The stories we tell amongst ourselves by word of mouth, in books, movies and TV, both reflect and contribute to, the mythic fundament of our taken-for-granted reality.
Apocalyptic themes have permeated the lore of many, though not all, cultures. There are stories of grand beginnings and calamitous endings but there are also stories of what has always been and will always be, as well — stories of our immortality by way of continuation.
Grand beginnings and calamitous ends figure prominently in our Scientistic age, thanks in great part, according E. A. Burtt, to its metaphysical origins in Pythagorean and neo-Platonic reduction and Judeo-Christian doctrine.
We need to understand that apocalyptic myths are not built into our brains. They are stories we construct in the service of particular kinds of practical relations amongst ourselves as we go forward in the world.
Scientism, born during the Enlightenment, in which the endless and industrious reduction of everything and ourselves to elemental particles in a unified field, bouncing around pointlessly, reflects and enables our current hi-tech M.O. for acting forward in the word. This reduction reflects and contributes to our preoccupation with a cold and heartless end-time — a darkness rising.
But if we know this is how we work — that the stories we create and tell amongst ourselves make us what we are and what we are becoming, then we can aim to become better story tellers. We can teach our young how story works and how to tell stories that work better. This is not much different than teaching ourselves that the work of singing and dancing our way forward into the future is more important than the rear-view-mirror work we do that is aimed at taking apart and reverse engineering the clockwork of the universe — including ourselves.
(For the latest, see Higgs Boson mania)
