The first myth is narrative, originally a narrative about the birth of the gods, the cosmos or human (Theogony, Cosmogony and antropogonia). It is a narrative that attempts to explain the reality, its deep roots in the form of revelation: the poet speaks in the name of the deity, stating incontestable truth, a truth that can not be discussed, that they should be accepted with confidence. Are true, then, that impose themselves by force of a law of nature, and just like the laws of nature, seem not to know history, because if he was ever the same.
In the history of Greek myth is that knowledge that is the background to the emergence of the Logos, the rational discourse of Greek philosophy. Physiologists (or more commonly pre-Socratic) look at the nature and seek explanations of reason, assuming a first principle (arche), no more external in nature (for Thales L'Arche is water, for Anaximander is a primordial substance indefinite - apeiron - for L'Arche is Anaximenes air). The triumph of rational discourse will be celebrated by Plato in the ancient myth that sees a kind of childish fairy tale for spirits. Myth
logos and try to explain reality, but the two seem to run along parallel paths. How Galimberti said in his Dictionary of Psychology:
For the myth that there is actually not in a subjective inner world, expanded and screened out, as there is no inner world, as psychic reality of the subject that is not projected and objectified in the form of divine powers. The mythical story live and then the subjectivism of external reality el'oggettivizzazione the inner world. As a result of this welding, the myth is not the world that does not result in the collective vision of the world, so in every myth you can read a specific stage of development of collective social consciousness. In this context takes on all its major expression of Heraclitus: "Do not listen to me, but the logos it is wise to agree that all is one" where the exclusion of subjectivity and manipulation interpreter marks the transition from myth to logos, a description of things as they are experienced by those who said, their description of how the damage.
Where myth subjectivized reality, projecting and reifying the inner world, the logos is, in fact, trying to see reality in its objectivity, regardless of the interpreter. We can see, so in the rational discourse of the Logos, the embryo of scientific thought which wants to emancipate themselves from the metaphysical claims, unprovable, to accede to reality in its objectivity.
We tend to think that the myth is something that concerns the primitive thought, his naïve consciousness, while our culture, rooted in the logos, is convinced to join the reality for what it is. But if this belief may have valid reasons for regarding the knowledge of nature, one can not say the same with regard to the knowledge of social reality. We are very confident that our knowledge of the social reality to be rationally based and acceding to this reality?
In this regard, we read a passage from Roland Barthes's Mythologies:
The whole of France is steeped in this anonymous ideology: the press, cinema, theater, literature, widely used, the ceremonies, Justice , diplomacy, the conversations, the weather, the crime is judged that the marriage to which we are moved, the kitchen of our dreams, the clothes you wear, all in our daily lives, is a tributary of ' image that the bourgeoisie is done and there is the relationship between man and the world.
The "myth" in Barthes, consists of all those meanings or connotations for placing second on the first level of signification, the denotative level. Thus, a picture of a black soldier saluting the French flag can be read: 1) a simple gesture of loyalty, 2) "France is a great Empire, that all his children, without distinction of color, serve faithfully under its flag. " And 'this second level, in many ways "implicit" to naturalize the forms and rituals of contemporary bourgeois society. The mythologist must therefore be able to read this second semiological system so as to highlight the historical and ideological nature. In the essay titled To
Marx explains Louis Althusser concept of ideology in these terms:
ideology has little to do with 'consciousness' (...). It is deeply unconscious (...). Ideology is indeed a system of representations, but these representations have in most cases nothing to do with 'consciousness': they are mostly pictures, sometimes even concepts, but their main structures, and as such require the vast majority of people without going through their 'conscience'. Cultural objects are perceived-accepted-suffered acting on men through a process that escapes them.
Through this process of naturalization can reproduce the ideology and give the impression of being something outside of history.
The crucial question at this point is to understand which specific ideologies prevail in a given moment in a given situation, and which groups and classes which represent their interests. The distribution of power, in fact, is not homogeneous. In
'German Ideology Marx expresses clearly the relationship between the dominant ideas and the dominant groups in society:
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, ie, the class which is the dominant material power of society is same time its dominant spiritual power. The class that has the means of production with this material has, at the same time, means of intellectual production, so complex are subject to it in the ideas of those who lack the means of intellectual production.
The validity of these statements is clear if we think, for example, opportunities for access to the media. E 'indisputable fact that certain social groups are in a position to produce and disseminate their own definitions of the world.
Returning to the question on the alleged rationality of our knowledge of social reality, we can now groped for an answer.
We live in a complex of ideas that shape our world view, ideas often take for granted, as if they were the "natural" representation of reality. It is this absolute naturalness and to make them legendary, indisputable. You need a process of demystification, the recovery of critical thinking that is able to put in brackets the ideas of our time.
Galimberti in his fine essay The myths of our time invites us to the care of their own ideas, ideas complicating the myth of our time. Wrong views of the world, in fact, create suffering.
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