If religion is an illicit unity, then the first task is surgical:
to separate what has been made to appear inseparable.
We begin with myth.
But as what it is, when stripped of these functions:
a semiotic system of construal.
1. The inherited mistake
Myth is almost always explained by what it does for society:
- it binds communities
- legitimises norms
- stabilises identities
- transmits values
Even when treated sympathetically, myth is cast as instrumental to social life.
This is the mistake.
It assumes, without argument, that meaning systems exist in order to coordinate value systems.
But once the illicit unity is cut, this assumption has nowhere to stand.
2. Myth as construal
Myth does something far more radical—and far more specific.
It brings forth worlds.
- gods and spirits
- origins and endings
- forces, agencies, orders of existence
This is first-order meaning.
Myth is not a container of meaning.
It is the actualisation of meaning.
3. No obligation to bind
Once understood this way, a striking consequence follows:
Myth has no intrinsic tendency to bind communities.
It does not:
- require collective adherence
- produce coordination
- enforce participation
Those are operations of a different system.
And often does.
4. The evidence already there
The moment you stop looking for cohesion, you start seeing dispersion everywhere:
- multiple, incompatible myths coexisting within the same population
- individuals drawing on fragments without commitment
- narratives shifting across contexts without loss of intelligibility
From a value perspective, this looks like instability.
From a meaning perspective, it is simply variation within a semiotic potential.
5. Against symbolic reduction
A common rescue attempt is to say:
myths are “symbolic expressions” of social realities.
But this reverses the relation.
It treats meaning as secondary—an expression of something else (power, structure, material conditions).
In doing so, it collapses semiotic construal into value coordination.
The alternative is sharper:
social realities are also construed.
Not by myth alone, but through semiotic systems.
Which means myth is not expressing a prior social order.
It is operating in a different domain altogether.
6. Narrative without necessity
Freed from the demand to bind, myth becomes something else entirely:
- a space of narrative experimentation
- a proliferation of possible worlds
- a field of semiotic variation
Contradiction is not a problem here.
It is a resource.
Multiple cosmologies can coexist because they are not required to resolve into a single coordinated order.
7. The illusion of coherence
So why does myth appear to hold societies together?
Because it is almost always encountered already coupled to value systems:
- embedded in ritual
- anchored in institutions
- reinforced through authority
Under those conditions, its variability is constrained.
Its proliferation is channelled.
Its contradictions are managed.
And it begins to look like a coherent, shared worldview.
But this coherence is not a property of myth itself.
It is an effect of coupling.
8. Myth in the wild
When decoupled—even partially—myth behaves differently:
- it fragments
- hybridises
- recombines across domains
- detaches from institutional control
What emerges is not collapse, but expansion of semiotic possibility.
The system does not weaken.
It loosens.
9. The analytic consequence
If myth does not bind, then it cannot explain:
- social cohesion
- norm enforcement
- institutional stability
Those belong elsewhere.
And with that, a large portion of explanatory discourse falls away:
- “shared myths create shared values”
- “narratives hold communities together”
- “cultural stories underpin social order”
These are not wrong because they are false.
They are wrong because they conflate systems.
10. What remains
What remains is both narrower and more precise:
Myth is a semiotic system that actualises worlds through construal.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
And this is not a diminishment.
It is a liberation.
- What kinds of worlds does it make possible?
- How does it vary across contexts?
- What constraints shape its actualisations?
Without smuggling in the demands of value.
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