Religion and Myth

I find it interesting that a good deal of people - scholars included - insist that "myth" is a different creature from "religion." Now, I know that my atheism probably introduces a good deal of bias here, but I still don't see a technical distinction. Even if I were religious, I would consider what is popularly considered "myth" a form of religion. Just because one thinks it is wrong should not automatically requalify it as "myth" rather than "religion."

All this comes to the forefront of my brain because I recently read Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth. Short, it certainly is, though her views on the development of hunting and agrarian mythologies are interesting. What irritates me about the book, however, is the clear bias toward twentieth- and twenty-first-century understandings of "religion" and "spirituality." She states that "We are meaning-seeking creatures," further stipulating that imagination is what gives rise to myth and religion:
Another peculiar characteristic of the human mind is its ability to have ideas and experiences that we cannot explain rationally. We have imagination, a faculty that enables us to think of something that is not immediately present, and that, when we first conceive it, has no objective existence. The imagination is the faculty that produces religion and myth. (Armstrong 2)
So far, I follow. We make up stories and fairy tales, so why not myths and religions? But I was initially a little disturbed at the distinction being drawn between "religion and myth." This leads her to make several claims that privilege an older, more archaic form of social imagination, stating that "Religion has been one of the most traditional ways of attaining ecstasy, but if people no longer find it in temples, synagogues, churches or mosques, they look for it elsewhere: in art, music, poetry, rock, dance, drugs, sex or sport" (Armstrong 8), as though this is a bad thing. Now, I agree that when we no longer find meaning in religion, we as a species tend to turn elsewhere. My objection is to the continual thread running through the book that implies that this is a bad thing. When she says "Today we separate the religious from the secular" (Armstrong 15), she implies sympathy with the ancients whose myth pervaded all aspects of their daily life. Why is it that my imagination may not permeate all that I do, enriching it without the false construction of mythology (or religion) to ratify it with illusory value?

As she continues, Armstrong feels obliged to apologize for identifying Jesus with Herakles - "This is not intended to be pejorative" (Armstrong 106), she writes - and states, in contradiction to her own previous distinction, that "unless a historical event is mythologised, it cannot become a source of religious inspiration" (Armstrong 106). I completely concur, yet my irritation with her for her blatant apologism leads me to almost wish she were not right. My conclusion from this is that all religion is myth, the events contained within its scope mythologized so that they may become universally accessible and permeable.

But it is when Armstrong turns to logos that I find her argument most fractured. She divides logos from myth/religion (despite the almost universal association of Logos with God or divine law) and blames it for the loss of myth in the contemporary world:
But logos had never been able to provide human beings with the sense of significance that they seemed to require. It had been myth that had given structure and meaning to life, but as modernisation progressed and logos achieved such spectacular results, mythology was increasingly discredited. (Armstrong 122)
And:
We may be more sophisticated in material ways, but we have not advanced spiritually beyond the Axial Age: because of our suppression of mythos we may even have regressed. We still long to 'get beyond' our immediate circumstances, and to enter a 'full time', a more intense, fulfilling existence. We try to enter this dimension by means of art, rock music, drugs or by entering the larger-than-life perspective of film. We still seek heroes. (Armstrong 134-135)
And, by implication, we fail to find fulfillment in these "material" things, leading, therefore, to the need for myth/religion.

She concludes with the suggestion that the "sacred" appears now in novels and works of art, that what we consider to be "academic" or "godless" (her term) really harken back to the mythology we claim to have left behind. In one sense, I agree with her. We do use alternative means to find fulfillment in our lives now that the Industrial Revolution and the Ages of Reason and Enlightenment have led us away from the Church. But why must meaning be affiliated - always - with the "sacred"? It is an argument made by Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and Christopher Hitchens (God is not Great), both of whom point out that they find their greatest awe when faced with the non-sacred, with science, with the scope of the human imagination. To find value, why must we always turn to something outside of human understanding and aptitude? Why can't we find fulfillment within ourselves and within our species? Are we truly so terrible that the majority of our species refuses to even consider the possibility that we - and only we - are responsible for what we have become?

The Epic Love Story

Having just finished rereading Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra for class next week, I am reminded yet again of the absurdity of so many of our "epic love stories," this one (and, of course, Romeo and Juliet) included. In particular, I am irritated by our response to the tragic love stories with which we we are inculcated by literature classes and movies.

These two of Shakespeare's - along with, let's say, Gone with the Wind - are perhaps the ones that aggravate me the most. It is not that they are poorly written or badly presented. Not at all. It's the placid insipidity of the characters and their utterly irrational behavior that drives me insane.

Like Jane Austen's Eleanor of Sense and Sensibility, I do not see the point of dying for love, unlike her more emotional sister Marianne, who can think of nothing more grand. I just don't see the beauty of dying for love. Dying to protect those you love, certainly. But dying for love betrays a kind of insipid and ignorant melodrama.

But I - as has often been determined - am cold and dead inside. I was never happier during my reading of Gone with the Wind than when Rhett walked out. The best part of Madame Bovary was when Emma finally died the horrible death she deserved. I desperately wanted Gwendolen of Daniel Deronda to drown when she was shoved off the boat. If Romeo had been killed by Tybalt at the beginning of the play, or if Rosaline had opened her bloody window, or if that plague Mercutio mentions had struck a little earlier... You get the idea.

I am particularly vexed by melodrama in young love - R&J aren't even old enough to drive in contemporary society - though in Antony and Cleopatra, one cannot help but think that two people of their age really ought to know better. At least R&J have the excuse of "young and stupid."

Ultimately, though, it isn't the works or their authors who drive me insane. It's the cultural response. We name our children and our pets after Romeo and Juliet, we happily quote "Quite frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," as though it were the most romantic mantra in the world, and we get starry-eyed over the great love of Antony and Cleopatra.

Wake up, people. Scarlett and Rhett made out the best of the lot, because at least they LIVED. Romeo, Juliet, Antony, and Cleopatra all DIED. By dagger and sword and snake. Dead. All of them. Not exactly a fairy-tale ending.

And you know what? They don't get to live happily ever after. They don't achieve the fulfillment of their love because they're dead. Death is not a good way to go about finding love. In fact, it's pretty much the best way to not find it at all.

So when the editors of the edition of Antony and Cleopatra suggest that Antony and Cleopatra win in the end because their love allows them to transcend the petty concerns of the world... I call bullsh*t.

Antony and Cleopatra caused widespread war, neglect, civil and international conflict, infidelity, slavery, and an epidemic of suicide (Enobarbus, Eros, Charmian, Iras, to say nothing about themselves). They were screwups of royal proportions. So don't go immortalizing their love story as if it were the great lauding of love. It's not. It's about how two daft people should not let their privates govern their countries. You can't even definitively prove they did love each other. Only that the gratification of their private desires completely screwed both Rome and Egypt and only got hauled back out of the muck because Caesar Octavian was a serious bad*ss.

Ah, yes. The joys of love. The complete obliteration of all you've ever worked for so you can stab yourself dejectedly when some strumpet fakes her own death, only to discover she's not dead at all, and then you die anyway. Oh, yeah, she dies, too. And so do your friends. And her friends. And then the guy you were fighting wins.

Personally, I'd rather not.