Life is not as it is. Life is as you are. The Myths Series

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Life is not as it is. Life is as you are. — real­i­ty is slip­pery and per­son­al. This scares a lot of peo­ple, who crave fit­ting in.

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Here’s a “Life is as you are” quote from the old TV show, “Third Rock from the Sun.”

Mary: “Dick, you are just going to have to accept that there are some things in life you are not going to under­stand.“
Dick: “Oh, I accept it — BUT WHAT ARE THEY, AND WHY DON’T I UNDERSTAND THEM?”

I haven’t much use for “under­stand­ing” what is “true.” Most of the time, seek­ing truth and under­stand­ing is a use­less pastime. 

Please note! I’m refer­ring to inter and intrap­er­son­al under­stand­ing, not, for exam­ple, the “rules of the road.” Because we all need to stop at stop signs and dri­ve on the side of the road appro­pri­ate to where we live.

Many years ago I was doing some busi­ness con­sult­ing, and some­one warned me: “Well, ask­ing ques­tions in a meet­ing prob­a­bly does­n’t fit with­in the pro­to­cols of our com­pa­ny.” The expla­na­tion was that the pres­i­dent thought he was real­ly smart (not quite a sta­ble genius, but… 😉 ) and no one ever asked him ques­tions, for fear of being judged to be stupid.

Imagine the communication at that company. Somebody needed to challenge what was perceived to be “true.”

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Life is not as it is. Life is as you are.

We have a propen­si­ty for cre­at­ing sto­ries about what we think is true. Many of them are cul­tur­al accre­tions, cre­at­ed to meet a spe­cif­ic need.

Wit­ness the “god­less sav­age” men­tal­i­ty pumped into 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry whites on the North Amer­i­can continent. 

How do you per­suade peo­ple to head west and kill every­thing that moves? You cre­ate a myth about the peo­ple liv­ing there being (much) less than human.In the USA, you cre­ate the idea of Man­i­fest Des­tiny. You then hand the the white guys guns and you get out of the way.

Jeez, this sounds a bit like things in the USA today… but I digress…

A myth is defined as “a theme or char­ac­ter type embody­ing an idea.” In oth­er words, a myth is a sto­ry that explains how some aspect of the world works.

For exam­ple, vir­tu­al­ly all cul­tures have a “cre­ation of the world” myth, and a myth about how peo­ple came to be — about how peo­ple are blessed by God or the gods, and have domin­ion over the earth.

We have also cre­at­ed polit­i­cal myths, hero myths, myths about wealth cre­ation (typ­i­cal­ly called “eco­nom­ic the­o­ries,”) and even sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries that were lat­er dis­cov­ered to be lacking.

Those of you born in the ear­ly 50’s will remem­ber being taught the solar sys­tem mod­el of the atom. Big nucle­us, lit­tle elec­trons cir­cling in orbits around the nucleus. 

Then, in High School, we learned how many elec­trons could occu­py each orbit.

Now, we know that there are no such things as orbits, that sub-atom­ic par­ti­cles make up the atom, that they are actu­al­ly both par­ti­cles and waves, that we can­not know both their speed and their loca­tion (mak­ing them sort of not there.) 

And then, we find out that atoms are 99.9999999 per cent nothing.

At least, that’s the cur­rent myth.

We seem to need some­one in author­i­ty to tell us what is real, as opposed to under­stand­ing that both noth­ing and every­thing is real.

Which means that when asked what is real, a good, truthful scientist (the shamans of our age) will say, “That depends.”

Over the next while let’s explore a cou­ple of our cul­tur­al myths.

The Myth of One Reality

The Myth of One Real­i­ty comes from the Enlight­en­ment. It runs thus:

If we study things, break­ing them down prop­er­ly, we will be able to under­stand any­thing, and the view we have will last forever. 

This view was so preva­lent that, near the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, a sci­en­tist bemoaned the dis­ap­pear­ance of sci­ence: “Soon, there will be noth­ing left to learn.”

This” “one real­i­ty” assump­tion is rife in reli­gious cir­cles. And here’s the weird part. Peo­ple believe that there is only one real­i­ty, one answer. One expla­na­tion. AND, by some mys­te­ri­ous process, the right answer is always the one my group and I already hold.

This would explain, for exam­ple, the Inquisition. 

