It only makes sense that since just about every culture has a creation story, there are a lot of end-of-creation stories as well. End of time, end of the world, or just end of humanity--it just depends on how they view the world. End of the world myths are closely related to afterlife myths in most circumstances, which is why we have them. Like it or not, what we think happens after we die affects how we feel about death.
In India, there's a special sort of calender called the Maha Yuga. It consists of four sections of time in sequence that repeat over and over for most of eternity. One whole sequence makes up about four million years, and each section is around a million, but they get a little shorter as you go down the list. They are as follows:
1. Krita: The golden years when people have contact with the gods. You don't have to live in a house because the weather is great, you can talk to trees that give you food, life is awesome.
2. Treta: Maybe call it the silver years. Life is still good, you can still talk to trees, but there's a bit of evil creeping into society.
3. Dvapara: Starting to get not so happy. People are becoming greedy and corrupt, and we have to grow food and live in houses.
4. Kali: Where we are right now. Life sucks. The world is corrupt, everybody is obsessed with money, sex and power, and there's constant war. Sound familiar?
Revelation from the Bible is a little simpler, but still fairly nasty. The whole world will be destroyed and evil people and things thrown into Hell, and then God will create a new heaven and a new Earth, where everything will be milk and honey and happiness for all of eternity.
So what will the end of the world sound like?
"Grapevine Fires" by Death Cab for Cutie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu4qQKlyF7s
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Day Three: Great Big Storms
How many of each animal did Moses take on the ark?
Tee hee, corny joke. (Noah had the ark) Sorry, but talking about flood myths, I couldn't resist.
Alright, seriousness now. Here's the lowdown of two of the major flood stories.
Biblical (Genesis 6-9): The whole world has turned into thieves, whores, that sort of thing. There are even women sleeping with (angels? demons?) and making crazy, evil giants, which is where Goliath comes from later on. But God is kind of pissed that His people are acting like this, so he decides to destroy the whole world. Our guy Noah is the only legitimately righteous guy in the world, so he, his wife, his three sons Shem, Ham, and Japeth, his daughters-in-law, and two of every kind of animal get to be saved by means of an enormous boat he builds. It rains for forty days and nights, then they float around and eventually end up on a mountaintop. After just over a year, it's safe to go out again, and God makes the rainbow as a promise to never flood the whole world again.
Ovid: Again, gods are pissed at their creation. At first they want to destroy the world in fire with thunderbolts, but they're worried heaven might get singed, so they decide to flood it instead. A man and a woman, Deucalion and Pyrrha, who are both siblings and spouses (yay incest!), randomly survive--not because they're particularly intelligent or faithful, but just because they got lucky. The gods take pity on them and tell them to throw the bones of their mother over their shoulders, and eventually Pyrrha figures out this means rocks. The fact that they came to that conclusion is really weird. Then the water goes away and the earth spawns a lot of animals to repopulate.
If you remember, there was a Native American myth earlier where an angry sea monster flooded an entire world and then almost flooded the next one everybody fled to. I've also heard that there are a lot more flood myths, so I went to offer sacrifices to the great god Wikipedia. I learned that there are flood myths in Sumerian, Babylonian, Israeli, Greek, Germanic, Irish, Finnish, Indian (India), Chinese, Malaysian, Laotian, Australian, Polynesian, Native American, Mesoamerican, Inca, Mapuche, and Muiscan cultures. So what does that mean?
According to wiki, most of these myths are thousands of years old and had been told for generations before trade was established. In fact, the Native Americans and South Americans didn't have regular contact with Europe and Asia until a few hundred years ago! So with little to no contact, why is it that all of them have strikingly similar stories of the whole world drowning?
As far as I'm concerned, this means there was one heck of a flood.
Tee hee, corny joke. (Noah had the ark) Sorry, but talking about flood myths, I couldn't resist.
Alright, seriousness now. Here's the lowdown of two of the major flood stories.
Biblical (Genesis 6-9): The whole world has turned into thieves, whores, that sort of thing. There are even women sleeping with (angels? demons?) and making crazy, evil giants, which is where Goliath comes from later on. But God is kind of pissed that His people are acting like this, so he decides to destroy the whole world. Our guy Noah is the only legitimately righteous guy in the world, so he, his wife, his three sons Shem, Ham, and Japeth, his daughters-in-law, and two of every kind of animal get to be saved by means of an enormous boat he builds. It rains for forty days and nights, then they float around and eventually end up on a mountaintop. After just over a year, it's safe to go out again, and God makes the rainbow as a promise to never flood the whole world again.
