Just saw that a new book has been published directly on the topic of creating new mythologies.
The book is "Story Wars" by Jonah Sachs.
On the other hand, I also see that there's a new movie coming out on September 7th, called BRANDED. A story of myth-making gone awry.
The movie trailer is here: http://brandedmovie.com/
Joe
Replies
Hi Joe, as far as 'Story Wars' goes, at first glance I thought the authors intention was to teach writers and advertisers, how to captivate people's imagination with universal symbols and archetypes. I wondered if the title was a reference to 'Star Wars', and the success George Lucas achieved after learning about them from Joseph Campbell's work. Then I read the first few pages of the book, and sure enough...
Question: Do you consider 'Star Wars' a new myth?
Myths going awry?! Considering the health of our planet, I'd say mythmaking went awry a long time ago. It appears, the idea of a supreme creator deity--who put us here to have dominion over nature--was a bad one. Oh, sure it was a good idea for a time, but not in our time...
Reverence for the Goddess--and hence ALL of nature--is totally lost with biblical thinking and monothiesm. IMO, the new myth has to bring man into accord with nature and one another, by showing 'the way' up, from biblical thinking and monotheism, to non-dual consciousness and transcendence...
Hi Scott,
No, I wouldn't consider Star Wars to be a new myth. IMO, it was a translation of an old myth (the Hero's Journey) into another setting, and from what I can tell from watching the movie trailer for "Branded," it too is a translation of an old story, perhaps even the same one.
We have not honored the gods and so they now have become our diseases and addictions. The hero starts off in the ordinary world which for us (in our modern and postmodern world) has the appearance of a kind of wasteland (evil empire, corporate domination, widespread psychopathology, etc..). She/He hears the call (perhaps encounters a mentor) and crosses the threshold, entering the special world of tests, allies, and enemies, etc... These narratives all assume that there is a "villian" - some defined enemy to fight in order to set things right again. This is an out of date paradigm, in my opinion.
I agree that the mono-myth and monological thinking has contributed to the problem. Postmodernism offers through pluralism a possible realignment once again to all of the gods (not just Apollo or an Apollo vs. Dionysus conflict), but I have yet to see a compelling myth which supports a more polytheistic paradigm and which also moves things forward and not back to a retro-romantic view of tribalism or the Mean-Green-Meme.
If I had to come up with a central idea for a new myth, I might look at the phenomenon of the Shadow, and the idea of facing the complexes, withdrawing projections and integrating the generative principles contained therein which comprise all of the gods - all the archetypes (in a balanced constellation) which lie at the core of the complexes. In terms of recent movies, "The Matrix" might have come closer to this paradigm than some others.
Perhaps a truly new myth will begin to appear spontaneously like the sightings of the Virgin Mary or of the god Wotan who appeared in the dreams of the German people in the period before WWII.
Joe
Hi Joseph!
Myth = Brand.
Here what the "fine print" states at the Amazon book site:
Trying to get your message heard? Build an iconic brand? Welcome to the battlefield.
The story wars are all around us. They are the struggle to be heard in a world of media noise and clamor. Today, most brand messages and mass appeals for causes are drowned out before they even reach us. But a few consistently break through the din, using the only tool that has ever moved minds and changed behavior—great stories.
With insights from mythology, advertising history, evolutionary biology, and psychology, viral storyteller and advertising expert Jonah Sachs takes readers into a fascinating world of seemingly insurmountable challenges and enormous opportunity. You’ll discover how:
• Social media tools are driving a return to the oral tradition, in which stories that matter rise above the fray