Lies. Humanities tool to gain what we desire, at the expense
of inconvenient truths. According to Dr. Michael Sexson this is what a myth is,
a lie. If a myth is a lie then what is humanity trying to gain, and what truth
is it denying?
What truth does a myth deny? A simple answer would be all of
them. Myths are created to answer the most desirable questions we as humans inquire.
Where does the sun go at night? Why is that volcano erupting? What happened, ‘in
the beginning?’ As our knowledge advances we find that all of the old myths are
nothing but stories; the remnants of our ancestors grasping at straws. We learn
the sun doesn’t go anywhere we just move out of its sight, that pressure causes
an upheaval of magma, and space began to expand.
What does humanity desire? Truth. We cower in the face of
the unknown, when truth is hidden we desperately try to uncover it. Even if we
must settle on mere fractions of the truth, we would rather believe we have
found the truth, though it’s just a guess, than continue living in darkness.
This is why we create myths; they are small candles that light up a painfully
dark room. Until we find the light switch and realize that our candles could
barely show us what was right in front of our eyes, let alone the beauty of the
entire room.
Isn’t this a contradiction? The single, solitary goal of a
myth is to create an answer, to try to find truth. We may now be able to look
back on myths and say with certainty that they are false, but they never
intended to deny any truth. Given the limited capabilities of their time they tried
to find truth in any way they could. We cannot say that a myth tires to deny
truth for some other goal, when that other goal is truth. At best we can only say that a myth is; A misinformed
guess.