Ovid: Again, gods are pissed at their creation. At first they want to destroy the world in fire with thunderbolts, but they're worried heaven might get singed, so they decide to flood it instead. A man and a woman, Deucalion and Pyrrha, who are both siblings and spouses (yay incest!), randomly survive--not because they're particularly intelligent or faithful, but just because they got lucky. The gods take pity on them and tell them to throw the bones of their mother over their shoulders, and eventually Pyrrha figures out this means rocks. The fact that they came to that conclusion is really weird. Then the water goes away and the earth spawns a lot of animals to repopulate.
If you remember, there was a Native American myth earlier where an angry sea monster flooded an entire world and then almost flooded the next one everybody fled to. I've also heard that there are a lot more flood myths, so I went to offer sacrifices to the great god Wikipedia. I learned that there are flood myths in Sumerian, Babylonian, Israeli, Greek, Germanic, Irish, Finnish, Indian (India), Chinese, Malaysian, Laotian, Australian, Polynesian, Native American, Mesoamerican, Inca, Mapuche, and Muiscan cultures. So what does that mean?
According to wiki, most of these myths are thousands of years old and had been told for generations before trade was established. In fact, the Native Americans and South Americans didn't have regular contact with Europe and Asia until a few hundred years ago! So with little to no contact, why is it that all of them have strikingly similar stories of the whole world drowning?
As far as I'm concerned, this means there was one heck of a flood.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Day Two: Origins
Whatever you believe, wherever you go to church and however liberal or conservative you are, everybody has an idea about where we came from. The big difference between now and a few hundred years ago is that we think our theories are more logical. In some cases, this is true, but the fact remains that none of our theories has been completely proven yet, which is why there are multiple theories.
Big theories today:
- Big Bang
- Judeo/Christian
- Evolution
What I've noticed about a lot of modern beliefs is that, compared to old stories, we're boring. I mean, if we're just guessing and speculating, couldn't we make it a little more interesting? When did Zeus making Cronus vomit up the Greek gods turn into pages and pages of how little tiny differences added up until we were slightly more human than monkey?
Our stories--sorry, theories--are mostly ex nihilo or primal unity theories. There are five categories that most theories fall into:
- ex nihilo: from Latin "out of nothing"
- Earth-diver: an animal or god dives from above (heaven, the ocean etc.) and ends up creating Earth/mankind/plants/all that other good stuff
- Primal Unity: unity breaks apart and Earth is created from the damage
- Dismemberment: something is chopped apart and its head becomes the mountains, its blood oceans, that sort of lovely story
- Emergence: life just kind of happens
So evolution and the Big Bang would fall somewhere between ex nihilo and emergence, depending on the scientist's personal views. The common belief seems to be that the universe was simply there forever, which is more of an emergence theme. The Big Bang could also be called primal unity if you look at the explosion as breaking things apart rather than creating.
Why do we need creation stories, anyway? It seems like everyone has a really hard time imagining living without an idea of where they came from and how they were made. But why? Does it affect how we live our lives?
My theory is that we base a lot of ourselves, our sense of self-worth and how we live our lives, on our views of where we came from and why we're here. Someone with a deep faith in Christianity may work extremely hard to do good in their lives and look forward to death to go to Heaven, while a Buddhist may work equally hard with the end goal of being reincarnated into a good form. Many Mormons believe if they live good lives and follow the teachings of Joseph Smith, they will one day be the gods of their own worlds. Atheists and agnostics are generally less concerned with the goal after death and more concerned with life, as they believe that there isn't much to look forward to after this world. No matter what you believe, it affects what you do, how you think and act, and what you want and expect out of life. Creation stories set the floor for that by giving us a sense of what we're worth in the first place--molded out of clay by a drunk god, formed out of a dead god's blood, or even vomited into existence (I think I prefer the clay theories...)
Friday, January 14, 2011
Day One: What is a Myth?
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary: "myth \'mith\ n : a legendary narrative that presents part of the beliefs of a people or explains a practice or natural phenomenon."
Some myth characteristics according to my mythology class:
Back to grade school when you had to find what was wrong with a sentence! So, first part of that sentence. "Events that are all perfectly logical." That's true, isn't it?
Okay, maybe this is just me, but how the heck do remote controls work? I mean, yeah, they send an electrical signal to the TV, but how?Why? How does the TV know which signal it is almost all of the time? How did the signals get there in the first place?
Here's another doozy: magnets. Right, there's a north and south end that are somehow north and south no matter which way the magnet is facing. There's some crazy exchange of electrodes, which we can't see or even prove exist, and this makes the gray thingie stick to your fridge and spoon and some metals, but not to other ones like gold.
Wait, what?
Moving on, second part of the sentence. Everybody knows that science is completely proven, right?
First, we have evolution. Yeah, most of what they tell us about humans coming from a common single-cell ancestor that magically came to life in the ocean seems pretty legitimate. It's possible, at least. But did it really happen? If something potentially could have happened, does that mean it did?
