Interesting conversation!
[
apologies for the ramble below . . .]
My take on the issue of whether the myth lives us or we live the myth goes something like this:
I think we have a very strong sociality instinct (much stronger than we often realize) . . . and I think that this sociality instinct is not specifically an instinct for all forms of human society, but only for what I've been referring to as "tribalism".
This tribalism is defined by a few basic qualities. For instance, a limited quantity (probably below 200 members . . . especially when we consider that our brains have evolved to be able to "remember" about 150 others before resorting to stereotyping). Also, a self/Other ideology in which tribal purity/identity is strictly defined. Thirdly (and this is not meant to be exhaustive), a sacralization of tribal cohesion, making it the most important ideology or totem for the tribe and all its members.
My working theory is that, in our ancestral, tribal environment (environment of evolutionary adaptedness), human sociality operates almost entirely by instinct. That is, unconsciously. I see (in such an environment) the expressions of religion, myth, belief, dogma, ritual, etc. as some of the archetypal images that emerge and are found to be numinous by the tribe. Archetypal
images being the egoic perception and interpretation of instincts.
Totemized tribal cohesion, then, is the best recipe for survivability for a tribe (and its members) in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. Because this is the fundamental instinct to human sociality (a radically social species), there is an immense instinctual pull in all of us for tribalism. When I seem to disparage tribalism, I mean in no way to disparage this instinct or prescribe some kind of super-ego repression of it. There is a lot of good in this tribal instinct. Eros/connectedness, for one. Empathy (our ability to think projectively and see how we are like others). Basic morality. Cooperative development. Etc.
When I criticize "tribalism", I am criticizing "neo-tribalism", which I see as an attempt to return to this state of unconscious, fundamental sociality
at almost any cost. That is to say, the return to tribalism is granted so much (ideological and numinous) importance that the neo-tribalist very easily convinces him or herself that the return is worth the expense of anyone and anything deemed "Other" by the tribe.
I see this behind most totalitarian movements, and especially the catastrophic neo-tribalist movements of the 20th century like Nazism, fascism, and Stalinism. I also see the rise of Christianity in exactly the same way.
So the real problem with the return to tribalism (after the Fall into modernism) is that it demands the sacrifice of Otherness. Those deemed Others are not granted group or individual rights or recognized as fully human. As these Others are pushed outside the realm of moral privilege, they are effectively dehumanized or scapegoated. This is a ritualistic tribal process that allows the tribe to purge or radically mistreat the dehumanized Others.
We cannot return to pure, instinctual tribalism without also losing our modern, conscious sense of morality. That is, the morality of humanism that encourages us to believe that all human individuals deserve equal rights and equal social worth
as individuals. Instead of the tribe being the most important social unit, the individual is granted that privilege in modern humanism. We can decry the "overemphasis on the individual" in modernism (and it does have repercussions) . . . but the fact of the matter is that this is a significantly more "moral" system, as it allows for equality among all individuals regardless of their affiliations. Essentially, humanity reinterprets the tribal sociality instinct through consciousness so that all human individuals are part of the tribe and deserve the rights of tribal members.
Why then did we leave the Eden of tribalism? I think this is a matter of survival and adaptation. Our species possesses the raw tools to conceptualize and innovate . . . and to think in far longer (more strategical) terms than other apes. What we know from both archaeological and recoded history is that it is an undeniable fact that the "fittest" societies for human survivability and reproduction are modern societies. The human population today is enormous compared to prehistoric days. Our global population has been generally growing (with the possible exception of the Dark Ages when Christianity came to power) ever since
homo sapiens evolved.
This isn't a value judgment about what is the best kind of society . . . I am speaking in purely evolutionary terms. I think it is as simple as this: as human society approaches modernism, human sociality increases in evolutionary fitness. But it isn't "simple" from the value perspective of human individuals. Tribalism (being an instinct) has never died (or come remotely close to dying) . . . it has merely been reinterpreted through the human organ of consciousness.
Consciousness, in my view, is an instinct "super-adapter". The demands on consciousness are very small in the tribal environment. In fact, in the tribal environment, too much consciousness in an individual can prove to be dangerous to tribal cohesion. Consciousness, in a sense, is a form of cognitive super-plasticity. In a state of relative "unconsciousness" we do not apply much plasticity to the interpretation of our instincts. When unconscious, we are "in thrall" to our instincts (and our religious systems will represent this as being in thrall to powers, ancestors, or gods that demand very strict and specific behavior).
