PSYCHOSCAPES: Reality or Myth

Myth or Reality at Cannon Beach Oregon
CC Jean Stimmell: 2013

Ben Okra, an award-winning novelist and playwright, pronounced at a recent summit: “Realism is not only a diminishment but in some ways an outrage against the possibility of the human spirit.”^⁠1 Worse yet, realism hasn’t worked to solve our greatest problems. What we need is something more.

Okra claimed only spirituality can inspire us to believe in something bigger than ourselves, something our ancestors understood: that’s “why they had forests as gods. They gave rivers names. It was a way of getting us to appreciate the fact that these are forces to be respected in the highest sense. It didn’t occur to them to pollute. Why would you pollute a river that you’ve raised to the level of myth?^⁠2”

Joseph Campbell, the legendary mythologist, taught us how myth is central to who we are. In his book “Transformations of Myth Through Time,” he tells us that every culture has myths by which it lives. However, as society changes, those myths become steadily more dysfunctional. Eventually, that culture will collapse unless a paradigm shift occurs, ushering in more harmonious myths. “Getting into harmony and tune with the universe and staying there ,” according to Campbell, “is the principal function of mythology.”^⁠3

We, like in all societies before us, are unaware we live in a myth, just like a fish doesn’t know it is swimming in water. Unfortunately, those myths that once allowed us to prosper are now threatening our survival: One is our certainty, passed down from the Bible, that we have total dominion over nature; another is our addiction to unlimited growth based on our free market economic system.

Yet, despite that, we go blissfully on our merry way, oblivious to the dangers ahead from existential threats like climate change. Still, another great mythologist, Michael Meade, finds reason for hope: “Although decidedly frail, perpetually foolish, and seemingly about to destroy the whole thing, humans are blessed with an imagination equal to the world and essential to its way of continuing.^⁠4”

That’s the key!

Imagination is our greatest gift, the only source capable of birthing new myths to fit our present circumstances. What we need is not new advertising slogans or clever computer algorithms but new metaphors. As Michael Polanyi has persuasively written, metaphor was – and still is – our original, pre-verbal language, establishing how we think and act.

In her insightful new book, "Deep Knowing,"^⁠5 Kim Hermanson tells us metaphor is not something we can understand through a rational thinking process… [its strength] is to open spaces that in a logical world do not exist. Whereas an image gives you something to look at and analyze, a metaphor gives you an experience. It takes you somewhere.”^⁠6

The right metaphor makes all the difference. For instance, in "Metaphors We Live By,” George Lakoff shows how now the war metaphor permeates our everyday speech, shaping how we think and act. He challenges us to “imagine a culture where arguments are not viewed in terms of war, where no one wins or loses, where there is no sense of attacking or defending, gaining or losing ground.” For example:

“Imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. In such a culture, people would view arguments differently, experience them differently, carry them out differently, and talk about them differently.”^⁠7

Hopefully, a more amicable metaphor will soon arise to replace our current hostile one, thanks to the efforts of change-makers of all persuasions, including artists and poets.

Meanwhile, another supportive metaphor is staging a comeback. Over the last 500 years, nature has been subjected to Western property-based ownership, giving owners the absolute right to do what they want to the land, modifying natural features or destroying them at will.

Just in time, an ancient myth is reemerging – what I call back-to-the-future -– that recognizes nature “as a subject with personhood deserving of protection and respect, rather than looking at it as a merchandise or commodity^⁠8.” That’s a qualitative difference, as a Bangladesh activist noted: Now, “the river is considered as our mother," and violators can be tried and convicted as if they had harmed his mother.

Ecuador, Bolivia, Uganda, and New Zealand have passed national rights of nature laws — and local laws now exist in the United States and Brazil. Courts in Colombia, Bangladesh, and India have recognized that rivers and other ecosystems possess legal rights.

Remember the Gaia Hypothesis, proposed by the chemist James Lovelock in the 1970s, which stated that the earth is a living, breathing, self-regulating organism. He named his theory after the primordial goddess who personified the Earth in Greek mythology.

Rather than more deadening realism, I vote for argument becoming dance and our globe becoming Gaia.

xxx

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