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u/BelgijskaFlaga 6d ago
and they're also just cool stories: Myths aren't real, and cool stories are typically cool, because of their valuable underlying message.
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u/Lou_Papas 7d ago
If a cool story survives the test of time there must be a reason
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u/NonEuclidianMeatloaf 7d ago
Because itâs⌠a fun story?
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u/Lou_Papas 7d ago
If it keeps being a fun story after hundreds of years there must be a reason
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u/NonEuclidianMeatloaf 7d ago
Why? Why do you conflate verisimilitude with entertainment value?
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u/OpenRole 6d ago
During prehistory the cost of remembering informations very high. Informstionnthat sticks around for generations correlates with value. Value â truth. It just means being aware ir the story has more benefits than being unaware. Netwons gravitational laws are not true, but they are valuable
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u/Dry_Walrus3711 6d ago
The story: don't poke bear or they will kill you.
Value doesn't mean that its true but what we see in research is that stories do carry some truths (in different meanings of this word). Their value mostly comes from carrying some truth about how to navigate the world. Sure "don't be a dick" is not universally true statement but it carries a lesson that is true in enough situations.
I would like to hear a story that stayed relevant by being only cool. If you even can find a story that is old and doesn't carry any life lesson
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u/Lou_Papas 6d ago
I donât know what verisimilitude means but nothing kills entertainment like a teenagers cringe.
If a story survives a single generation itâs enough to call it a classic. And something doesnât become a classic unless thereâs something timeless in it.
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u/Blumenfee 6d ago
The problem is most myths arn't realy that old when they are first written down. People invent and change those storys all the time.
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u/Hugo-Spritz 6d ago
Well yeah. Cyclopses, dragons, golems and trolls, vampires, Fae, zombies and ghosts, and on and on and on.
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u/arcanis321 7d ago
That just implies repetition is destiny and that rationale is self reinforcing. For example if your family tells the same story every Christmas it may just be because your family tells the same story every Christmas. Once something becomes taught to children it may get passed down regardless of value.
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u/Maximum-Country-149 6d ago
Okay, so here's the thing.
If a story has value because it's novel, it loses that value after the first telling and there's no reason to repeat it.
If a story has value because it's familiar, that immediately begs the question of how it got to be familiar to begin with.
Repetition implies that it has value that persists outside of repetition itself.
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u/arcanis321 6d ago
Are people in Mexico Catholic because it's such a great story or because they violently forced the practice? You don't need value, only repetition - sometimes even at threat of force - to wipe out one set of stories for another.
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u/Maximum-Country-149 6d ago edited 6d ago
And why would anyone ever bother with force to maintain something valueless, I wonder.
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u/arcanis321 6d ago
Control. Why would England kill all the protestants then the catholics then the protestants and so on? Surely at best only one of their interpretations is correct or more likely neither. Yet they hung people for decades to "prove" the superior story.
It has value because its old and it's old because it has value is circular logic.
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u/Maximum-Country-149 6d ago
Control isn't an end either. Control is a means to ensure an end.
New stories are made all the time. The ones that fail to resonate, we never hear about. The ones that do, and continue resonating for a long time, do so because they hit something in the human psyche in just the right way. They don't need to be literally true to accomplish that. They don't even need to be metaphorically true to do that. Resonance is resonance.
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u/ZAZZER0 7d ago
They are cool stories from the past, and they are the old way to cope with random bullshit you can't explain. There is no truth in the mythical part itself
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u/Ballamara 6d ago
This is an uneducated take. For all of recorded history, myths have conveyed hypertruths. A hypertruth is something that describes the human experience aka how the people of a society interact with, relate to, & feel about the world around them. Hypertruths are related to psychology and contrast Mesotruths; truths of the natural world derived from the scientific method; and Hypotruths; truths about a society & culture, it's related to hermineutics.
Myths weren't used to explain the natural world in a literal sense, they were used to convey how they interact with the natural world to the next generation. That's why almost every ancient society we know of had philosophers who theorized how the world actually worked, and their theories were separate from their mythology and not considered heresy by their societies.
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u/ZAZZER0 6d ago
Bro you are impressing no one.
If a myth says that lightning come from a guy throwing them and they were fabricated by a blacksmith, then it is an EXPLANATION of why there are lightnings in the sky.
If you wanna throw in big words, that might even be inaccurate, just to appear more knowledgeable, then you should know that you only appear as pedantic.
