The Importance of Myth: A Preface to Plato

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“The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State” by Thomas Cole, 1834. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Course_of_Empire_(paintings)

All cultures that I am aware of are laden with myths. In his best-known work, the old philosopher Plato argued that the rulers of the ideal society would contrive myths to encourage perfect public acquiescence. Plato realized that if rulers implanted in the minds of the masses – by repetition and provocative imagery – an idealistic bond with the culture and their social obligations, they could to some extent control the public’s thoughts and actions. These cultural stories are integral to the continuation of a given society’s institutions, because they provide an extraordinary origin for them, and definitive consequences for or for not following them. The contrived narrative – the manipulated myth – is the tool with which utopians attempt to steer culture. Who controls the story, says the utopian, controls society.

In the sense that myths are stories told by cultures to explain the world as they experience it, no human society is without them. Amazingly, many cultures have had very similar mythic narratives, despite vast geographic distance. Perhaps the best-known “universal myth” is the story of the Great Flood, told in the Bible as the story of Noah, in China as the Gun-Yu, and in the Incan nation as the Unu Pachakuti, just to name a few. Myths will go so far as to explain the origins of the universe, be it the creation in Genesis, the primordial Greek state of Chaos, the celestial masturbation of the Egyptian Atum, or even the Big Bang. Other myths explain how humanity came to be and, others still, how human beings ought to act. Because these cultural narratives so greatly influence the mindsets of the people who believe them, myth in effect shapes the way in which people interact with each other and their environment. At the same time, these continued interactions reinforce the belief system, creating a feedback loop between the people’s acceptance of the myths and the myths themselves (see here).

In The Republic, which has influenced philosophical and political thinkers for millennia, Plato suggests to a group of friends that history and myth (between which there is little-to-no distinction) ought to be rigorously censored in order to produce the right sort of citizen. He insists that if gods and heroes are ever portrayed in a bad light, the people will be less inclined to be virtuous. If death and the afterlife are spoken of hesitantly and fearfully, soldiers will be less inclined to die for the state. Even laughter must be scorned, he says, because it causes people to lose their concern and reason. Not only does he suggest limiting what may be said; he proposes alternative myths to encourage conformity, virtue, strength, and intelligence. Most notably is his “Noble Lie.” According to the rules of the Republic, each citizen will attend compulsory school. One’s time in school depends on which social class they are determined to fall into; once that is decided the person is released from school and sent out to perform their duties. The Noble Lie is supposed to convince people that their time in school was actually a dream; that in reality, they were deep underground, being fashioned by God and Earth. One of three metals was placed within each person, and their social position directly correlated to which metal was contained within them (thus, in school, the citizens proved their mettle). The importance of this myth was that it would make people believe they were sons and daughters of the earth, making all citizens brothers and sisters. It also meant that one’s class position was non-negotiable; their status was as permanent as the metal within them. Interestingly, he says that whether or not the ruling class believes the Noble Lie is immaterial, so long as it continues to go unchallenged. The maintenance of such a myth is necessary, after all, for the survival of Plato’s Utopia.

In more modern times, one might point to the utopian visions promulgated in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Communist China. In the case of the Nazi government – a regime which was obsessed with the idea of “reason” – the public was constantly fed heroic imagery of the Teutonic Knights of yore and thousand-year golden ages. This along with triumphant music, constant propaganda, and Hitler’s bombastic rhetoric filled much of the public with patriotic fervor, and made a religion out of the state. While the USSR and China may not have incorporated nearly as much traditional folklore in their social engineering efforts, they were constantly promising the imminent achievement of a hunger-free, poverty-free, and oppression-free Utopia for all, which of course justified all of the states’ actions and the common person’s constant and bitter toil. Naturally, these Utopian promises, as well as those of the Nazis, only resulted in the deaths of millions upon millions upon millions. [20th Century Democide] In all three cases, a cultural narrative was pushed in order to gain widespread public acceptance, or at least docility.

