I am reading Edward F. Edinger’s The Creation of Consciousness (1984) and my goal is to blog all the way through this short but very deep book. (Wish me luck!) The subtitle is “Jung’s Myth for Modern Man.”
Chapter 1, “The New Myth,” begins with a description of the problem:
History and anthropology teach us that a human society cannot long survive unless its members are psychologically contained within a central living myth. Such a myth provides the individual with a reason for being. To the ultimate questions of human existence it provides answers which satisfy the most developed and discriminating members of the society. And if the creative, intellectual minority is in harmony with the prevailing myth, the other layers of society will follow its lead and may even be spared a direct encounter with the fateful question of the meaning of life.
It is evident to thoughtful people that Western society no longer has a viable, functioning myth. … Meaning is lost. In its place, primitive and atavistic contents are reactivated. Differentiated values disappear and are replaced by the elemental motivations of power and pleasure, or else the individual is exposed to emptiness and despair. With the loss of awareness of a transpersonal reality (God), the inner and outer anarchies of competing personal desires take over.
The loss of a central myth brings about a truly apocalyptic condition and this is the state of modern man.
Edinger says “[I]t is the loss of our containing myth that is the root cause of our current individual and social distress” and that the only solution is to discover a new one. Edinger’s claim is that the work of Carl Jung — particularly his discovery of his own individual myth — is the first emergence of our new collective myth.
An example of a functioning central myth was found by Jung among the Pueblo Indians in 1925. He was able to gain the confidence of a chief of the Taos Pueblos, Mountain Lake, who related the following:
“[W]e are a people who live on the roof of the world; we are the sons of Father Sun, and with our religion we daily help our father to go across the sky. We do this not only for ourselves, but for the whole world. If we were to cease practicing our religion, in ten years the sun would no longer rise. Then it would be night forever.”
Jung realized that the Mountain Lake — and the other Taos Pueblos — saw life as “cosmologically meaningful” and therefore had “dignity” and “tranquil composure.”
Now, of course, this sounds like a bunch of poppycock to us “intelligent” folks. And I am in no way trying to suggest that we should take over this sun-god myth — that would be totally ridiculous. The point is that they had a myth and the myth worked for them. It gave them a reason to get up in the morning and made their lives peaceful and meaningful. This is exactly what we are lacking today.
Another important point is that the Pueblos practiced their religion “for the whole world” and this is crucial. Arguments that I’ve heard against religious pluralism, and something that I struggle with myself, is “where do we draw the line?” How can Nazism co-exist with Judaism? How can Fundamentalist Christianity co-exist with Fundamentalist Islam? If we allow religious tolerance, then how can we say that Nazism is wrong? Doesn’t our defense of tolerance mean we need to defend the Nazi’s belief system? Well, the acid test is: is that religion practiced “for the whole world”? Obviously, Nazism is not — it is in direct conflict with and seeks to destroy a part of the world and so it does not have to be lumped in with “valid” beliefs. Of course, I realize that it’s not always so easy. In the case of Fundamentalist Christianity/Islam, for example, I’m not sure either side is practicing “for the whole world.”
Later, Jung started crystallizing the formation of the myth while traveling in Africa and visiting a great game preserve:
From a low hill in this broad savanna a magnificent prospect opened out to us. To the very brink of the horizon we saw gigantic herds of animals … There was scarcely any sound save the melancholy cry of a bird of prey. This was the stillness of the eternal beginning, the world as it had always been, in the state of non-being; for until then no one had been present to know that it was this world. …
Now I know what it was, and knew even more: that man is indispensable for the completion of creation; that, in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world, who alone has given to the world its objective existence … Human consciousness created objective existence and meaning, and man found his indispensable place in the great process of being.
I’ll leave you to ponder this until next time …
We experience tragedy. Whether it’s a hurricane, an earthquake, the early or unexpected death of a loved one, a mass shooting, or a terrorist attack which kills dozens or hundreds or thousands … we experience tragedy. And we have, as a race, experienced tragedy for thousands of years (or longer, depending on your viewpoint). So, I wonder why tragedy still takes us by surprise. Why are we always left reeling and searching for answers when bad things happen? Why do we not have the answers; or at least an inkling of an answer?
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