Why There's No New Mythology

in ancient Greece the moon goddess Artemis knocks  an arrow and signals to her band of sworn Maiden   Hunters as her twin brother Apollo rides his  Sun Chariot across the sky in Scandinavia   the oneeyed Norse god Odin stalks the world of  midgard seeking the famed meat of poetry which   will transform the Drinker into one of the most  knowledgeable among all scalds and Scholars in   ancient Egypt the Goddess Isis collects all  the pieces of her murdered husband Osiris's   body and reassembles him so that can conceive  a son Horus do you ever wonder what happened   to stories like these why this kind of tale  was only told by the Ancients why there's no   new mythology well the answer to that is of  course that there is pick up any novel from   the fantasy section of your local bookstore  and you'll likely find some kind of Mythology   that forms the basis of its fictional World in  fact thanks to the internet there are probably   more mythologies now than there ever have been  at any point in human history what a wonderful   time we live in but that's not actually what  you meant is it you're not here wondering about   fictional mythologies from fictional worlds  are you you probably want to know about the   real deal myths like the ones I mentioned just  a moment ago what happened to them will we ever   see people telling genuine stories like that  again you almost have to wonder is mythology dead [Music] one of the best things in life  is learning which is probably why you're here   to begin with unfortunately not everyone learns  the same public school is not a one-size fits-all   option and I don't really think it ever can be as  a result a lot of us creative types end up missing   out on a lot of precious education fortunately  there is a shockingly easy fun and highly   personalized way to get an education right from  home learn all of your fundamentals maths Sciences   computer programming and more with our sponsor  brilliant visit brilliant.org taale Foundry to get   30 days for free and 20% off a year subscription  seriously this is the most fun you'll probably   ever have learning this stuff try it out for  free and be as brilliant as I know that you can be the first problem with that question is that a  lot of Mythology is actually just religion people   weren't just using the sun Chariot of Apollo as  a metaphor for the rising and setting of the sun   they actually believed that that was what was  happening and as tends to be the case with most   religion expressing your skepticism of these  beliefs was not exactly appreciated just ask   Socrates you may have noticed though that we  don't call Modern religious stories myths that   would feel pretty rude wouldn't it that's because  the term myth has another meaning something that   isn't true or at the very least whose veracity is  dubious the show MythBusters videos promising to   debunk the top 10 weight loss myths that sort  of thing not the implication you usually want   to make about somebody else's deeply held beliefs  so we tend to reserve the term myth for the dead   religions the gods who don't have anyone left  to feel offended for them but when you ask why   there's no new mythologies you probably aren't  asking about religions either are you because   there are new religions popping up every single  day a lot of those are what we would call Cults   and if you're looking for information on how  to start one taale Foundry is probably not the   YouTube channel you're looking for so if not Gods  from fictional worlds and not religions then what   exactly are we even talking about here let's get  academic for a sec the term myth itself comes from   the ancient Greek word Mythos and it referred  to any thought idea or story delivered by way   of spoken word but of course language changes and  the word itself is obviously evolved beyond that   very few people would argue that a myth stops  being a myth when it's written down and even   fewer would probably argue that anything spoken  aloud is by definition a myth even experts tend   to have a hard time defining what a myth is Finn  folklorist lorri hongo refers to it as a story   of the Gods a religious account of the beginning  of the world the creation fundamental events the   exemplary Deeds of the Gods as a result of which  the world nature and culture were created Spanish   myth criticism Professor Jose Manuel loada calls  it a functional symbolic and thematic Narrative   of one or several extraordinary events with a  Transcendent sacred and Supernatural reference   that lacks in principle historic IAL testimony  and that refers to an individual or Collective   but always absolute cosmogeny or eschatology  Wikipedia very simply defines it as a folklore   genre consisting of narratives that play  a fundamental role in a society these are   all different definitions but they have some  important elements in common a myth seems to   be a story that is very important to a certain  culture that explains why the world is the way   it is and has some Supernatural religious aspect  not a perfect definition but good enough to start   working toward an answer to the question we  really want is myth in fact dead and if so   what killed it I think the easiest go to answer  here is surprise surprise science centuries after   the enlightenment people no longer need to explain  away the sun is the wheel of Apollo's Chariot we   know what makes the Sun rise in the east and set  in the west there are still a handful of people   who worship Apollo but I doubt even most of them  them believe in this story literally the way that   the Ancients did after all people have access to  telescopes now you can just go check but science   is only one of the reasons for myth's decline it  also just sort of comes down to how people