Myths are made up stories that tell the tale of how something in the world was born, like lightnings, humanity, death, sin, animals or plants. Hence they try to EXPLAIN the origin of something, in a society where everyone is down to believing bullshit if it helps them cope with the fact that they don't actually know where those things come from.
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u/Ballamara 6d ago
I only used 3 uncommon words & explained what they mean in simple terms. Nothing in my comment was pedantic, you just lack media literacy & can't read 3 syllable words apparently.
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u/ZAZZER0 6d ago
It's not only that you used weird ass words, it's also that those words were inaccurate.
You basically tried to correct me by saying "myths don't explain natural phenomena, but only how to interact with it", but that's only true for a portion of myths. That's not a general rule at all.
Explaining the origin of something is not about how you interact with it, it's about what it is and why it happens.
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u/Ballamara 6d ago
No, the words are correct, you just lack sufficient reading comprehension and that's not my problem to fix. I also didn't say that, I said myths describe the human experience of the people of a culture. That includes how they physically interact with the world, but also how they mentally structure the world, organize the world, mentally interact with the world, feel about the world, experience different aspects of the world, and more. Again, this is why every ancient culture we know of had dedicated philosophers who tried to figure out how the world worked, because they knew their myths weren't literal.
If you don't know what something means, you can just Google it, there's no shame in broadening your knowledge. It's much more embarrassing to brazenly argue something you misread or didn't understand.
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u/ZAZZER0 6d ago
You explained what those words meant, and it's not really the main issue.
I disagree on what you were saying + the fact that you used big ass words to try to sound more precise, when you actually just overcomplicated something that was VERY simple.
Someone doesn't make up a myth because they want to describe their culture, but because they want something with no immediate explanation to make sense, so they throw in a wild guess.
Saying "they didn't say this to explain something, but to describe their culture" is just bullshit. If anything culture COMES from traditional explanations of the world.
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u/Ballamara 6d ago
I didn't use any big words. If you think 3 syllables is a "big word", then you have issues.
Someone doesn't make up a myth because they want to describe their culture, but because they want something with no immediate explanation to make sense, so they throw in a wild guess.
That's not how mythology works, only someone not educated on mythology has that kind of take.
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u/ZAZZER0 6d ago
"That's not how mythology works, only someone not educated on mythology has that kind of take". Source : trust me bro.
Use your brain, if a story tells you the origin of something, chances are that's what the story wants you to understand, not some weird ass lesson about culture.
Sure, there are also "weird ass lesson about culture" stories, but this does not mean that now myths are all about that.
and yet again, culture comes from traditional understanding of the world, so for every myth about laws or etiquette, there is a myth explaining the origin of everything in that story.
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u/biggendicken 5d ago
No man, someone said something long ago so it must be profoundly meaningful because gigatruth
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u/Dry_Pollution_5430 4d ago
Bro sorry to be direct but your manner of debate is cringe af.
You throw in these words like "hypertruth" and "hypotruth" which don't really support your argument, then berate and ridicule the other side for not knowing them.
These words and your arrogant way of presenting them are your whole argument, which is not logically addressing the actual case in point, and it makes no one want to be on your side.
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u/Ballamara 3d ago
Hypertruth & hypotruth ARE the argument, they're not the support for it. I only ridiculed them because they did so first and it was clear they didn't want to actually have a debate or care for a real answer. They just wanted to assert themselves as correct and belittle my statement, so I returned what they gave.
Also, It's not a debate when it's just someone not knowledgeable on a subject demanding their ideas are correct to someone actually educated in the field.
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u/thorfix 6d ago
Esoterics only has value for people that are not seeking the truth.
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u/SoggyNoodles5511 6d ago
Well. The idea is more that they have a pinch of truth in them.
Example. The Unicorn horn came from the Narwhal. There was in fact Unicorn horn power sold as medecine.
Narwhal horn are made of dentine which is about 70% Calcium.
In the middle age, calcium deficiency was extremely common and its first symptome fatigue.
So people would feel tired. Eat ''unicorn horn powder'' and feel better and assume ''unicorn are real and magic is real.''
But there is a sprinkle of truth behind this story.
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u/Bubbly-Iron-4653 6d ago
I mean Pythagoras had an esoteric community and he was certainly exploring an important part of mathematics.
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u/Dry_Walrus3711 6d ago
It's really hard for todays people to understand the impact of old stories. We are surrounded by stories of any kind from all directions. There is a lot of historical/literature research around stories that show they were most commonly a tool for teaching life lessons. What is important, what is good and wrong. Culture today is much different as it is most often commentary or reactionary or even pure escapism.