The Church, after “study­ing Scrip­ture,” felt itself quite pre­pared to sort out the wheat from the chaff. And if there was any doubt, a good, red-hot pok­er where the sun don’t shine would clear up the mat­ter. Praise God.

We know that the “one real­i­ty” view does­n’t hold water over time. We see its flaws as we study the his­to­ry of thought on almost any topic. 

None the less, we still crave the certainty of an explanation that will hold.

Most cou­ples who request mar­i­tal ther­a­py want only one thing. Each wants their view of the rela­tion­ship to be upheld as the “true” one. They hate it that, in almost all cas­es, there are two sides or more to every­thing, and that noth­ing is absolute­ly true, even that statement.

Adopt­ing the view that truth is rel­a­tive is a scary propo­si­tion. It means con­tin­u­al­ly dis­cov­er­ing the real­i­ty that is mine, in this moment. It means under­stand­ing that my real­i­ty will only imper­fect­ly match the real­i­ty of anoth­er person.

We may, for social convention, agree to agree, but this is more an exercise in semantics than the truth.

It all comes down to choice. I can mouth the “truths” of my group, fam­i­ly, soci­ety, faith com­mu­ni­ty. But if I speak the social­ly accept­ed truth, un-reflec­tive­ly, I give up my pow­er to be oth­er than what soci­ety demands — I give up freedom.

How can that be? Well, rec­og­nize that change only hap­pens when some­thing fer­vent­ly believed is dis­proved. You know, of course, that

• the earth is the cen­tre of the uni­verse, don’t you?
• That humans will nev­er be able to fly?
• Once a per­son gets the flu, they die?
• That time is absolute?
• That mar­riage is about the wife obey­ing the husband?
• That mas­tur­ba­tion is a sin?
• That sex is a sin?

Or not. Depend­ing on your perspective. 

Some­one, some time, decid­ed to chal­lenge these pre­vail­ing beliefs. As to the first exam­ple, declar­ing that the earth orbit­ed the sun cost not a few of them their lives; many were excom­mu­ni­cat­ed or threat­ened, in the name of God.

Through sheer perseverance, these myths changed.

Each gen­er­a­tion, though, wants to believe that the cur­rent ver­sion is the final truth. For many, uncer­tain­ty is scary. 

Which is why old­er adults are threat­ened by Mil­len­ni­als, who seem to have dif­fer­ent work ethics and val­ues. Which is why teen-age rebel­lion is always about rebel­lion against the rules (read myths) of the culture.

And sadly, in most cases the rebellion goes away when the rebels assimilate.

That’s cer­tain­ly what hap­pened to my gen­er­a­tion — to the 60’s hip­pie movement. 

While it might be argued that “we” stopped the War in Viet Nam, brought down a Pres­i­dent and brought in Affir­ma­tive Action, we cer­tain­ly are into our BMW’s and Brooks Broth­ers suits now, eh? 

A sell out? Sort of. An assim­i­la­tion? For sure. We think life is ter­ri­ble, but we don’t want to screw up the retire­ment funds.

How do we live comfortably in a world with multiple realities? Isn’t “follow your own understandings” a cop out, designed to lead to everyone doing anything to anyone anytime?

It could.

The sav­ing grace is that we are capa­ble of deep self-reflec­tion. At some deep lev­el, we seek to explore. We then wish to to join with oth­ers in the search, to iden­ti­fy our path and to walk it.

The vast majority of people feel a pull to this centering in the Self — feel it in the pits of their stomachs or in the hole in their hearts.

Bet­ter to note that we haven’t exact­ly solved any­thing with our present world­view. Doing more of the same, or pre­tend­ing, along with a gen­er­a­tion of delud­ed Trumpian neo-cons, that turn­ing back the clock or build­ing a fortress will solve any­thing is mud­dy thinking.

This walk into a new myth is not some­thing many peo­ple are going to jump right into. Scott Peck once said, in a lec­ture, that he fig­ures 5% of the pop­u­la­tion ever fig­ures this stuff out. Some find that per­cent­age to be depress­ing. I don’t.

I sim­ply choose to be in the 5%. What about you?

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Series Nav­i­ga­tion

« The Myth of Sex Equal­ing Inti­ma­cy — The Myths Series« The Myth of a Self — The Myths SeriesThe Myth of Absolute Truth — The Myths Series »