Mythology provides a point of view and a particular quality of comprehension. Myths are encoded in a sacred narrative. The sacred narrative is the catalyst for a kind of knowledge that cannot be understood through discursive logic alone. The narrative is not the myth, but is integral to the cultural experience that is. Mythology is communicated by music, visual image and the spoken word. It is both convention and ontological ground.
The narratives of classical mythology are the shed skins of a transitional ego. Their absurd explanations are no longer sacred. It despiritualizes mythology to be interpreted allegorically. Active myths are believed to be true. Contemporary myths would include art, science, religion, consumerism, history, and the myths of objectivity and progress. These are not isolated myths but motifs of a seething diachronic mythology that provides various contexts for mediating experience. Today's active mythologies are woven through the heartfelt beliefs, peak experiences, personal values and dreams of the individual. The belief system that employs faith in intuited truth is mythic.
Mythology is supported by faith. Faith implies trust and intuited knowledge. Religious faith is trust in the religious experience as the way to know God beyond the narrative. When we think of faith we think of religion, but faith includes more. We have faith in our convictions and ideals. After the epistemological shifts of the past three millennia we may conclude that faith in any belief system is ironic, and the incorporating mythology is always paradoxical; that is, man believes he will find the answer (fulfillment) as a consequence of his beliefs, but completion will always elude him in the end. To have faith the participant must be unaware of the paradox or not accept it.
Science has overtaken religion as the central mythology in Western culture. Science tells us who we are and how we got here. It incorporates humanitarian values and democratic strategies in a belief system that explains the mysteries of life. The continuous stream of discoveries and technological advances reassures us of science's ability to mediate the unknown. The miracles of science integrate everyone into a collective culture. Religious explanations were no match for the reversible logic and tangible results of science. From atomic weapons to electron microscopes, from genetic engineering to satellite television, the miracles of science allow us to manipulate the environment and exploit resources as never before.
The scientist believes the world reduces to rational causes, and that objective ideals allow us to know empirical truths. The rational mind is convinced that analytic proposition offers safe refuge from the hobgoblins of mythology. Where science works outwardly from the facts with an analytic model, mythology works inwardly from the objectively perceived world with subjective confirmation. To this extent they are different. But science and mythology are not oppositional. The belief system of science is the medium whereby the ontology of the cultural myth is known.
Objectivism, the mainstream philosophy supporting our beliefs about the nature of reality, belies the indeterminacy of perception. Science divides components of reality into increasingly smaller units, seemingly blind to the enigmas behind the gossamer of objective ideals. The linear explanations float on unconscious seas. Free-floating belief systems offer biased appraisals of the world while their underlying function is to integrate the individual and provide a coherent worldview and self-image. Just as classical mythology seems naive and fraught with illusion, future generations will look back and have a similar opinion of our belief systems.
The object in objective perception is an accumulation of experience localized in a symbol. The symbol supplies perception with its known context as a function of mythology. The objectively perceived world can only be as objective as the belief system that produces it. The developing personality learns the nature of reality and his place in it through the belief systems and ontological experiences of cultural mythology. The objectively perceived world is the echo of the symbol forming experiences of an actualization process. This is not to say there is no phenomenal world, but the perceptual and conceptual processes are interpretive, and herein lies the myth. Perception, language, causality, logic, science and art emblematically represent the world in terms of human understanding.
As the mind adapts and solidifies phenomenal stimulus into known context, we unquestioningly accept reality as having volume, weight and placement in contiguous time and space. But all we really have is sensory data and we conclude the rest. Our perception of reality is an interpretation.
Despite the unknown that exists between the phenomenal world and our perception of it, there is an obvious correlation between the two. Common sense dictates there is a 'real' world and knowledge fits it like a glove. But there is no ultimate reality or absolute knowledge to be discovered just beyond the current grasp of the intellect. Throughout history there is only an endless series of organized conventions serving individuation and cultural integration. Each new belief system holds a sense of truth until reason or lack of relevance erode the ontological ground from beneath it. The reductive search for truth always negates belief systems by exposing contradictions. When the narratives of active diachronic mythology no longer seem reasonable and no longer serve to integrate the participants, new myths develop to take their place.
The metaphoric nature of knowledge does not allow for knowing reality beyond the myth. The sense of truth of any proposition or experience serves as affirmation of the myth and provides a measure of how well it integrates the individual.
R. Cronk, 2004