New Myths

There is perennial talk about the culture war, metapolitics. “policy is downstream from culture” has become a platitude. But what is the foundation those “narratives” all the culture warriors and metapoliticians want to change according to their plans?

(One Ring: Peter J. Yost, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

In 2016 opponents of the then President Elect Donald Trump put on costumes from the Harry Potter series, to protest against the Voldemort in the White House. Trumps supporters laughed them off. Millenials in wizard cloaks seamed to be symbolic for the lifestyle leftists from the chattering classes, only partially capable to distinguish between reality and the fabricated media narratives fed to them and not much better, at distinguishing both from their own phantasy. A phantasy no less fabricated for them, then their media narratives. But a lot of those people laughing at them, had shared memes depicting Donald Trump as the God-Emperor from the Warhammer 40.000 universe. So both are using fiction, to understand reality?

It is a commonly held viewpoint, to think of them as Peter Pan’s, people who simply refuse to grow up, even in their 30’s and 40’s. Harry Potter especially seams like a clear cut case of adult children. Who except those would refer to fantasy figures when talking about serious issues?

The answer to that question is: Almost everyone. Man is the narrative animal, the storytelling animal. Sometimes those stories are based on true events. (In spite of all scientific methods, the historians work is exactly that: storytelling according to, let’s hope so, true events.) Sometimes they are entirely fictional. Ans sometimes, like with the legends of saints, the stories about the life of Alexander the Great and probably also those about King Gilgamesh, which might be based in a similar way on a real ruler, the lines aren’t that clear cut.