Is mythology relevant? My personal answer
to this question is a definite YES
Simply for the reason that I find
mythology delightful. It is so rich with
details, vivid and realistic details that
reveal in them our humanity both at its
best and worst extremities. Actually,
simpler than that, I find reading
mythology somewhat entertaining, and
looking at the world with the stories
from mythology at the back of one's mind
can endow certain aspects of life with a
kind of majesty--for the lack of a better
word.
Anyway, you may not share my opinion, and
this is completely fine. And that is why
I want to spend the next few minutes
talking about how relevant and important
mythology might be in our everyday life.
first of all the first written record of
mythology--that is Greek mythology--is
about 1000 BC. Now undoubtedly there are
some stories that were told before that,
and there are some that were invented
afterwards. But let's say that on average
about 3,000 years
separate us from the time when these
stories were invented or recorded.
And still nowadays people read them and
they are touched by how poignant and how
vivid they are! This has to mean
something. I mean, this by itself is a
testimony to the enduring quality of
mythology. There have to be some
universalities that we still can relate
to nowadays. The stories of mythology are
as true now as they were 3,000 years ago.
Of course when I say true, I don't mean
the word in its literal physical sense.
Art cannot be true in the same sense
that science is. Speaking of the truth in
Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
is quite different from speaking of the
truths that might be in Dostoyevsky's
Crime and Punishment. For example, when I
see this beautiful flower, the narcissus,
I don't think that it had been once a
a beautiful man who fell in love with
himself and pined after himself until he
drowned in a lake and was turned into
this beautiful flower. Yet that theme of
falling in love with oneself and being
so preoccupied with the image of oneself
is nowadays more relevant than ever with
our attention-seeking social media
profiles and the "selfie generation", and
so on. Throughout the ages,
anthropologists have found in mythology
a great resource to study and
examine the way ancient people used to
think and perceive the world and behave
and so on.
The structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss
bundled the mythologies or the stories
of mythology together and tried to
uncover a universal underlying structure
that gave meaning to the whole world of
mythology, from Greek mythology to Roman
to Ancient Egyptian, etc.
Psychologists also have used mythology to illuminate
and illustrate some of their points. For
example, we have already touched on the
idea of Narcissism. Another even more
famous example is Freud's theory of the
Oedipus complex, which obviously takes
its name from the story of Oedipus, the
king who was destined to kill his father
and marry his mother. And he did so
unknowingly. The story in reverse is when
the daughter falls in love with her
father and develops hostiles emotions
towards the mother is for Carl Jung
the Electra complex, also a 
name of a person borrowed from Greek mythology.
And speaking of Jung, his whole
idea of the archetypes and so on ---
for him mythology is basically stories
representing patterns and embodying
archetypes, like the "wise old man"
the "ever giving mother" and so on.
If we like go back to the origins of mythology,
of course there was this religious
aspect to it, but also it was our first
attempts--humanity's first attempt at
science. Ancient people looked at the
world around them and didn't take things
for granted. No, they wanted to find out
reasons for why things were the way they
were. For examples, when people saw the
changing seasons, they didn't just say,
"well that's part of nature." No, they
sought to explain it. Of course, for them,
they explained it in terms of the story
of Persephone and Demeter and Persephone's
abduction by Hades, and so on, but
still, at its root, it is a way to
explain why things are. So, it is like our
first attempt at science.
Some of the stories have more a literary disposition or literary something.
For example, the story of Pygmalion and
Galatea, this is not trying to explain
anything. It's just like a beautiful and
disturbing story of a man who fell in
love with a statue of his own creation.
Basically, in mythology, the ancient
people (I'm speaking here of Greek mythology
in particular) saw the frightening unknown
world around them and they wanted to
humanize it; they wanted to give it shape
and feeling that was familiar to them.
That's why they created gods in their
own image. And the stories
they created of heroes and gods and so
on, they were very very human and very
colorful and very rich with detail. And
Edith Hamilton actually says that it
would be interesting for us to read
mythology because it is a way to connect
with people who lived in nature. Now in
our lives we live in cities made of
asphalt and cement, so detached from nature
yet in mythology everybody was like part of
nature and it is really interesting to
see, to make that journey back in time
and back to nature to see how we used to
live with it.
This brings me back to my
personal answer to the question
"Is mythology relevant?"
I said yes it is
because I find it delightful and full of
detail and beautiful. And I think this is
the most important reason why we should
read mythology and why mythology has
endured for so long.
Basically because mythology is a
collection of beautiful stories and
that's what they are: stories, stories that
defy interpretation and categorization.
They are as Samuel Taylor Coleridge says
that when we fall in love,
we start to find this physical world too
limited, too narrow, and we need the
imaginative, we need to believe in
divinities and spirits to give expression to
our love. We still need that language of
freedom and imagination, and he continues
(I have the poem here with me)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I hope that what I have said made some
sense to you and probably got you
thinking about mythology in a different
way
if you haven't thought about it like in
this way already.
What do you think of mythology?
Do you have a different view
of it? do you think it's relevant or
irrelevant and why? Please tell me in the
comments below.
If you like this video, please like it.
And if you're interested in this kind of thing, please subscribe to my channel.
I'll be retelling the stories of mythology
With some personal thoughts and comments on these stories.
Thank you very much for watching, 
and I'll see you in the next video
