107 pages • 3 hours read
Parallel Myths
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Themes
The Human Need to Anthropomorphize the Mysteries of Nature
Most cultures—at least the ones detailed in this book—have in their mythic pantheons gods and goddesses attributed to specific natural phenomena, deities in charge of the sun and moon, the rivers and oceans, the earth and nature, and the heavens. To early civilizations, attributing a god—in distinctly human form—to these patterns of nature was the only way for a pre-scientific mind to understand the world. A fierce storm or a volcanic eruption is easier to process as the act of an anthropomorphized being with emotions and motives than as the result of random happenstance. If everything is random, nothing is predictable, and an unpredictable world is terrifying. Of course, one of the appeals of science is its attempt to predict the patterns of nature, and those predictions provide a sense of control. Early cultures, in contrast, attempted to control nature by offering sacrifices to their gods, whimsical and capricious though they may have been. By creating the gods in their own image—an interesting variation of biblical Genesis—humans could persuade, appease, and bargain with their gods in the same way they might bargain with each other. If humans could be appeased, then human-like gods might be similarly persuaded.
Humans not only personified nature in the human characters of gods, but they did the same with distinctly human concepts, such as love and war. The elusiveness of emotions such as love or aggression or jealousy necessarily took on human form as a way for those primitive (or “traditional”) cultures to understand the behavior they witnessed every day but had no schema with which to contextualize or the language to even properly define. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God cannot be understood or conceptualized by humans. His glory and power are beyond all human reckoning. The only way, therefore, for people to imagine the unimaginable is to place the vast unknowable God in familiar terms, namely, that of another human, albeit one with supernatural powers. The “Yahweh God” of Genesis “walks” in the Garden of Eden; he calls to them when they are hiding from him; he speaks to them literally. In this way, the authors of Genesis (as well as all of the Old and New Testaments) present a mythic God—all-powerful but personified—in a cognitively digestible form. This need to transform natural phenomena into a walking, talking entity speaks to a basic homocentric tendency, the predisposition humans feel toward similarity. A god that looks like us might just empathize with us and show mercy toward us by not flooding the fields or wiping the land clean with a hurricane. Myths for these early people were more than simple stories to pass along by the campfire; they were a necessary part of survival.
The Conflict Between Myth and Science
It can be argued that science and religion are not mutually exclusive—that rather than being oppositional, they simply answer different questions. Science tells us how the world works, and religion tells us why. However, Bierlein makes the case that the encroachment of science and “rational” thought on society, beginning with the Enlightenment and continuing through the 20th century, has alienated humanity from its mythic ties. The power of mythology lies in its ability to instill wonder in the natural world and to give societies a moral guide that maintains order and keeps chaos at bay. Without those fundamental and primal benefits, he argues, humanity is set adrift. Science may provide answers (data and facts), and it may make life more comfortable, but without the guiding star of myth, societies become fractured; they lose the glue that binds them together. Technology has prolonged life, but without myth, the quality of that life suffers.
Where myth once told of the creation of the world in six days or from the body of Ymir the frost giant, now science describes the Big Bang, accretion discs, black holes, and dark matter. Where myth once offered moral guidance in the stories of Narcissus, Midas, and Tantalus, psychoanalysis attributes behavior to trauma, neurological development, and environment. Myth gave us heroes, while current thinking suggests that heroism is relative—that heroes are human, fallible, and perhaps maybe even anti-heroes. Science has become highly specialized, the realm of elites, and thus alienated from the average person. Indeed, the mission of scientists like Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson has been to take science out of its ivory tower and make it relatable to the masses, perhaps to restore some of the wonder and myth to science’s “objective” observations. Sagan once said, “Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality” (Druyan, Anne and Sagan, Carl. The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996). As technology reached a formidable milestone in the 1960s—the moon landing, the development of computers, communication satellites, the first artificial heart—social unrest grew, a yearning for something beyond the mechanization of society. It is perhaps no accident that Sagan’s seminal Cosmos TV series (1980) and Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth (1988) became so popular during the high-flying capitalism era of the 1980s. With a world seemingly awash in machines and money, humanity desired a return to something simpler, more primal, a return to myth.
The Sin of Arrogance
In many of the stories recounted in Parallel Myths—particularly those involving humanity’s fall from grace—the catalyst for the fall is arrogance. Adam and Eve dare to disobey God in search of knowledge. Arachne has the arrogance to challenge the goddess Athena, and for that, she is turned into a spider. Icarus flies too close to the sun, and death is his punishment. Adam’s first companion, Lilith, has the temerity to demand to be treated as an equal, and she is banished to the demon world, referred to as a “miserable creature” and “cruel.” In the moral hierarchy, hubris ranks near the very top of man’s greatest sins. Arrogance—thinking too highly of oneself—is dealt with quickly and efficiently in myths. Implicit in the condemnation of arrogance is the idea of humans knowing their proper place, and that place is most definitely not on par with God. The relationship between humanity and its deities is analogous to the parent/child dynamic—the authority figure sets the boundaries, and the submissive party obeys, no questions asked. The authority figure does this out of love and concern, but if the child (or humanity) steps out of line, they must be punished for their own good. Ironically, the equation of knowledge with arrogance speaks volumes about the desire to keep humanity blissfully ignorant.
Arrogance, haughtiness, and narcissism may be accepted norms today (we may call them “self-esteem” and “self-love”), but to early civilizations, placing oneself above the community could damage social unity and have dire consequences. Perhaps that is why the Bible mentions the sin of arrogance over 200 times, calling it “detestable” in the eyes of God. At a more fundamental level, hubris represents a defiance of the natural order of the universe, an order in which humans have a fixed place. To challenge that order through presumption is to invite the wrath of the cosmos (i.e., the gods). Myths that articulate this particular moral code speak loudly and clearly. They serve the function of keeping the troops in line, an apt metaphor since the military works on the same basic premise—questioning authority or acting out of self-interest can result in severe consequences, including a loss of unit cohesion and death.
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