The notion of free will is connected to the measure of plasticity in our consciousness. We are "free" to interpret our instincts through consciousness in non-fundamentalist ways. We are even free to try to ignore, to repress, or to not act on our instincts (but if we fall into unconsciousness with too much repression, we will act out our instincts unconsciously and more or less fundamentalistically).
In my view (and this is just rewording Jungianism for the most part), instincts "desire" to be actualized. They are largely behavioral goads. We might have some free will in interpreting them, but we do not have any power over turning them on or off with consciousness. When we thwart the actualization of our instincts, we experience anxiety. Also, what we call consciousness (the ego) is not as powerful nor as large as we generally "feel" it is. Our thoughts and feelings, for instance, are not created by consciousness . . . they are merely observed by consciousness (sometimes as archetypal images). Which means that we cannot entirely keep instinctual goading out of our thoughts and feelings (even as we can keep them out of our behaviors to a larger degree).
One of the cognitive principals of consciousness is that it "invents" reasons that bring order or meaning to data . . . when those reasons and order are not necessarily present. Part of this invention can be the assignment of conscious volition, or
rationalization. In other words, we can be goaded into various thoughts and feelings by our instincts and come up with rationalized reasons why we invented these thoughts and feelings consciously and rationally. This is one of the many ways in which we tend to be significantly less conscious than we believe we are. Which is to say, free will, as it is commonly conceived, is itself much more determined by instinctual, autonomous cognitive processes than we recognize consciously.
Sometime the "cults" of free will are actually the least "free" . . . because absolute belief in free will only means that we have become unconscious of the autonomous cognitive process. This kind of (typical) "ego-maniac" believes s/he creates her/his thoughts . . . and this belief and its contents (dogmas, totems, taboos, etc.) will actually be governed by fundamental (not interpreted through much plasticity) instincts. The "cult of the will", is just another form of unconscious tribalism (as Nazism clearly demonstrated).
Therefore, we come to the very interesting predicament of human consciousness and free will. That is, the greatest "freedom" or plasticity of consciousness in interpreting instinct is afforded only through the recognition and valuation of the autonomous, instinctual cognitive process. Free will is developed through the limitation and differentiation of the ego (rather than through its "reckless expansion", which only leads to unconsciousness).
Only through this differentiation can an individual truly make "free" or highly plastic interpretations of instinctual, cognitive urgings. Otherwise, the ego doesn't really know why it thinks and does what it thinks and does . . . it merely develops a rationalization (which is itself an autonomous process). So, to be "free" is to recognize that the ego is part of the human cognitive toolkit. It is a plasticity tool. Seen cynically, the ego will always be enslaved to the Self . . . and can only win partial freedom through consciousness (which is a consciousness of its own enslavement!).
An important question then is, "Why plasticity at all?" The potential benefits of this plasticity of consciousness are enormous . . . as this plasticity allows us to be super-adaptive to changes in our environment (through skills like conceptualization and innovation). So long as consciousness uses its plasticity to effectively channel instinct, our species can make adaptations to environmental changes or problems in "non-evolutionary" time.
But is the egoic "margin of error" worth these benefits? Evolutionarily speaking, absolutely and without doubt. We like to think of ourselves as having lost Eden, Fallen, radically screwed up (by becoming modernists). But we are evolutionarily or genetically successful now more than ever before. We don't really "screw up" as often as we think . . . because we tend to act in accordance with our instincts almost all the time, whether we realize it or not. If we didn't, we would have probably died out as a species.
What we face now as an "externality" of our social evolution is not (directly) extinction. It is stress, depression, ennui. This is a small price (for
some and by no means all) to pay from the perspective of our genes (which succeed at replicating themselves like never before).
But we now face something utterly different (than just the supposed loss of our myths). I call this new thing the Problem of the Modern. The Problem of the Modern is a massive environmental change unlike any environmental change faced by any species ever on this planet. It is more complex than "overpopulation" (but similar in many ways). Now we are being challenged not only by overpopulation and excessive competition over limited resources, but by our ability to self-exterminate on a species-wide level. We have it in our power to prevent this, but we are in a state of self-opposition, because our ability to prevent disasters (and maybe even reverse some of the damage we have already done) is dependent on our ability to become more conscious (or dependent on a higher percentage of us becoming conscious).