What about global warming? Glaciers and ice caps are melting, and it's possible that overall climate is warming, although that seems a bit far-fetched in Montana. Still, it could happen, and a lot of scientists say it is happening. But did you know that less than fifty years ago, esteemed scientists thought we were about to go into another ice age? So who's right?
Sometimes, I think we'll believe anything if a guy in a white coat with a test tube says so.
Personally, I don't believe in evolution and global warming, but not because of my religious beliefs at all. My theory is that we don't know anywhere near enough about the world to come up with the right answer. Think about the billions of creatures in the ocean that no human has ever seen, the crazy stuff down in the center of the Earth that we can only guess about based on magnetic fields. How could we possibly come up with exactly the right answers about the world when, in reality, we still don't have access to almost any of the clues?
But back to mythology, here's one thing a lot of myths have: a hero. There's Heracles, Perseus, Odysseus, Momoko, Robin Hood, the little mermaid, just to name a few. And what do they all have in common (other than Disney)?
They all mess up.
That's all I can come up with--they're not all selfless or beautiful or rich or successful, but they all screw up at least once. Maybe that's why they're heroes and not gods. I think we all want to be heroes, so we make our heroes somebody it's easier to act like. Nobody can be as awesome as Jesus or Mohammad, so what about the guy who spends years being seduced by a siren when he's supposed to be going home to his ridiculously loyal wife Penelope? That's not so hard to relate to, is it?
A couple modern heroes:
Anyways, after much ado, here's my definition of a myth: an unproven story that defines the unknown because, really, the unknown makes us uncomfortable. We like answers, and we like them now.
To finish off, here's a couple Charity quotes:
"What happens when the monster comes out of the closet? It has a gay pride parade!"
"What other people flush becomes our problem."
Some myth characteristics according to my mythology class:
- a story about origins
- has some truth
- good vs. evil, good always wins (I disagree--Heracles, anyone?)
- teaches a moral lesson
- a phenomenal explanation for questions or occurrences
- entertaining
Back to grade school when you had to find what was wrong with a sentence! So, first part of that sentence. "Events that are all perfectly logical." That's true, isn't it?
Okay, maybe this is just me, but how the heck do remote controls work? I mean, yeah, they send an electrical signal to the TV, but how?Why? How does the TV know which signal it is almost all of the time? How did the signals get there in the first place?
Here's another doozy: magnets. Right, there's a north and south end that are somehow north and south no matter which way the magnet is facing. There's some crazy exchange of electrodes, which we can't see or even prove exist, and this makes the gray thingie stick to your fridge and spoon and some metals, but not to other ones like gold.
Wait, what?
Moving on, second part of the sentence. Everybody knows that science is completely proven, right?
First, we have evolution. Yeah, most of what they tell us about humans coming from a common single-cell ancestor that magically came to life in the ocean seems pretty legitimate. It's possible, at least. But did it really happen? If something potentially could have happened, does that mean it did?
What about global warming? Glaciers and ice caps are melting, and it's possible that overall climate is warming, although that seems a bit far-fetched in Montana. Still, it could happen, and a lot of scientists say it is happening. But did you know that less than fifty years ago, esteemed scientists thought we were about to go into another ice age? So who's right?
Sometimes, I think we'll believe anything if a guy in a white coat with a test tube says so.
Personally, I don't believe in evolution and global warming, but not because of my religious beliefs at all. My theory is that we don't know anywhere near enough about the world to come up with the right answer. Think about the billions of creatures in the ocean that no human has ever seen, the crazy stuff down in the center of the Earth that we can only guess about based on magnetic fields. How could we possibly come up with exactly the right answers about the world when, in reality, we still don't have access to almost any of the clues?
But back to mythology, here's one thing a lot of myths have: a hero. There's Heracles, Perseus, Odysseus, Momoko, Robin Hood, the little mermaid, just to name a few. And what do they all have in common (other than Disney)?
They all mess up.
That's all I can come up with--they're not all selfless or beautiful or rich or successful, but they all screw up at least once. Maybe that's why they're heroes and not gods. I think we all want to be heroes, so we make our heroes somebody it's easier to act like. Nobody can be as awesome as Jesus or Mohammad, so what about the guy who spends years being seduced by a siren when he's supposed to be going home to his ridiculously loyal wife Penelope? That's not so hard to relate to, is it?
A couple modern heroes:
- Martin Luther King, Jr. (by the way, why do we still call him Jr. when nobody knows a thing about Martin Luther King, Sr.?)
- Oprah
- Abraham Lincoln
- Lady Gaga
- Beethoven
- Dr. House
Anyways, after much ado, here's my definition of a myth: an unproven story that defines the unknown because, really, the unknown makes us uncomfortable. We like answers, and we like them now.
To finish off, here's a couple Charity quotes:
"What happens when the monster comes out of the closet? It has a gay pride parade!"
"What other people flush becomes our problem."
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