Alan: Knight's Journal

With the IP and Apprentice Journal completed, I've been missing a place to write.

Unlike those, this Journal is open; though I retain the role of moderator.

Here, the occasional post - sometimes Journal, other times, something else.

Myth: A Biography of Belief by David Leeming, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA, 2002.

This most excellent little book is, I believe, worthy of being included on the ‘required’ reading list for TotJO Jedi. While referencing Campbell, Eliade and Jung, the scholarship includes a wide variety of sources, the writing style is clear, and the content accessible to all levels of readers.

The book is divided into four 'Jedi compatible' chapters:
Introduction: Myth and Religion
Creation: Myth, Science, and Modernism
Deity: Myth and Gender
Hero: Myth, Psyche, Soul and the Search for Union

My thoughts from the Introduction.

Myth is a form of narrative that has three common genres. Creation regards origins. Deity is a general category that describes the nature of collective being. Hero myths describe collective identity, that is, narrative pertaining to the psychology of life and history. Whereas both myth and superstition are illusory and irrational, myth is a narrative of origins and is distinguished from superstition which refers to a specific order of events regarding of physical causality. Irrational here means that myths “contradict our physical and intellectual experiences of reality” (9). Metaphorically, a myth is a container that holds eternal truth despite its extraordinary qua illusory narrative content. On the other hand, myth is not true in an ordinary sense because it describes events that are outside human experience. The truth of myth is that in its narration it describes the nature and origin of being. Like dreams, myths contain important information (insight) despite their cognitive differences from waking, rational forms of thinking. While each mythic narrative is different some philosophers (e.g. Eliade, Jung, Campbell) recognize, isolate and describe certain recurring forms, ubiquitous plots and common characterizations that occur across history and geography. Such comparisons can yield universal concepts and archetypes that reveal commonly shared metaphors of, for example, order and chaos, harmony and balance that are shared across history and geography.

Myth: A Biography of Belief by David Leeming, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA, 2002.

Reflections on the Introduction, Part 2

Myths are narratives of origins. The action occurs outside the ordinary causality and history in which it is the cultural expression. Ritual is the shared expression that defines the culture. Determining the temporal priority of myth, ritual and culture cannot be decisively determined; these do not occur as cause and effect. One reason for this is that myths emerge from experience and are not a created composition. Common structures and elements in myth are the result of our shared human evolutionary development and so also our physical human nature. Myths are the result of instinct and similar to metaphors both are natural expressions founded upon our consciousness of the nature of our human bodies in the world. We find ourselves already in a world (German philosopher Martin Heidegger describes our being in the world as having the character of being thrown into a world that is already there) and so our myth and metaphors are the common human ways in which we, as a species, describe our ‘thrownness’. Myth, then, in all their cultural variety and in their structural similarities are local narrations of our being-in-the-world. Over time, they have been institutionalized by religio-political power. Today, it might also be added to this pairing, the scientific for it too has its myths and metaphors and power structures that protect its version of reality. Power/knowledge structures will both protect their particular version or modify it to accommodate the power/knowledge agenda. (The combination of power/knowledge as a unified concept/practice is from French philosopher, Michel Foucault.) Development of a 21st century mythology that includes the structural elements of traditional ‘religious’ myths and integrates it into our current scientific knowledge regarding physics, evolution, consciousness and the natural sciences is Jediism. In conclusion, Leeming’s introduction concludes with a brief survey of the new myths and notes that these include ancient themes that had been excised. The new myths include ecological, nurturing, feminine and planetary elements and it is these elements that Leeming will develop in his book.

Another book you may enjoy that explores this is "Myths We Live By", Mary Migley, Routledge, 2004

A quite refreshingly hilarious up-side is how she certainly takes the piss out of that element of the scientific community that blankets its own version of reality over all other domains of thought and insists that its reality is the only one that counts -- thus effectively attempting to exclude itself from the mythic narrative and establish itself as the 'omnicompetence' (her word) that knows best ...

Just a read that I found delightful and thought you might too ...

Theodore L. Brown in Making Truth: Metaphor in Science quotes Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity,

“Truth cannot be out there – cannot exist independently of the human mind – because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but the descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own – unaided by the describing activities of human beings – cannot.”

Metaphors are used in science as they are used in all human language activities.