Now, don’t rest and think that such myths are only pushed in those nasty dictatorships. The social narrative – the secular myth – is present even in those societies that are called “free.” Just for example, let’s look at the United States. For one thing, the designation of “free” to a country with a government that has imprisoned more people than any modern (overt) dictatorship, and which has the largest military in the world, all the while paying for those and many other dubious endeavors with the money of the so-called “free” residents, must be due to some degree to a national myth. Certainly we’ve got one. The common narratives will be familiar to almost any American: Washington and the cherry tree, Paul Revere’s midnight ride, Lincoln freeing the slaves, FDR reluctantly but necessarily entering World War II, and the uncertain future of our great nation. These stories that many of us were told in school as children are plainly not true, but they shape the average person’s emotional relationship with “The USA” as a concept. They are made to think that the United States is “the good guy” in any conflict, to think that the American legal system is – usually – right, to think that their nation is superior to all others. This is a trick of association. Patriotic stories are repeated to young people, imprinting them with an idea of what “America” is. These stories are reinforced throughout life by multiple forms of media: TV, cinema, books, video games, political rhetoric, etc. I think that, as children, a sort of transference begins, where people begin to equivocate America, “the government,” with America, “the place from the story.” This is made physically manifest when the children are ordered to strike a pose and ritualistically swear themselves to a cloth icon of the state. Then come the myths about the land they just pledged allegiance to.

Of course, this doesn’t work on everyone. There are many people, even people in the so-called “system,” who don’t buy into the traditional American myth. That doesn’t mean that they’re myth-free, however. Today, in our society, there are multiple narratives competing for dominance. We might look to the “social justice” narrative, which rejects the glorification of elitist slave-owners who spoke of freedom; which rejects the idea that the United States has been divinely decreed the greatest nation on earth. I agree with these criticisms. However, it isn’t uncommon for people who raise such criticisms to consider themselves socialists, or at least democratic-socialists. I certainly don’t think that more state power and regulation is the solution to oppression. Nor do I think that capitalizing on victimization and group identity is a coherent method of bringing people together. But, I digress. What I mean to say is that whether one follows the pantheon of Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks, or Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, one is embroiled in mythological warfare. These myths form within people a psychological loyalty to a larger group. These myths drive people to act.

It is not my intent to suggest that myth only exist as a tool of tyrants. Such a conclusion would be far too reductive, and would ignore the function I believe myth originally served. It appears to me that myth arose from the human need to make sense of the mysterious world. We modern folks ought to remember that “science,” as we think about it, is only a few centuries old. Before the world was viewed through mechanical lenses that revealed burning balls of gas millions of miles away and entire ecosystems living and dying within our very bodies, humans had every reason to think of themselves as the center of the universe. They would have had no reason not to see themselves in everything; no reason not to think that the wind, the water, and the sky all had very human traits. And, let’s be honest, the earth does kind of look flat. In Egypt, even the animal gods had human bodies. The Greeks prided themselves on the fact that all of their gods were so perfectly human. Even once monotheism had replaced the paganism of old, mythological themes continued to thrive. In Catholic countries, animistic deities were replaced by patron saints. As with the social narratives mentioned above, it may be myth vs. myth, but there’s always a myth.

In conclusion, I’m not anti-myth. I think that mythology has certainly made the human experience very interesting, and I’d hate to dismiss it all as some nefarious ploy. My problem isn’t with “myth” itself, but with those who are arrogant enough to think they can and should manipulate something so ubiquitous, organic, and constantly changing in order to reach some utopian goal. It is my contention that by asking the right questions and by taking as little for granted as possible, we can mitigate the mental-mythical booby traps scattered around us by the would-be utopians. Having written this, I definitely think there is much more to say about myth in this context.  The next step I’ll be taking in my study of myth and culture will be a presentation on The Republic, and seeing exactly how one of history’s most respected philosopher’s thought society ought to be run.

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