Mythos vs. Logos
My culture of origin substituted logos for mythos. We demanded that our myths be true in the modern literal sense or else without value. This was a tragic mistake, and its influence on me is still felt. Let me describe the balance that I've reached in my attempts to overcome it.
Author Karen Armstrong, in her book The Battle for God, presents a model of logos and mythos in which there is more than one way for a statement to be true-- things that are flat-out no-question 100% false in terms of logos are "true" in terms of mythos. This inevitably makes all truth of equal value with that which is not true. Up is down, black is white and water is not wet. My dim view of this approach is best expressed by the Fox when he describes myths in C.S. Lewis book Till We Have Faces. "Only lies of poets, child, lies of poets."
However, being true in the literal sense is not the only way for a statement to have value. Isn't that, ultimately, the part that postmodernists rightly perceive? Fables of untrue events can bear true lessons. Subjective truths can be emotionally valued by people, so long as this is not confused with objective truth as my culture of origin did. For example, novels, stories and such works of fiction are flat-out no-question untrue. But we value them for their artistic, aesthetic or emotional content rather than their informational content. Myths aren't true, they're useful, and here is a point of overlap between my world view and that of the postmodernist. The only difference between lies of poets and fiction, is that with fiction, this distinction is understood.
I love art. I love fiction. I love beauty and awe and feeling good. And most importantly, I don't get it confused with the informational value of truth claims-- these are two separate values. That's why my aesthetic values can't threaten an attitude of hostility toward reality, because they're neutral to informational knowledge. Aesthetics is not an alternate form of reality or "Truth." There are just truths, period. Some of which happens to be pleasing and others aren't. Sometimes truth and beauty intersect but there's no correlation. This detracts nothing from either.
A scientific explanation to Johannes Brahms as to why his mother died was not enough for him - he wrote the German Requiem. But all this is saying is that he doesn't need information. The German Requiem isn't knowledge, it can't be referred to as "true" or "false," so there's no reason to say that it's a "truth" separate from logos. Logos therefore keeps its total jurisdiction over truth, which is knowledge and information. That's why this has nothing to do with Armstrong's lies of poets.
Whether a statement is attractive or not has got nothing to do with whether it's true. Imagine a preacher offers information that the earth is 6,000 years old, people resurrect from the dead, you're going to live forever, you have an infinitely loving and competent parent, and everything happens for a reason. When he says this I'm not going to demand that he say things more attractive, more artistic, or even more satisfying to my feelings. I have heard some people do this, whose only complaint about fundamentalism is that it's not nurturing. Gag me with a spoon. He's not standing up there offering art. He's offering information. When he stops claiming to be describing reality then he can say anything he wants.
Yes, there is value in life, in love, friendship, art, beauty and social justice. These all have value in the sense that human minds, the only existant things that are capable of assigning value to anything, have assigned value to these. These values are subjective at a certain level, in that acheiving human values is not a "cosmic" purpose outside of the human race (there is no such purpose and it wouldn't even help if there were). Where objective reality comes in, is in identifying those values as corresponding to who and what we objectively are inside. That interior condition just is what it is. Therefore it is objectively real. Objective reality also comes into identifying instances of life, love, friendship, art, beauty and social justice, regardless of the arbitrariness of those values from the perspective of non-people-- such as rocks, and viruses. We are able to know roughly whether the values are being achieved and tailor our actions through reason alone. That's where many will disagree with me. I'm sorry, but this is reason applied to the object of the self.
This is why I believe there is no realm of human decision-making to which reason doesn't apply. For me, reason decides how to accomplish my goals, but my life is motivated by a desire to maximize happiness and minimize sadness. Someone is probably going to reply that we have to make choices that lead to suffering and sadness some of the time. I would agree, but the reason is in order to maximize happiness and minimize sadness. This is delayed gratification, and is an example of what I'm talking about. The gutters of the world are filled with life failures who allowed emotion to decide what's true and what's not. I don't advocate being emotionless. I try to cultivate my emotional reactions to things. Emotion is good for enjoying, reason is good for perceiving. Reason is like the expert guide in a jungle expedition, and emotion is like the unskilled newcomer who hired the guide. Without the client, the guide would be out of a job. Without the guide, the client would fall off a cliff.
Perhaps the distinction that Armstrong is trying to draw lies in looking outside vs. looking inside: outside at that objective truth which is imposed on us, which is science, vs. inside, for personal or human value judgements such as art or love. Too many fundamentalists, of every religious, political or social movement, have subverted both. They feel that they need an exterior authority to serve as the wellspring of their motivation and purpose, but they can happily ignore or twist the objective realities of the outside world in order to keep it that way. This is getting the eyes and the heart backwards. The heart can't "see," any more than the eyes can "feel."
Not all religion does this, and examples of this are by no means limited to religion. Recently DNA evidence was finally provided to prove once and for all that Anna Anderson was not Princess Anastacia of Russia. And yet some of her supporters said that they needed to believe a "larger truth" about her, because they needed her to be Anastacia. This is getting the fire out of the fireplace. Does myth have to be the enemy of untrammeled sight? Must quantum physics and string theory threaten the validity of sanity itself? Or can mythos and logos be regarded as separate, non-overlapping territories in peaceful non-agression?
Comments
dawnwolf on Jun. 23, 2004 11:44 AM
I do disagree with you on one point in particular, depending on how you define your terms. "Objective reality?" Granted there is some such-gravity, laws of motion, etc. But to lay a claim that "Objective reality also comes into identifying instances of life, love, friendship, art, beauty and social justice, regardless of the arbitrariness of those values from the perspective of non-people.." is, to my mind, faulty thinking. My "objective reality" of what constitutes friendship, for example, may have several shades of difference from yours - but both are nonetheless subjectively real. Also, while religion, myths, and art are acts of invention and illusion, all of the above can help those engaged with them come to a deeper understanding of what may well be certain objective realities underlying our individual, subjective realities about love, friendship, beauty, social justice, etc.
BTW, my issues with fundamentalism have nothing to do it not being comforting enough. For me, the emotional/intellectual/spiritual quest only seeks comfort as a temporary resting spot. Fundamentalism attracts people precisely because it *is* so comforting - "here are all *the* answers," so adherants need not do the difficult work of thinking/feeling/intuiting things for themselves.
Reason is a good and valid tool. Reason alone, though, is a dangerous thing.
I'm done with random comments, now, really... *g*
matt-arnold on Jun. 23, 2004 12:24 PM
I don't understand where the disagreement is. Can you illustrate with examples?
Reason alone is a like a guide with no one to guide and nowhere to go, who just sits there on the side of the road forever. Yeah, I guess you could call that a "danger." Emotion alone is like someone with somewhere to go who has no idea how to get there, and runs straight off a cliff. Neither sounds very effective to me. But if I were asked which one of these I have witnessed in my life, I'd have to say I have no experience with the first one.
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