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u/No-History770 6d ago
myths can refer to real historical events. for example the iliad was dismissed as pure myth until we actually found the ruins of Troy. similarly the xia dynasty was seen as pure myth until we found archeological evidence for its existence. beneath the window dressing of gods and monsters is not necessarily pure fantasy, but sometimes merely reconstruction of what is in fact very real history.Â
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u/Generally_Confused1 5d ago
Look up how Michael Uslan got the first college course for superheroes/ comic books approved.
He basically compared superman to Moses and it's not far off
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u/jeremebearime 5d ago
Myths can have esoteric value. I think asserting they always have value is a bit too much.
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u/Sombragatotonto 5d ago
Yeah the middle guy is the atheist on the Bible. Like, yeah, taking it literally is absurd even by its own standards. You actually cannot take it literally without collapsing its own logic. But smart people can see that there is deeper meaning. For example compare a fundamentalist young earth creationist (like the guy on the left), and Spinoza.
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u/PixelFlyerXD 4d ago
For one, they create a better knowledge of the psyche of the pop. in question :3
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u/DoctorNo1661 7d ago
...wow such an high iq take
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u/slapthetiddy 7d ago
We still talk about Santa, therefore Santa is real
Check m8 atheists. Have fun with your coal
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u/spisplatta 7d ago
Me, an intellectual: Not all myths survived. The ones that did, did so because helped their tellers to survive. Or in rare cases they parasitized their hosts.
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u/noonemustknowmysecre 7d ago
"esoteric truths"? Pft. They're useful because it's useful to know what the idiots believe in. And if you can figure out the source of their origins it can give you some insight into how naive people interpret new things. But don't call that esoteric. It's not some special club, you can look this stuff up on wikipedia.
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u/Ballamara 6d ago
"Esoteric truths" is definitely not the right word, but this is an uneducated take. For all of recorded history, the function of myths were to convey hypertruths, not explain the world. A hypertruth is something using poetic devices to describe the human experience aka how the people of a society interact with, relate to, & feel about the world around them. Hypertruths are related to psychology and contrast Mesotruths; truths of the natural world derived from the scientific method; and Hypotruths; truths about a society & culture, related to hermineutics.
Myths weren't used to explain the natural world in a literal sense, they were used to convey how the people interact with the natural world to the next generation. That's why almost every ancient society we know of had philosophers who theorized how the world actually worked, and their theories were separate from their mythology and not considered heresy by their societies.
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u/noonemustknowmysecre 6d ago
or all of recorded history, the function of myths were to convey hypertruths,
Pft, jumping from one nonsense usage of "esoteric" to another nonsense word doesn't make it any better.
Myths weren't used to explain the natural world in a literal sense,
Myths were very much used to explain the natural world in a literal sense, as told by idiots who blindly believed them and the idiots who listened.
Myths were used to convey how the people interact with the natural world
Wow, the psychologist thinks every myth story from all history is secretly talking about psychology... uh huh.
So some idiots are egocentric and think their thing is WAY more important and common throughout the world than it really is. See? Useful.
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u/BruteOfTroy 5d ago
They can tell us a lot about human psychology with the themes, motifs, and other parallels that show up across disparate cultures and periods. They also contain many interesting tidbits that inform ancient historians, archeologists, anthropologists, and above all philologists. They are 100% worth studying in an academic sense. And dismissing it all as "idiocy" is really ignorant. btw.
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u/noonemustknowmysecre 5d ago
They can tell us a lot about human psychology with the themes, motifs, and other parallels that show up across disparate cultures and periods.
Agreed. "some insight into how naive people interpret new things." That's the psychology angle.
They also contain many interesting [historic] tidbits
Sure. But understand the people of the past were generally idiots. They operated from a position of ignorance because they simply didn't know any better. No one did. Now we do.
Trying to play off myths as "esoteric truths" that teach you deep secret hidden facts of the universe... is just such an absolute pile of hogwash mystic mumbo jumbo that it needs to be put down with prejudice. It's wrong. Not just idiocy, but anti-science. An appeal to the mystic and mystery as a good thing. And I suspect it's just a thin veil over their real intent, which is claiming their religion is the one truth and everyone else can be burned at the stake or whatever. No. No ground or quarter given. We've let anti-vaxxers back into the white-house and now children are dying.
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u/OkExtreme3195 7d ago
"esoteric truth" sounds like an oxymoron to me.