Michel Foucault, in copious examples taken from centuries of source material and covering a variety of institutional power/knowledge activities (mental hospitals, prisons, sexuality, social sciences, art, etc.) demonstrates the changing nature of our knowledge over time. The most shocking were the changes over time regarding the human being - even our conceptions of ourselves has changed (and radically). What a human being was in the 18th century is not how we define of ourselves today.

Sources investigating changes in thinking (scientific and other):

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn.

The Day the Universe Changed, Ambrose DVD (five discs) written and narrated by James Burke.

Highly recommended: Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

Within the metaphor of learning as a journey of exploration, the path of the explorer is the investigation of particular ideas and concepts. The territory wherein one travels has both known and unknown features. My understanding of my role as Teaching Master is that I travel the road with my Apprentices. The Temple of the Jedi Order suggests only general features. The landscape itself that is the destination for there is no particular end or goal for this kind of quest. So, in this metaphor, the first territory to be explored is Krishnamurti’s Freedom from the Known.

Krishnamurti begins, as do all thoughtful books, with the problem. And this problem is that we have given over our quest for the sacred to others, whether institutions, or to prophetic individuals known to us through writings or institutions. Most importantly are his assumptions: first, that the human being is a certain kind of biological and spiritual entity. Secondly, that our social institutions, and in this category he includes religion and power/knowledge, are a reflection of our biology and our psychology. He sees the human as the result of millions of years of evolution and so we are actually mostly animals with a thin veneer of rationality. History has done little to change this biological determinism. Finally, Krishnamurti conceives of each human as an individual; a separate entity, mostly selfishly competitive. But only this final conceptualization of the problem is the result of improper teaching and only this idea is fallacious. Conceptualizing reality as possessing the characteristics of an inner and the outer is part of the problem, and so it is that he suggests what is needed therefore is a “complete revolution in the psyche” (16). We must separate ourselves from the commonly projected reality. Seek freedom from all that we now know. The revolution is personal and occurs in the individual’s psyche. We must become our own authority. The journey begins here.

Chapter Two.


Unlearn.

Questioning everything is the beginning of freedom.

Give up illusions.
The most tenacious of which is that there is an abiding Self.
There is no soul that inhabits a body, there is only the body. We do not own a body, we are a body.

Mindfulness is presence…without the constant narration.


It is silence.


Forget analysis.

The intellect, the voice of reason, becomes mute. What remains?

Consciousness of…?

Or, simply consciousness.

Attending.

Attention.

Presence.

Myth: A Biography of Belief by David Leeming

Chapter Two: Creation

The recitation of creation myths reminds us of who we are. One of the most common settings for the recitation of creation myths is the healing or curing ceremony. Curing/healing is a form of beginning. It is a return to the earliest state of being. It is to start over, begin again. The opportunity for re-creation can there be found for in the recitation we hear that which is most vital. In the myth we see our original face. The myth is expressed metaphorically through our common human experience of birth. The primary symbols of the birth metaphor are emergence, as out of the womb. A pristine condition of an infant before stain and exile. But some myths describe other kinds of bodily functions: excretion, secretions, emesis, expectoration, dismemberment. In other myths creation is spoken or dreamed; it is an emanation, even an explosion. Creation could be formed, made or simply an event – the coincidence of energy.

Leeming proposes a thought experiment of a great hall where the representatives of all the different creation myth have gathered. In that place the commonalities of different mythic elements bring diverse religions together. They gather together around common elements and in the hall there is a flow among the representatives as they move from one common mythic aspect to find commonality with other representatives regarding other shared symbols and metaphors. Some representatives attempt synthesis, syncretic combinations with novel artistic representations . The myths of science are not excluded for they too describe primary symbols of chaos to order and entropy returning the cosmos to uncertainty that all may be re-created again.

Myth: A Biography of Belief by David Leeming

Chapter Three: Deity

The concept of Deity has been one with which I have struggled for all my life. Even while confessing my belief therein, doubts lurked at the periphery. The shadow of disbelief was the constant companion of my desire and need to believe. It was nearly thirty years ago that the shadow dissipated, and under the influence of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, my monotheism faded completely. Animism or pantheism more closely describe my current status, but even so, I deny any sort of spiritual realm separate from the physical. Deity, spirit, soul, divinity are each for me symbolic expressions, metaphors for that which is beyond cognition, but not consciousness.

