October 29, 2018 Monday
Bedtime Story
Why Myths are not Always Treated as Fiction
With this we have made a fair assessment of
the deep connection that mythology has with world religions.
Before we finish off and depart from this
subject there is just one last question to be dealt with and that is the subtle
difference between myth and fiction.
Why is it that most fictions are obviously
considered fictitious whereas others are given the status of religious
mythologies and thereby “true” is a fascinating point to ponder.
To be very blunt, myth is a fiction that
society or a culture regards as true for the strange reason that perhaps it
gives them certain sense of “meaning” of their existence (where in reality
there is none).
The “meaning of life” is perhaps one
question that is asked by every person no matter what his or her intellect is.
Whereas such a question is easily asked by
any ape to himself the greatest stumbling block comes to us apes is in
accepting the true answer which is inherently distasteful to our minds.
When Richard Dawkins posed this question to
James Watson in the form “what it is all for” Watson’s reply was:
“I don’t think we are for anything.
We are just the products of evolution.”
To apes endowed with such tremendous
cognitive powers of self-perception and self-analysis (just note how often we
examine ourselves in the mirrors picking out tiny flaws and extra flab) to
accept that we are by products of some natural law with great role played by
chance and accidents would indeed come as a great disappointment.
There is a school of philosophy known as
absurdism that exactly has its origins in this dilemma- the obvious conflict
and disharmony that exists or arises between the human tendency to seek
intrinsic value and meaning in life and human inability to find any due to
actual lack of any meaning or value.
One must understand that this sort of
absurdness is not of logical nature as understood in the subject of formal or
mathematical logic but simply because of the nature of two simultaneously
existing realities.
There is no true contradiction or
absurdness present here simply because just because human mind is capable of
asking the question of ‘meaning of life’ there need not exist an answer (intrinsic
value in our existence) that should be pleasing to the mind.
One of the several ways for the human
cognitive mind to come out of the shock of meaninglessness of life (most will
arrive to this blunt reality no matter what they may manifest to others) is the
creation of religious mythologies (the other two are suicide and acceptance of
absurd and live with it).
This philosophy shares some of its ideas
with existentialism and nihilism and out of which was also born the legendary
work of Camus – the Myth of Sisyphus.
Both these sister philosophies accept the
meaningless of life and make it their starting point on which to work upon.
The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical
essay that Albert Camus the French philosopher published in 1942.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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