Tao. Campbell recalls in the context of this discussion that the Bhagavad Gita, too, addresses both the arts of government and war. In this text it is noted how important the treasury is to these arts and individual life:
“ A person who has no wealth is more dead than alive.” (Page 195)
A Machiavellian spirit haunts some of the pages of this work:
“A King seeking prosperity should not hesitate to kill his son, brother, father, friend.” (Page 196)
Power, on this account is of more importance than Right:
“Every work should be done completely… By killing its inhabitants, by destroying its roads, and burning and pulling down its houses, a King shall devastate his enemy´s realm.” (Page 196)
Such thoughts place such ideas in the realm of war mythology, and here too, we find the idea that the Self can never be slain, a different thesis to that of the no-Self view of Buddhism. Machiavelli again emerges when the Prince is discussed:
“The duty of Princes being to fight and to slay.”(Page 197)
Yet in both Buddhism and Hinduism we encounter the idea of a farther shore we are journeying toward: a shore which transcends the opposites of light and darkness, truth and illusion, war and peace. Buddha-consciousness is impersonal, selfless and guiltless.
After charting the history of war mythologies Campbell then interestingly maintains (in the spirit of Philosophy):
“But on the other hand, in the annals of world history accounts are to be found also of a diametrically opposite point of view to this, where the aim is to be quit of war and strife altogether in a state of perpetual peace.” (Page 198)
“Perpetual Peace is a Kantian term used in his writings on History: writings which include a recommendation for the establishment of the Cosmopolitan institution of the United Nations whose task it will be to regulate war-peace relations between nations. The actual institution of the United Nations also has the task of regulating the human rights of the citizens of all nations, something that was made possible via the Kantian account of Moral Law. The idea of Rights also emerged in Grotius’s thesis “The Rights of War and Peace”, a work which also discusses a “law of nations based on ethical , not jungle principles” (Page 199).
Returning to the issue of the power of mythological language to suggest Projects of War and Peace we ought obviously to note that it is far easier to appeal to the emotions associated with war, than the reasons associated with peace. Depicting strangers as enemies and diminishing their humanity, is far easier than appealing to principles of reason and the moral law. Metaphorical language plays a significant role in such a process, which is reaching into the realm of the unknown and unnamed. Both war and peace symbols however are relatively abstract, e.g. Janus or the olive branch. As mythology has evolved throughout the ages, Consciousness (beginning with the first idea of the body) has actualised the potential of language to integrate both the sensible and intellectual powers of man into an ego that is self-consciously related to both the Truth and the Good. The articulation of the form these stages take are beginning to emerge on the foundations laid by Aristotle, Kant, and Freud and their followers. Whether, however, we will ever be able to postulate historical dates for the different stages of this evolutionary actualisation process, is, however open to question.