The Myths We Like to Tell Ourselves

 

 

Something I’ve learned since making an effort to read the classics, both fiction and non-fiction, is that historians back then treated history differently than we do today. Sure, modern-day historians still aim to craft facts into narratives and lessons. But ancient historians tended to take more liberties in bending or altogether forsaking facts, feeling that it was more important to elevate certain people and events, connect them to contemporary mythology, and drive home closely held values, and to heck with inconvenient facts that didn’t quite support those agendas. 

Mythology is deeply important to all cultures. And most people would acknowledge, even with their most dear beliefs, that there is an element of uncertainty, selective emphases, and even out-and-out deception involved in that mythology. As important as we claim “truth” is, we hold more dearly many other things. And why not? When “truth” gets in the way of existential things like identity, superiority, and redemption, it’s easy to brush truth aside. 

Leave aside that pure, unvarnished truth is hard to come by nowadays. People who are supposed to be honest and objective arbiters of information have been coopted for one cause or another. Technological advances mean you can consume direct audio or video and still not know what actually happened. And, young people in particular, with the least amount of time to develop wisdom and resilience, have had to endure wave after wave of trauma such that it’s understandable their ability to process what’s happening and their willingness to take facts at face value is compromised. 

I’ll let you fill in the specific mythologies your side and the other side give into, which are varying degrees of justifiable, and none of which are completely and unassailably correct. None of us can truly stand outside of any mythologies and simply process information in raw form and make informed judgments from that. Nor am I asking anyone to. But do know that you, me, and all of us have myths we like to tell ourselves, just like those ancient historians covering emperor’s reigns and marital scandal and war heroism.