It's easy to see this in almost every environmental (e.g., ecosystem disrupting) problem we face today. There are usually solutions . . . but only if we can get some or many people to deprioritize their immediate desires (for wealth or comforts and conveniences). People have to learn that the short term gains are not worth the long term losses. Why is this so hard? Because instinct pulls at us so powerfully, and the easiest way to respond to instinct is unconsciously or "non-interpretively". That's the path of least resistance. While consciousness is difficult, energy-consuming, and extremely fragile. I think we should even consider the possibility that consciousness as we experience it is something like a partially-evolved trait. Even in the modern world it seems that high-level consciousness is not naturally selected for at a very high rate. Relative unconsciousness has many advantages.
But our modern societies and cultures have been built with some measure of consciousness or long-term strategization included. The "flaw" with this long-term design is that these modern societies only work at maximum efficiency when the individuals of the society participate in the group with consciousness. A simple example in our culture: a democracy operates at peek efficiency only when the vast majority of voters have not only shown up to cast their votes but also researched or adequately evaluated and understood the policies of the candidates. But because these things don't happen sufficiently in the United States, people end up constantly voting against their (and often, the majority of the population's) interests. In other words, functional democracy depends significantly on effective dissemination (and
comprehension) of valid and useful information. This is why the "founding fathers" of our country believed the newspapers would be able to keep the government in line . . . a kind of checks and balances system outside of government.
So, all we need to do to find a clog in the democratic plumbing (by no means the only one, of course) is look to our institutions of information dissemination: the media and the education system. Both are very much under siege today by what we might call "ideological interests" . . . or people that stand to make a significant profit from the control of information. In order for the American voter to "outsmart" these ideological interests trying to control information to improve profit-making, s/he often has to actively seek out alternative media and education avenues. That requires not only a great deal more time and effort, but a much higher demand on self-reflection. That is, in order to see the way powerful interest manipulate various aspects of society, we are required to be able to conceptualize the system of complex (usually economic) causality. In other words, to know the "truth" politically-speaking, one cannot merely trust the institutions of information (as they are not regulated very well or "guaranteed" to be free from the manipulation of private interests). One must instead "
Follow the Money".
This kind of investigation requires high-level conceptualization and the ability to think innovatively or counter-tribally. To think differently than the group requires a great deal of conscious effort for us. We are largely conformist by nature (due to our good old tribal sociality instinct).
What this example seems to imply is that consciousness is self-perpetuating and that the demands on consciousness tend to increase exponentially. That is, if Individual A figures out how to manipulate the system of government (or any group system), Individual B needs to learn the trick of A in order not to be manipulated. This escalates competition dramatically. We end up with a kind of intra-species evolutionary arms race. But it isn't really, below the surface, Tribe A competing with Tribe B for the same, limited resources. It is actually (on a more fundamental level) unconscious humanity competing with conscious humanity. That is, the demands on human consciousness are increased radically due to the modern, non-tribal systems of society. The individual has to be able to process and make effective use of enormous amounts of information. If an individual fails to do this adequately, that individual can become the resource (or tool . . . or even slave) of another, more consciously manipulative individual (or group).
I see the Problem of the Modern as a kind "phase transition anxiety". Human consciousness is under severe pressure to adapt to the modern. What the 20th century should teach us is that, when enough people cannot "become conscious" and effectively process enough information, other people can use information to manipulate them into unconscious, tribalistic behavior . . . even making a kind of tribal, ideological militia out of them that will do the bidding of the powerful interests. The fascist movements of the 20th century didn't operate on terror alone, but also (and perhaps even more significantly) on propaganda. It might even be accurate to say that tribal purging was used to even greater effect than pure terror. It wasn't only dissent that was purged in these regimes, but the gene pool (in which information evaluation skills may have been greater than average).
People are most susceptible to this kind of manipulation where the tribal sociality instinct is both strongest and most unconscious. The famous recipe for wide-scale population control (as was so brilliantly exposed by Orwell) is the fabrication of an enemy. Feeling we have a formidable enemy, a wholly alien Other who wants to overpower us, jumpstarts our tribal sociality instinct. That is, the highly competitive and dangerous environment of evolutionary adaptedness that demanded the evolution of a powerful instinct for tribal cohesion needs only to be recreated (in reality or through propaganda) for us to feel the huge gravity of tribalism. It is a kind of group fight/flight response. Us vs. Them. The Chosen People and the Infidels.
