CCD HISTORY 101 - History of Western Civilization 1
Origin Myths
Every human society has them. Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are things the way they are?
Usually when we use the word myth, we think of a story that is untrue.
We know that the stories of Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite and Mount Olympus were origin myths for the ancient Greeks - their stories about how the world came to be
But we are, perhaps, thinking, "how childish they were to believe such fairytales. We moderns have science to tell us how things really work. "
However, if you study science, its philosophy and foundations, sooner or later you are confronted by the fact that our science is provisional. Even our most cherished theories - evolution, quantum mechanics, gravitation, capitalism - are models. That is, they are our best guess about how the world really is. They are our myths.
We have other kinds of myths: George Washington and the cherry tree, Horatio Alger that anybody in America can become rich and famous if they work hard enough. So there are those kinds of myths too which we accept as a kind of truth.
When studying people from other times and other places be aware that sometimes they have very different ways of looking at the world, very different ways of living, very different organizing principles - their sources of meaning in their lives, may be very different from our own. That makes them hard for us to understand.
What is human nature? Are three meals a day natural? is one spouse natural? is fidelity in marriage natural? Is equality between men and women natural? Is slavery wrong? Not all societies would agree.
We live in a society where the norm is to value individualism, freedom, self-fulfillment and self-realization, freely chosen according to one's own lights. That's a big part of what changed at the beginning of the Modern era. People have not always thought about freedom and self determination the way we do.
At different times in history and in different places in the world, people have found meaning based on such things as the belief in an hierarchical chain of being in the universe, or the call of God made clear in revelation, or the guidance of dreams obtained on a spirit quest, or the space of glory in the memory and song of the tribe.
I challenge you to be open to looking at the world in fundamentally different ways. Don't be too quick to judge others from our modern perspective. Try to put yourself in their shoes. What must life have been like for them. You'll learn more and get a lot more out of the class.