lunamoth
Will to love
In what way? isn't mythology a conscious activity?
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What Would Be Lost?
- Thread starter lunamoth
- Start date
lunamoth
Will to love
Just to be sure I understand, you think that religion is an essential human trait? Why is that?
Mythology follows the same patterns and "logic" as at least some dreams.
lunamoth
Will to love
You must be much more deeply versed in this subject than I am.
bigbadgirl
Active Member
How many religions are not about an afterlife? The big three are.
Me Myself
Back to my username
I wouldn´t say it is essential to be of a reigion, but everything that makes religion be is essential to who we are.
It´s no coincidence that every culture developed it´s own religion.
If religion didn´t exist, then probably some really essential parts of us would not exist. If this essential parts of us did exist, then there would be some very weird limitation or I don´ñt know what should need to be different in us for us to not be able to generate religion again.
It has happened always in human history.
Religion comes from the most important parts of us I would believe.
lunamoth
Will to love
I tend to agree. What human traits do you think are tightly connected to the tendency to be religious?
You might enjoy reading Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, among others.
Storm
ThrUU the Looking Glass
Teaching something does not necessitate being defined by it.
lunamoth
Will to love
I've read some Campbell but I don't recall him saying that myth is very similar to dreaming.
outhouse
Atheistically
I recall him stating as much several times, including in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and also in The Masks of God.
Me Myself
Back to my username
It would be hard for me to say exactly.
but being in awe and feeling so tiny but in a good way when looking at the whole, like that kind of difficultly defined spiritual experience, there are quite a few actually! more than people surely, at leastr different approaches to it.
The thing is that you have one human that aligns himself with this somehow. Then he is so happy he needs to share it, and because he experienced it, others listen and marvel. Now becuase he had this experience in a very specific way, he relates things to that experience that are not necesarily essential to it. Then he mizes realizations and epiphanies he had there that were important in his moment, culture, time etc.
Utlimately, spirituality means to find the most essential things for us about ourselves.
Religion is kind of a product of that, and a product that tries to make others eventually get to this spiritual experience (many times without luck). But it is a testimony that this feelings of trascendance exist.
Religion tries to trap in words what is infinitely beyond them. I love it because it´s kinda cute, that human attempt
bigbadgirl
Active Member
We are defined not by whom we are, but how others believe us to be. What would be lost? Nothing but belief.
lunamoth
Will to love
I read The Power of Myth, and it's been a while so I quickly browsed and found this:
"...Because a dream is a personal experience of that deep, dark ground that is the support of our conscious lives, and a myth is society's dream. The myth is the public dream and the dream is the private myth. If your private myth, your dream, happens to coincide with that of the society, you are in good accord with your group. If it isnt', you've got and adventure in the dark forest ahead of you."
So, I see the connection. But, it also would seem, as Me Myself suggests, that myth is very much connected to human nature, and Campbell says that shared myth is important for society. I would extend that and suggest that shared myth is important for healthy societies. Added: and shared myth is religion.
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I doubt any culture could start from that point, since as Sagan points out, critical self-evaluating thought doesn't appear to be human nature -- it's a learned behavior, one that even seems flippant and counterintuitive to us at times. It took a long time for humans to figure it out and most still haven't done so (even in the first world), and I'm not just saying that as a stab at religion because I'm talking about broader things than religion here.
I also suspect something that could be called "religious" would even come out of a society living on an island that started with skeptical principles (science is only a subsection of skepticism) because frankly I bet there would still be people eventually in that society that did their metaphysics differently.
lunamoth
Will to love
Few of us have clear-thinking self-criticism as one of our strongest traits, so I can see where that comes from. From Sagan I have read Demon-Haunted World (need to read that one again soon, it's been a while), but could not quickly find his thoughts on myth in my copy. I like Sagan a lot. Even in retrospect, it is hard to imagine human societies developing without shared myth/religion of some kind.
I agree, but I also tend to think of religions as our shared 'story,' one that addresses various needs each of us has and requires of our relationships/dependency upon each other.
Which is quite possibly the main reason there was a need for religion in the first place.
It's unlikely we ever would have settled down and built civilizations if it weren't for religion, so no.