We can see this kind of thing going on today with (among others) the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Another interesting example that comes to mind (because it might seem so innocuous) is the movie
Independence Day (of course there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of movies that operate the same way). Evil aliens invade Earth . . . and in order to survive, humanity must "tribalize" and unify against this invading Other. And in that movement toward tribal cohesion, instinct fires up its engines and we feel the adrenaline rush of camaraderie, heroism, the war-drive, fight or flight. In other words, the characters (and the audience, vicariously) are kicked into an instinctual mode of sociality that it maximally survivable.
And, in addition to this, we (the audience) are asked (compelled, really) to see the tribal cohesion as kind of positive human connectedness. Petty differences among individuals (like race and class) are overcome so that a larger, more threatening enemy can be faced. And it all seems completely valid and justified (because that's the way Hollywood blockbusters work). But even deeper than the "Hurray! We are all coming together as one!" melting pot theme of the movie lies a more fundamental truth: such unification requires a formidable enemy. The power of tribalism over individuals is dependent on the introduction of an enemy.
I don't mean to issue a blanket criticism of our tribal sociality instinct. This is just the way we are. Films like
Independence Day or
The Lord of the Rings are specifically designed to hit us right where we live (or else they are channeled products of the unconscious that "speak instinctually" to us). The problem with this instinct is that it is highly manipulable when we are not conscious of it. And not only manipulable, but extremely dangerous. This is an instinct that can be fairly easily "weaponized" . . . and there is no doubt that the greatest power in our species is in its sociality, its ability to pool and organize its aggression and drive and productivity. Our evolutionary success is more dependent on our ability to form complex, large-scale societies than it is on any other faculty.
The question then is how do we become responsible for our sociality? Like every other responsibility, it is achieved through consciousness. But our collective efforts stand against the interests of power . . . which has long since realized that the greatest ready-made weapon that can bolster and enable power is human tribalistic sociality. In order to de-weaponize sociality and not give or sell it away to power interests, we have to be able to first recognize that it is immensely dangerous (when "wrongly" used). It is a shadow recognition.
I think we should imagine our unconscious sociality instinct as if it was a loaded gun lying openly around our house. But instead we fall into thoughts of wanting to belong, to be endorsed or supported or protected by the group. Those are normal human desires, of course, and I don't mean to prescribe some kind of asceticism (which I think would be impractical and irresponsible to do). But we would do well to apply long-term, conceptual thinking to these desires and to try to figure out what the satisfaction of these desires is worth. Is our embrace by the group worth a few casualties? Should other people have to suffer so we can feel one with the tribe (we don't always recognize this cost, because these "sacrifices" are Othered and dehumanized or discounted)?
It is just as much a trap, I think, to ask people to be all-embracing and give up every ounce of their selfishness. Self-interest is just as instinctually necessary as sociality. In fact, self-interest on an unconscious level often serves as the vehicle of tribal sociality. Only in sociopaths is self-interest taken to a level of true anti-Otherness. By upholding too much
unconditional "peace, love, and understanding", we are only repressing our instinctual self-interest. That is, we are becoming unconscious of the way our self-interest operates rather than actually exorcising it. This unconsciousness allows individual self-interest to be harnessed to a tribal ideology or usurped by other manipulators. That's how cults operate.
The only ethical solution is to become conscious of the instinctual urge and try to negotiate a deal with the instinct, finding it what it needs without succumbing unconsciously to what it wants. So what would be an ethical differentiation between what our sociality instinct needs and what it merely wants?
I think that at the core of our sociality we need Eros. We need to connect or engage with others . . . not only for evolutionary or social success, but for individual wellbeing. We seem to have evolved for collectivity. We are not singular beings. Our psyches are collectives or complex systems. Being human is being more than the sum of our parts. Even our identities do not mean anything except in the way they relate to other people and things. That is, our identities are relative, not absolute. And as ego-personalities, we must also define ourselves in relation to the instinctual unconscious (and our unique, genetic predispositions) . . . which we experience as both collective and Other.
