Thoughts are an experience.

We use language to attempt to encode those experiences into a set of symbols.

Of course there is going to be a discrepancy between the richness and fullness of a lived experience and the words we would use to describe it.

I couldn’t agree more.

As much as modern interpretations of spirituality get flack, I actually see them as a move in the right direction.

When people on Instagram post things about “listening to the universe” or whatever, I see it as a secular attempt to employ traditional religious modes and methods of interacting with the world and life in general.

In a world that is as decentralized as the one that we live in, it’s impossible to know when, if ever, such a belief system could codify into a unified set of principles that we could follow as a collective.

I’m doubtful if such an ideological unification would even be a good thing in the first place.

But I do see a lot of evidence that there is a trend towards a sort of modern, decentralized, more secular spirituality which at least attempts to reconcile our emotional wants and needs with modern developments in science and philosophy.

Several thousand years ago, the Greeks believed that Hades fell in love with the goddess of spring, Persephone. She was a lover of light and nature, and could not possibly have loved Hades, in his gloomy underworld.

But that didn’t stop Hades. He kidnapped her, took her to the underworld, and forced her to marry him. But, as she was held captive there, he noticed the things he loved about her disappear. Her inner light faded, and she wilted like a flower without the sun. So he made a deal with her.

6 months a year, she can live in our world, and bring spring and summer. But the remaining 6 months, she must return to the underworld. In her absence, autumn would strip trees of their leaves and winter blanketed the land in snow.

And that’s their explanation for seasons.

Now, the amount the average Greek knew about the world back then probably greatly facilitated their belief such a story.

And when the oracle proclaimed it from his pulpit on high, your average Greek had neither the knowledge nor the evidence with which he could reason against the claim, nor a reason to want to try to argue in the first place.

After all, he’d be called a heretic and malefactor if he did dispute it, so why would he.

Instead, he would participate in the faith and the various forms of culture and ritual that would emerge from it.

None of this has very much to do with the “Truth” factor of the assertion that winter exists because Hades married Persephone.

He might even find the story a bit romantic, and therefore relatable; Hades loves Persephone for her light and love of life, but recognizes that he will take what he loves from her if he holds her captive. So he lets her go.

Mr. Greekman might find that thought a bit intoxicating. Therefore, the story might double not only as an explanation for the seasons, but also as a commentary on the nature of love and it’s relationship to possession

But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that what it takes for him to believe the story is that it’s told by a person in a position of authority, and that he agrees that winter exists.

It doesn’t need to be true for there to be a reason to believe in it. The risk of social alienation is enough. And it at least somewhat parallels what he can observe about nature.

Let’s parallel this to the modern day.

Our relative understanding of the world has deepened. Our awareness of the politics of power has also deepened.

Myths and metaphor have done a relatively poor job keeping up with the development of our knowledge.

The problem is not the death of myth and metaphor. It isn’t that there is a vacuum of “belieflessness”, into which all meaning is absorbed and lost forever.

The problem is that many of these myths and metaphors are no longer relatable because they are not reflective of our experiences.

In a secular nation state, the risk of severe consequences for faithlessness are greatly reduced.

Thus, the changes in our knowledge and in our social environment have given rise to a phenomenon where myth and metaphor have become particularly impotent when it comes to performing (what I believe) their purpose is; to behave as an ideological and social coagulant.

The resulting lack of social cohesion is what’s responsible for the conflict of meaning and understanding that has arisen in the modern world. We will necessarily struggle to know what to believe when we live in a world without consensus.

While the smartest amongst us might have, at least partially, risen above a sort of tribal perspective, they’ve left the rest of us behind.

The vast majority of us are still arguing about God’s opinion on gay people.

But again, it isn’t the death of myth or metaphor that’s responsible for this.

It’s that there are now many opposing authorities offering differing explanations for the order of the universe, competing amongst each other to win over as much of the population as they can.

If each of these ideologies represents a sort of cohesive world view, their intersection and competition in the public domain is a sort of blender which reduces each competitor to an unidentifiable and alien slurry; it’s nutritional value, no longer visible or apparent.

To put it more concretely, studying science as a religious person might result in a conflict which makes both science and religion seem absurd by their comparison to one another.

While the professor and the preacher are espousing contradictory perspectives, the student must somehow either reconcile them with one another, or else renounce one in favor of the other.

While we can, at least partially be guided by reason, most of us are predominantly motivated through emotion. These emotions are themselves incredibly vulnerable to biases.

Because of this vulnerability to bias, there does not have to be a truth in our beliefs; our beliefs are often conformed around a set of needs we unconsciously hold. Myths and metaphors can appeal to these unconscious needs, but that isn’t because they’re true, it’s because they’re significantly more powerful linguistic tools for communication precisely BECAUSE they can slip past our defenses, target out emotional vulnerabilities, and bypass our faculty of reason.

The Hades and Persephone myth is made much more effective (in terms of its ability to get stuck in your brain) because it couches it’s explanation for the seasons in a story about the pain of loving from a place of deficiency or sorrow.

But, for the average person, our ability to believe in things is only slightly affected by its truth factor. Our beliefs, by my measure, are first and foremost shaped by their utility to us. And that utility is, once again, first and foremost emotional in nature.

And that is what enables us to form beliefs around untrue things.

I guess my point is that myth and metaphor are neither inherently good, nor do they have to be inherently truthful. They are not powerful through their ability to depict reality, but rather, because they are powerful linguistic tools to generally communicate a broad sentiment. They are effective at replicating reality in the same way an impressionistic painting is; they idealize and approximate some vague truths, seduce us with their beauty, and leave the mind to fill in the details.

This doesn’t make them inherently evil either. Myth and metaphor are simply powerful linguistic tools for communicating an idea or concept. To what end that tool is utilized is the measure of its value.

But the sort of “meaning void” we’ve fallen in to is much more a result of changing social and environmental factors, ideological and philosophical conflict between different sources of authority, and a general deepening of our knowledge (thus resulting in myth and metaphor needing to more accurately depict reality), than it is about our disconnection from some primal Truth that can only be ascertained through spiritual means.