Week 4 Lab: Crash Course

The Crash Course videos provided some insights into myths and mythology that I previously had never given any thought to. Theories of myths are something that seems pointless at the surface level – why do we need to understand where/why myths exist? They’re just stories for people to tell one another.

However, after these videos, I’ve gotten more of an understanding of the theories and the people who propose them. First off, I thought it was interesting that even during the time when myths were being invented/spread around more so, people were critiquing and analyzing them. Xenophanes was criticizing myths during the Greek period – that myths provided dangerous information, pushing the faults of man over to random gods that people worshiped. Another viewpoint, when looking back to the early time periods, is the belief that myths could be considered rudimentary science. As in, since myths were people trying to explain why things are the way they are in a very un-scientific manner (at least to modern day people). The fact that more modern interpretations of mythology has combined with anthropology and psychology shows how important and widespread myths have become throughout the world.

An important aspect of studying myths is realizing that there isn’t one particular viewpoint to hold to – you could use Jung’s perspective of a collective unconscious, saying that all myths come from universal truths that everyone has access to within themselves. Or, you could think that all myths stemmed from one point in time, using an Aryan-dominated hypothesis. Overall, the number of different ways to interpret myths, classify them, and understand why they exist show just how important myths are to society today as they were a few hundred years ago. Exploring how heroes are interpreted, that we all empathize with them because we all deal with our own trials/tribulations. All aspects of myths are able to be drawn from some aspects of human behavior.

Creative Thinking

Image by Matthew Loffhagen