So at the core of sociality is this barely distinguishable "relationality" . . . which we might consider to be the principle that requires separated points or polarities in order for energy or libido to flow. That is, seen in terms of libido, there is either relationality or non-existence. Therefore we could say that, as individuals, we
need to be able to channel libido, to allow libido to move through us. To belong to a tribe or to relate through an affiliation is the easiest way to do this, but it comes at the compromise of some autonomous identity. Therefore, when one is for whatever reason separated from the group, one might feel like a substantial part of one's identity is missing. One does not know how to "be" without the group affiliation.
The process of individuation moves toward a redefinition of identity where the individual sheds many of his or her group affiliations and replaces them with affiliations to the instinctual unconscious. This would become more necessary as group affiliations cease to effectively channel libido from the instinctual unconscious into the group. Or, seen another way, when the group doesn't want the libido from the individual because it is too individualized. If the group wants apples and the individual has oranges, the individual is in a bind. Can an orange tree produce apples? Probably not. Certainly not apples as good as a genuine apple tree can produce.
This scenario is more common in the modern environment. In modernism, we usually do not have only one affiliation, because there is rarely one all-encompassing tribe. The attempts to establish all-encompassing tribes in large populations always lead to tribal purgings in order to limit diversity. So we have learned to live as conglomerates of affiliations. We belong to many tribes today . . . but our selves are divvied up among these affiliations (with some affiliations accounting for larger portions of our selfhood than others). This sense of division places a lot more weight on the ego as center of identity. The ego is the affiliation manager "on the floor". Instead of getting to live in the group through a specific role to the degree that we would once have, we now have to conserve and portion out our libido or Eros energy. This could be another way of saying (as Jung did), that we run the risk of becoming dissociated or overly fragmented, our various affiliation identities segregated from one another or irreconcilable. Libido isn't flowing through our whole identity as efficiently as it needs to . . . and we are liable to break down, become depressed.
There are two solutions to this, and we are liable to find them both compelling, even simultaneously. They might even appear to be one and the same to us from some perspectives. The first solution is to "find our tribe" . . . that is, to find the one tribe in which we feel we can get our libido flowing. This may indeed work for that purpose . . . but only at the sacrifice of many other tribes and avenues of identity (an example of this would be the AA/support group/12 step approach). One must take on the tribal attitudes and dogmas, totems, and taboos. This might feel great, at least for a while . . . until one starts to recognize that one has portions of identity that are not met by this one tribe. Then the process of dissociation could start over. Also, single tribalism in modern society is not very practical. It requires joining a cult (either "in the flesh" or at least ideologically). There is no one tribe or cult today that can encompass all the diversity of modernism . . . which means that belonging to any such tribe will place one in opposition to numerous Others. I personally see this positioning inside one tribe to be unethical as it forsakes social responsibility for what amounts to pure selfishness (this is every bit as valid even when the one tribe the individual belongs to espouses all kinds of peace, love, and understanding philosophies).
The second solution to dissociative depression (Eros/libido breakdown) is individuation. The Eros goal of individuation is to restructure identity so that it can exchange libido with other individuals or groups directly (rather than through affiliations). That is, the individuant is her or himself a polarity that, as a whole entity unto itself, interacts with Others and with groups. The Eros relationship, then, is by necessity conscious. Of course, this situation brings a whole new set of relational problems, because most groups (especially those that are exceedingly cult-like) do not interact well with individuals . . . or even recognize individuals as valid entities. Individuals are typically demonized or at least held to very severe standards of participation. That is, they are tabooed or marked because they exhibit (as they must) Otherness.
But (without going into it in much detail here), I also believe that individualism is the primary (if not only) source of innovation and revision in human social systems. Social systems need innovative individualism in order to adapt to the most severe changes in environment. If they can't adapt, they will fail . . . and adaptation requires change, which requires consciousness and Otherness. We can see the immense resistance to innovation in the general policies of the United States today (especially with the Bush administration). The Bushites might not want to accept innovation because this would require them to limit their power or curtail their greed somewhat . . . but they are able to motivate and tribalize half of America (with various anti-modern, tribal-cohesion propagandas) to keep them established in power. But the real clash in ideologies between the Bushite neocons and the so-called "liberals" is a matter of shorter-term thinking vs. longer-term thinking. The Bushite worldview is very limited. It discounts the externalities, repercussions, and long-term effects of its instituted policies. It doesn't understand complex systems (like ecosystems and inter-species dependency). It doesn't believe in long-term solutions . . . to such a severe extent that its ideologies can often seem rather childish.