Myths and stories are powerful ways for truths to emerge and be recalled for generations. They survive in our collective memory for centuries, to be recalled when we need to learn from them how best to live.
I call the great myths “news that lasts” to contrast them with the daily headlines or bursts of images and sounds we get from online news that require little time for reflection. On the wall above the editorial desk where I worked as a journalist was a slogan someone put there to keep us humble: “Today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s kitty litter.” Perhaps the plastic in our cellphones of today could serve the same purpose.
One of my teachers would often counsel us to approach myths carefully. He would say far too many ask if a story is true or false, but that’s where most stop. A s…
Myths and stories are powerful ways for truths to emerge and be recalled for generations. They survive in our collective memory for centuries, to be recalled when we need to learn from them how best to live.
I call the great myths “news that lasts” to contrast them with the daily headlines or bursts of images and sounds we get from online news that require little time for reflection. On the wall above the editorial desk where I worked as a journalist was a slogan someone put there to keep us humble: “Today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s kitty litter.” Perhaps the plastic in our cellphones of today could serve the same purpose.
One of my teachers would often counsel us to approach myths carefully. He would say far too many ask if a story is true or false, but that’s where most stop. A second question seeks to understand what truths about life come from a myth, because like a symbol it points beyond itself to some great truth.
Joseph Campbell, a teacher and author of many influential books about myths, expressed his understanding of them this way in his classic “The Power of Myth:” “Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth…”
It’s the stories in our lives or that of our nations that remain past facts and figures. We remember stories, false or true, about George Washington refusing to lie about whether he cut down a cherry tree but can’t quote a sentence from the famous last speech he gave when leaving office. Come to think of it, maybe we remember his refusing to lie, something we need to stress these days. The same applies to our lives — we remember stories about ourselves and our families, some true and some not, but all deemed worthy of telling because they reveal something about ourselves and others.
There are two great ancient stories that offer profound truths to us across the centuries, each with time-tested ethical wisdom about how best to live as individuals and societies. Heed them and life becomes better; fail to do so and things get worse.
The first ancient story can be found in the Bible’s book of Genesis about a tower humanity attempts to build to reach heaven. God strikes down their pride by scattering people across the earth and confusing them with diverse languages. Perhaps the story was inspired by a Mesopotamian tower, but the truth is about human pride and divine judgment, surely one relevant today.
Humility is a rare virtue these days. Pride is still an ancient vice. Show me someone who claims to know everything and I will show you someone who doesn’t understand much at all about our limitations. As British satirist G.K. Chesterton wrote: “Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. One settles down into a sort of selfish seriousness. Seriousness is not a virtue.”
There’s another old myth that resonates these days, the parable of blind men and an elephant, told in various Indian versions. Its basic story is about a strange animal, an elephant, brought to town. Each man touches a different part of the animal, leading to different conclusions about what it is. Each man has a different opinion, but none the whole picture. The moral truth is clear — no one has all the truth but only parts of it.
Respect for differences, learning from them, is a long held truth from many traditions. Mahatma Gandhi believed toleration was showing respect for the essential humanity in every person, suffering resulting when we don’t do so. Isaac Newton, the English scientist who formulated theories of the laws of motion, expressed humility simply:
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
These days we could use more humility and less pride, more toleration and less judgment, more love of truth and less promotion of lies. One can hope our stories have taught us something over the years and centuries of telling them.
John C. Morgan is an educator and author. He can be reached at drjcm1000@yahoo.com.