What Is Myth?
Do we know what myth is? Perhaps hardly can we define altogheter what myth is, but we routinely describe a myth using an example of myths, not by defining what those myths are. It is easy enough in the modern era and as “enlightened human beings” to apprehend myth is contrary to truth. Plunging into a scenery of Ancient Greece, we find it palpable enough that the history reveals the distinction between myth and logos (truth), explicates that capturing the meaning of myth is by seizing the meaning of truth, and expounds what logos is not what myth is.
From my elucidation above, myths become quite tangible and conceivable enough to discern. In other words, we can grasp a conclusion that myth is everything untrue when contradicted to truth itself. Regardless of the fact that most myths are inevitably fabricated, we do not want to problematize why we think myth untrue. Several believe the real existence of myths, while several do not. Nonetheless, as a matter of fact the two realize that myths are functional, useful, and efficacious.
The functions of myths themselves make us repudiate to investigate further the untruthful part of them. As long as the myths still operate functionally, we do not object to keeping accepting, affirming, and even undertaking or complying with their contents or values. Unquestionably, each myth always has value, exactly because of that we are willing to dwell inside it.
What myths do we keep conserving nowadays? It is too strange not to be aware of all contemporary myths we even do not suppose myth. We are snared in a global illusion such a mass that we only think one line where we are snared. Our horizon is narrowed so that we only imagine myths we have had or held and myths we have understood as classical stories told hereditarily, and we cannot construe the objective reality dispersing in front of us as myths — because we are living inside it and do not want to be wakeful from sleep like a dog.
It is undeniable that we are obliged to dwell amongst the scattered myths, such massive contemporary myths. I think that not only do we dwell amongst their existences, but they also reside in our awareness intensely. Hence, we cannot be aware of their existence. In addition to the fact that we are made blind in front of them, actually we are experiencing them, thus we cannot distinguish ours from theirs, or separate who we are from what they are.
By the way, what those contemporary myths are? When watching an advertisement on “an ideal woman” (a built-in meaning within), a critical reader or viewer will question, “What is the relation between a woman and an expensive car?” This question interrogates and tries to decipher the built-in meaning within produced and compelled by its maker to arrive in the reader’s or viewer’s comprehension. By proposing such a simple but detrimental question, the reader or viewer attempts to take a distance from her or his contaminated reality, so that the built-in meaning plugged by force can be decoded and can simultaneously unveil what its purpose is — that is, to incite or instigate the reader or viewer to consider it an established meaning.
Surely, I do not confine that the scope of contemporary myths merely exists in advertisements except only my interest in displaying an example. Here, we have to recognize why those myths are spread out. Commonly, the contemporary myths are spread out in or on mass media fully deliberately, purposefully, and motivatedly to chiefly disseminate a maker-produced reality. As being elucidated above, I want to append that regardless of myths being untrue, myths have functions for human beings — at least according to their makers, in order that the value of their functions we are conserving becomes the helpful reality we are undertaking.
We cannot enquire into the part of the truth of the myths, and indeed it need not be done, thus here we can only inspect the useful value of the myths. It means that while reading a myth, we do not regard the existence of the truth within myths as one of our problems, but regard what value we can grasp after reading it as our importance. Mass media in which pop cultures are residing becomes one of the figures of the existence of myths. Why? So long as our reading a thing in mass media cannot prove that it is true or untrue, then we can immediately place the thing in mythical area. Remember that even though the thing proves untrue, the paramount existence is solely the value within its built-in meaning. This means that we are compelled to ignore the truth or the falsehood provided that the thing demonstrates its useful value for our reality.
To be aware of the existence of the contemporary myths is our problem since we are many times made faint in the front of them. Is not being aware of them problematic? I think so, on the grounds that the myths consistently obsess us to be willing to be what they want. We are (un)consciously haunted by them, thus we cannot express ourselves authentically because of our imitating what they have dictated. Accordingly, we are perpetually simulating what myths are displaying, we are living in a massively simulated world, and we are nothing but a flock of simulation. We do not want it to happen, do we?