Headline, Time Magazine, July 3, 2009: 5 Media Myths Debunked by Michael Jackson's Death.
The problem with this headline is that the article it introduced had nothing to do with myths. A myth, according to this misuse of the word, is something patently false. Something that should be "debunked" because it is bunk.
But using the word in this way breaks Mark Twain’s rule number 13 of writing: “Use the right word, not its second cousin.”
What Time means to say is “five fallacies,” or “five misconceptions.” But you can find the same mistake in virtually any American periodical at least a few times in any given issue. There is no other word that publications misuse so often or with such gusto. And that's a problem because there is a real meaning for myth that is very important for us to understand. Our civilization lost a pearl of great price when it perverted the meaning of myth.
In between absolute truth and absolute false, there is whole spectrum of truth varietals and falsehood hybrids. There’s subjective truth, empirical truth and common knowledge. Then there is that popular form of falsehood professor Harry Frankfurt describes in his book On Bullshit. There is Stephen Colbert’s truthiness.
And there are myths.
A myth is a story that has power in the esoteric realm – the inner person – whether or not it’s true in the exoteric world that we usually call “real” truth – objective, empirical, provable facts. But esoteric truth is hard to grasp, vaporous, insubstantial. Not really real.
But don’t be fooled. The inner world is real. There is reality in esoterica.
Some myths actually contain exoteric truth, but that is not what gives them their power. What makes a myth powerful is the way it resonates with the inner life. Myths are the dreams of a society. They are dreams we all share. The reason certain stories can still make us cry thousands of years after they were first told is because they touch something deep in the human soul.
Was there really a Prometheus? Was there a man who was chained to a rock and had his liver eaten by vultures day after day because he dared defy the gods to give the power of fire to mankind?
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is that if we break away from the "common wisdom" we were taught and seek individual enlightenment, we become Prometheus, and we suffer for that defiant sin as he did. If you have really searched for enlightenment, then you know the promethean pain of having your guts ripped out.
And we find ourselves in other myths as well.
Was there really a Hamlet? A Romeo and/or Juliet? Was there a real Scarlett O’Hara, and if so, was she like Vivian Leigh? Did Jonah really live inside a big fish for three days? Was there really a man who embodied the myth we call Elvis? Is there a goddess of love called Venus who leads us to such heights of ecstasy and depths of pain? Is Darth Vader real? Is Richard Nixon? Snow White?
Whether these people really lived or not makes little difference in the esoteric inner world where their myths continue to have power and influence our lives.
That’s not myth in the way Time meant it in the headline of July 3. It’s not a lie. It’s real.
In fact, nothing is more real than myths.