Leeming posits several theories regarding Deity that I find particularly appealing. Deity is a general label under which a variety of designations might be included: immortals, gods, and divinity. Like others, Leeming states that Deity is an evolutionary adaptation, the expression of, “the embodiment of our instinctive drive to establish a permanent order in the universe, of which we, as the allies or offspring of deities, can be a part if we act properly…Mircea Eliade calls gods ‘fecundators’ of the universe, embodiments of the mysterious force that, in creating, struggles against the natural tendency toward disintegration” (76ff). Deity as metaphor and symbol expressed in mythic narrative is believable, especially when this expression is natural, instinctual, the result of evolution. Deity is a universal archetype arising out of our embodiment. Deity, then is the natural expression of our instinctual need to create order and so the myths are narratives of who we are and what we believe is most important. When we are confronted with the fears that arise from disorder, from our lack of understanding, and from our limited power to control our environment, humans have instinctually fashioned a deity who is the “metaphor for the furthest extension of which the human mind is capable at any given time” (77). It is not then only fear that is the matrix for our myths and deities, but also our wonder and awe – the numinous, but also our lust and whatever else embodiment experiences. Deity is an evolving catch-all category, a container metaphor, into which we put what is unknown, that which eludes reason and our power/control. It is in this sense that the divine is mysterious.

The Limits of Scientific Objectivity

Philip Wheelwright in Metaphor and Reality uses the example of the height of a building as something that can be thought of as an objective fact. The height of a building is not subjective but exists independent of any personal attitudes or culturally relative factors. Neither does the height matter in regards to what language is spoken. The question of the height of the building can be answered for the building can be measured and the results will be clearly understood. Measurement is experimental and objective. The increments of measurement, whether yards or meters, and the technique of imposing these upon some physical object is an ancient achievement of human thought that has remained a consistent aspect of our thinking for millennia. Our human capability to inquire into the problem of the height of a building is the result of “the very long process in the evolution of human consciousness and of human measuring techniques” (27). Even so, how the numbers are applied to objects is a projection. Numbers are the constituent elements of the language of arithmetic and mathematics and are inventions just like any other element of language. The application of a word, the agreed upon sequence of letters that form a word whose definition is also an agreed upon convention is the same whether it is ‘red’ or ‘three’. All naming is arbitrary. Letters that become words and numbers that become formulae are conventional, inventions. The value of numbers is proved in the success when the technique of measuring becomes science and its applications qua technology.

The universal human ability to express units of measurement in any form of incremental designation (distance, weight, speed, mass, temperature, etc.) while possessing objective meaning is the result of subjective experience. Choosing the form of incremental measurement, agreeing on that particular standard, applying that standard form to an object are each processes that are shared experiences of spatial perspective and the agreed upon conventions of measurement. How we look at a building is just as much the result of subjective agreement as the language of asking and the form of measurement. In other words, the manner of looking and the form of measuring are the result of accepted linguistic conventions. Wheelwright gives the objectivist voice, “’Nevertheless the length is what it is,’ the outraged realist may cry, ‘it is what it is, regardless of our varying optical sensations and accepted ways of marking lines on rulers!’” (28). Yes, the building is as high as it is. True and a tautology. A meter is always a meter and there is a standard meter stored in a special place in the capital that serves as the model for all other metric rulers.

Objectivity relies upon an exact mathematical model, and also, the subjectivity of language and accepted standards. Science invents the machines that measure what we want according to the standards of measurement that science agrees upon. Discoveries are simply another way of describing and measuring what science tells us is worth describing and measuring. Whatever then cannot be both described and measured is not scientifically interesting (‘soft’ social sciences) . And so, science seeks to expand its repertoire and invent new forms of measurement, subject of course to the approval of the scientific community, so as to apply them to what was previously unmeasured. Discoveries are sometimes merely the result of the novel combination of various measurements; such as, measuring the magnetic field of core samples as proof of tectonic plate movement which is valuable because an accurate map of the plates will show the location of oil deposits. Such discoveries show the values of a society. Knowing where oil can be found did not matter before the invention of engines that run on gas. A planet whose continents float and move upon a sea of molten lava is not the world that preceded the discovery of continental drift. Science is a constantly changing way of describing what is of value to a society at a particular time in its history.