Myths Are Strange Attractors
Channel: SatoriD
Date: 2023-04-24

I was on Nodes In The Net podcast, in which we got into a wide range of Infinite Imaginarium topics. Like Myths Are Strange Attractors.

check out the full podcast: https://creekmasons.com/nodes-in-the-net/nitn-45/

An analogy can be drawn between the relationship of the two (microbiomes and mythologies) in a manner of scale, emulating the Gnostic motto, “as above so below.” The observations drawn in the world of biogeography might be applied to the behavior of narrative as a part of an ecosystem. As the Internet further acts as a representation of social networks, analysis can be assisted through elaborate real time modeling and analysis of the global narrative machine. 

Myths are a primary selector for social motility, even if not a motive, as it’s not as if we read and enact our lives like a play. We are tugged and pulled by them, as they are simultaneously created by us and creating us, existing at all the junctures where our worlds overlap with one another. Myths arise as relationships, points of intersection. They present within a context, and it is in that context in which they must be understood. These relations are complex, and involve an open ambiguity about their power dynamics. The relationship between ritual object or work of art and individual audience member, the relationship between audience members, all occur within the framework provided by our myths themselves, especially the almost inaudible but ever-present whispers of the past.

Finally, myths are strange attractors, the set of values toward which a system tends to evolve.

A body plan defines a space of possibilities (the space of all possible vertebrate designs, for example) … The formal study of these possibility spaces is more advanced in physics and chemistry, where they are referred to as ‘phase spaces.’

Their structure is given by topological invariants called ‘attractors’, as well as by the dimensions of the space, dimensions that represent the ‘degrees of freedom’, or relevant ways of changing, of concrete physical or chemical dynamical systems. …

In the biological and social sciences, on the other hand, we do not yet have the appropriate formal tools to investigate the structure of their much more complex possibility spaces. — A New Philosophy of Society, Delanda

This means that the tools of literary, psychological, and social analysis may all be set loose on our myths, with a recognition that this is considerably more than a purely academic issue. Beyond that, assuredly neurological and mathematical-linguistic models will continue to have a place, using multi-discipline approaches. It is an open discussion that could benefit as much from exploration of cognitive psychology as it can from the analysis of literary symbols or the direct experience of a shamanic ritual. This is not a science, but that doesn’t make our aims any less legitimate. And science can even provide us with some of our most useful metaphors.

What we learn in this domain may never be certain but it is nevertheless vital to do so. Not only in the hope of understanding ourselves, but more troublingly, because these semantic and sentiment systems are already at work in our social-technological ecosystems, our media, our political systems, our markets, all as a part of the ever-evolving web of language darting around the globe and bouncing off our satellites.

We hope this re-appraisal of myth leads us to new ideas and questions which none of us would have formulated on our own. It is a group endeavor and benefits the most from the interaction of minds in the commons. What it becomes is in all of our hands.

Myths Are Strange Attractors by James Curcio - https://modernmythology.net/what-is-a-modern-myth-c37943fcd2df