tell   stories now it's easy to take it for granted but  the concept of fiction itself hasn't been around   forever most stories and Antiquity were told with  at least a veneer of plausibility the teller would   claim to believe it and so would the audience  there was no specific term for stories that the   teller admitted were untrue that the audience  accepted were untrue and which were told for   entertainment purposes anyway to them that would  have just been a complicated way of lying you can   see this in the way that many ancient legends  mix mythology and history the Trojan War could   very possibly have happened but was Achilles  really there and was he actually Invincible   because he was dipped in the river sticks as  a baby probably not it's very common for the   exploits of real heroes to become a attributed  to gods and on the other hand in cultures like   Ireland traditional gods are downgraded to the  status of theories and metaphors sometimes even   just legendary rulers in the case of Ireland  a lot of this to avoid accusations of idolatry   after much of the population was converted to  Christianity Catholicism St bridgid for instance   shares a suspicious number of similarities to  the ancient Irish fire goddess of the same name   so there's science and there's fiction there's  also one more very important concept blocking   the development of new mythologies canonicity  before literacy became more commonplace most   Tales were spread orally Mythos in its original  form and that had a couple of different effects   the first is that no one knows who came up  with these stories originally because it   wasn't written down anywhere it's basically just  rumors gossip the longest game of telephone ever   and the second major effect is that nobody knows  how much these stories have changed over time as   they've been passed from person to person with no  way to compare who told what version of the story   when or how they changed those two factors make  something very important possible these stories   do not belong to anyone because they cannot belong  to anyone the closest thing you can really say is   that they belong to a culture and even that is  pretty dubious as stories are known to be passed   back and forth across borders and peoples all the  time these days we basically have Paper Trails for   everything we make we even have copyright laws  to protect the intellectual property of creators   no one can profit off a story you've made unless  you give them written permission and while those   rules are very useful in protecting authors and  artists and especially the Walt Disney Corporation   they also have the downside of making stories less  accessible and therefore hampering collaborative   storytelling when Dante alari wrote The Divine  Comedy he didn't have to request permission from   someone who originally came up with the Christian  concept of hell because that story belonged not   to a single author but to all of Christendom now  you yourself are welcome to create a spin-off of   the Divine Comedy no permission needed because  that book is in the public domain but unlike the   concept of hell this is a novel and its lineage  is written down everyone will know what based on   this one specific work The Divine Comedy and if  they feel like doing research they'll be able to   find their own cop of the original and look up  exactly how many Liberties you've taken with the   source material so we have science challenging the  role of myths as ideological narratives used to   understand the world we have fiction eliminating  the need for a basis of assumed truth in all the   stories that we tell and we have canonicity which  allows us to identify who created the work and how   it's changed given all of this it's sort of easy  to say that it was progress that killed myths   that it's a form of story humans simply don't feel  the need to tell anymore for a variety of reasons   and because of that barring some Earth shattering  event that sets the species back a couple thousand   years myth will probably have to stay dead so  I guess it's time to say goodbye to one of the   oldest and most beloved forms of Storytelling myth  has died and all we can do is mourn its loss okay   I hope you weren't taking that too seriously you  weren't really expecting me to let go of one of   my favorite types of story that easily were you  because honestly I really don't think I need to   yes myths have changed that's true the stories of  the Gods and heroes from Antiquity May no longer   serve as explanations for natural phenomena but  their lasting impact on culture remains undeniable   every time you refer to a Pandora's box and a  killing heal or a Herculean effort you're invoking   a cultural Legacy thousands of years old myths  will never completely go away because they become   part of the collective Consciousness serving  as a Wellspring of inspiration for creatives   the world over ancient Japanese gods and Spirits  show up in such diverse modern anime as Spirited   Away death note and yo-kai watch Norse Gods like  Thor and Loki have become some of the most famous   characters in the world with the Marvel Cinematic  Universe how many times have we seen Cupid show   up as the special guest in the Valentine's Day  episode of cartoon shows and who could forget   that sein old 2011 classic Nickelodeon's House  of Anubis but the impact of ancient mythology   is hardly limited to Simply reimagining mythical  figures as characters the plot beats of ancient   stories can be tweaked and given a new coat of  paint to replay ageless dramas with a fresh cast   of characters the way Frankenstein is based on  the myth of Prometheus Mulan Rouge is based on   the myth of orus in youry or the personalities  of archetypal figures can be used as the basis   