If myth names the work of orientation, then it should not surprise us that this work continues under other names.
In a scientific world, orientation rarely appears as myth as such.
It appears as art, ritual, and education — practices that do not primarily explain, but still shape what can be perceived, felt, and lived.
Art: re-weighting attention
Art does not explain the world.
It reorganises attention.
By slowing perception, amplifying contrast, or unsettling familiarity, art alters what stands out and what recedes.
In doing so, it re-weights possibility.
What can be noticed changes.
What can be endured changes.
What can be imagined changes.
This is orientational work, whether or not it is acknowledged as such.
Ritual: holding orientation in time
Ritual is often dismissed as empty repetition.
But repetition is precisely how orientation is stabilised.
Rituals mark thresholds, synchronise bodies, and maintain shared tempos of significance.
They do not transmit information.
They preserve a field in which actions remain intelligible.
In a world of constant novelty, ritual performs the quiet labour of continuity.
Education: shaping what can be thought
Education is not primarily the transfer of knowledge.
It is the cultivation of sensibility.
What counts as a good question, what feels puzzling, what demands precision, what can be left vague — these are orientational outcomes.
Education shapes not only what students know, but what they find thinkable.
This makes it one of the most powerful orientational practices of all.
Orientation without totality
Art, ritual, and education do not aspire to total orientation.
They operate locally, provisionally, and often in tension with one another.
This partiality is not a weakness.
It is what allows orientation to remain flexible rather than brittle.
The ongoing work
In a scientific world, myth does not disappear.
It disperses.
Orientation is carried by practices that do not claim authority over the whole, yet quietly shape how life can be lived.
Recognising this does not restore myth to a privileged position.
It simply makes visible the work that has never stopped being done.
No comments:
Post a Comment