The previous posts set aside two persistent misframings: that myth is bad explanation, and that explanation is the right lens through which to approach it.
This post introduces the positive account.
Myth is a practice of orientation.
What orientation is
Orientation is not belief, knowledge, or explanation.
To be oriented is to have a sense of:
where one is,
what kind of situation this is,
what matters here,
what calls for action or restraint,
and what kinds of futures are conceivable.
Orientation precedes judgement. It operates before truth and falsity become relevant.
One can be well oriented or poorly oriented, but not correct in the way a proposition is correct.
Orientation before objects
Orientation does not begin with objects.
Before there are discrete things to be explained, there is already a field of salience: some aspects of experience stand out, others recede; some relations matter, others do not.
Myth works at this level.
It does not describe a world of objects.
It stabilises a world as lived.
Stories that locate
Myths locate their participants.
They answer questions such as:
Who are we in this situation?
What kind of forces are at play?
What is at stake?
What responses are fitting?
These answers are not delivered as propositions. They are enacted through narrative patterns, figures, repetitions, and contrasts.
A myth tells you where you stand by showing you how to move.
Orientation without explanation
Because myth orients rather than explains, its effectiveness does not depend on causal adequacy.
A myth can orient successfully even when its imagery is fantastical, contradictory, or opaque.
What matters is not whether the story corresponds to an independent reality, but whether it holds a field of action and meaning together.
This is why myths persist even when their literal content is no longer taken seriously.
The orientation can remain intact long after belief has faded.
Myth and repetition
Orientation must be stable to be usable.
Myths therefore rely on repetition: retelling, ritual, familiar figures, recurring scenes.
This repetition is often mistaken for rigidity or dogma.
In fact, it is how orientation is maintained across time and individuals.
A myth does not merely happen once. It must be re-enterable.
Orientation and responsibility
To provide orientation is to shape attention and action.
Myths therefore carry responsibility, whether acknowledged or not.
They do not dictate behaviour, but they weight possibilities: some responses appear natural, others unthinkable.
Understanding myth as orientation makes this visible without reducing myth to manipulation or ideology.
Toward structured possibility
If myth orients, it does so by stabilising a space of possibility: what can happen meaningfully, what counts as a response, what futures can be imagined.
The next post makes this explicit, showing how myths function as stories that hold structured possibility steady — not by explaining the world, but by delimiting how it can unfold.
No comments:
Post a Comment