for entirely new characters think of any fictional  pantheons that have a love goddess and a trickster   God probably most famously Comic Book Heroes  are often referred to as modern mythology and   the similarities are hard to ignore beings with  Godlike Powers sometimes as with Thor and Loki   actual mythological deities each with their own  theme and emblem who fight to protect or destroy   the world whose Cannon is forever shifting sounds  like mythology to me but they're missing a few   things firstly we know that their creators and  their lineage are recorded secondly they aren't   free for anyone to use and thirdly nobody  actually believes in them they're much less   modern mythology and more the metaphorical gods  of the American Zeitgeist if anything but that's   just how the legacy of myth has lived on where  are all the new myths the kind with no author no   traceable lineage okay you humans aren't really  dreaming up New Gods so much anymore but you're   still participating in that old oral tradition you  come up with other Tales Cryptids that lurk in the   woods and caves in the bottom of loch nest urban  legends that totally happened to your roommates   cousins friend all pass through Word of Mouth over  the course of decades with no known originator or   verification some of them like Tales of friendly  alien encounters are just intriguing but the vast   majority are also supposed to be frightening  because just like myths a lot of scary stories   exist to explain the world around you why you  should be scared of Dark Places and strangers   why nobody enters that abandoned building where  that weird stain on the school carpet came from   and unlike myths scary stories are thriving creepy  pastas have been all over the Internet practically   since it existed most passed from person to person  with no Central Cannon many with no clear Source   it started with email chain letters forwarded  by superstitious uncles and grandmothers and   eventually gave way to creatures like Slender  man who have inspired actual violent crimes by   Believers and while we know where Slender Man Came  From we still don't know where the original photo   of the back rooms was taken or who the person  in the original photo of Jeff the Killer really   was intriguingly the most similar thing we might  have to our own mythology now might be conspiracy   theories not the mainstream ones but the ones that  are really out there after all what's a cabal of   all powerful shape-shifting lizard people if not  a Pantheon of malevolent Gods conspiracy theories   like these show not just a similarity to ancient  mythology in terms of its followers sincerely   believing in it but also in the way that sincere  belief can be twisted to do harm still there are   some important differences here these conspiracy  theorists don't worship the gods they believe in   but seek to destroy them instead and they aren't  fundamental to an entire culture just a small   subculture and I know none of this is exactly what  we described when we were defining myth but that   Elder type of Mythology is still out there too for  instance during World War II certain melanesian   tribes with little exposure to the outside world  interpreted the cargo drops from Allied planes as   signs of favor from the spirits these cargo cults  as they became known began worshiping figures such   as a mythical American soldier called John from as  well as Prince philli of the United Kingdom these   religions still exist to this day with entire  generations of children presumably raised in   the faith and while I don't know for sure whether  they've developed complex mythology around these   beliefs I think it's a pretty safe guess mythology  just seems to be a part of Being Human so myth in   the classic sense might basically be dead but  that doesn't mean you aren't still engaging   in a version of it every time you invoke one of  the old mythological figures every time you form   the next Link in the chain of a rumor every time  you speculate baselessly about the true nature of   things you're participating in one of the oldest  storytelling traditions of all myth and someday   perhaps in the far distant future your ancestors  will look back on the strange stories you told and   believed and allowed to inform your worldview with  the same sense of awe that you feel for the gods   of old one of the most interesting truths about  all fiction though no matter how Fantastical it   has its roots in reality all those old eological  narratives the stories about how the Sun travels   across the sky because it's the wheel of Apollo's  Chariot or how the Earth and the sky are separate   from each other because a giant pushed them apart  all early human attempts to rationalize a reality   that they were observing but those early humans  were comparatively Limited in how much of the   world they even could observe these days you  can observe a whole lot more of it if you have   the tools there are so many new stories to tell  so much speculating left to do provided you can   see the parts of your world that aren't so easily  observed normally that means years of study and   schooling but it doesn't have to our sponsor  brilliant.org can make all of 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Channel: Tale Foundry

Views: 570,136

Keywords: Talefoundry, Writing, Fiction, Literature, Storytelling, Stories, Writers, Write, myth, mythology, folklore, crypids, ghost stories, legends, rumors, conspiracy theories, mythos, ancient mythology, anubis, zeus, apollo, artemis, athena, horus, isis, modern mythology, modern myth, folk stories, folk legend, monsters, cargo crate cult, cult, cultists, new religion, fairytale

Id: xDN3pEOZuXg

Length: 20min 1sec (1201 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 09 2023