It is always amusing to me that myths turn out to be facts. That our modern mythology is fact-based but with the same emotional components of ancient myths. For instance, I've seen stuff on "mass extinction events," of which the scientists have said there have been four in the last four and a half billion years. That would pretty much assure another one down the line. And how come all ancient myth has an "end of the world" component without the facts? Consciousness had seen the scenario before the facts had been established. And why would the mind have the capability to produce a thought that fact will prove later on to be true about the entire inhuman, objective universe?

Myth is an intuition of facts without the instrumentation. The instruments often confirm what we already know. Of course, we need the instruments. The numbers make it official. But then humans are more than the numbers. For a precise world you need fact-finding. But a thought experiment would prove that if the mind absorbed the totality of known facts it might offer up a new myth based on "the facts we can not possibly know at this time."

For the modern type to believe, he must have the facts. And we know that often, facts lie or are lied about. Myths too are often roped to lies so the crucial moment is understanding "who has constructed this fact or myth?"

You have to have some fun with it. Extinction is a myth with fact but not yet our fact, so it opens into that splendid arena of speculation that can carry both myth and fact. Millions of years down line, after the next extinction event one could imagine consciousness, in some form point out that "these little guys used to be giants and dominated the Earth. They used to be called people"

"Isn't nature odd!"

Nature would retain the positives of our DNA but would leave lessons for the next dominance to avoid certain things.

Another modern myth developing out of facts is that of "globalization," a myth with the power of facts behind it. A myth that is already deeply entangled in politics. I do think Obama will shift the attitude a bit but there are so many components to the puzzle that it could all collapse as well. The bust of the financial system is a very telling one in terms of the authentic foundations of any complex, global system. The facts work in regions, the myth belongs to the state. If ultimately, the myth of globalization can't improve certain facts for regions, the myth is pulled down or altered. And if the myth fails in many regions then you'd start to see an unraveling. It's a long way from that but then events hurry things along don't they?

One thing about periods we are experiencing: The past becomes a series of broken myths we try to establish as facts. By the time we finish interpreting them the world will have passed to a new vector.

Orientation

There is physical reality lived in the region for the most part. It's lived in collaboration with technology and is generally more fluid than in the past. That physical reality walks streets and drives freeways; it enters buildings and flies great distances. It goes to stadiums and theaters. It sees the landscape. It experiences the ocean. The mind picks out the best kinds of orientations; for instance, the regions are connected together by a federal system that emerged out of the Constitution. It helps form a sense of what is going on. After all, the adventure into space, civil rights, and a few wars were initiated by government. So, the study of the Constitution is a meaningful orientation. The values of the region I am from, such as environmentalism and diversity, are meaningful orientations.

I know, especially through the internet, people of other regions around the world. We connect as persons but since it is a fact I become interested in the Earth as the sustaining surface, a physical place and one that gives me a sense of physical time. Many things have happened on the surface for many centuries so to understand this I study history, another orientation. And back then, to the physical evolution of the old and delightful planet since it did not suddenly appear in the shape it has now.

And this awareness gives me the sense that the Earth is part of and is embedded in the large universe around it.

The universe goes through the Earth despite an atmosphere and magnetic poles. So the universe is an object of inquiry and so cosmology is an orientation, of sorts, since the facts can be arrived at even if only understood by a few people.

But then I am a writer. So all writing is a source of orientation. And I am a human being so all understanding of what makes the human being human is an attempt at orientation.

Now my orientation is livelihood and publishing, each being objective, ponderous business facts. I don't like it but there it is, what can one do? The facts outstrip the myth of fame and fortune.

And that drags one down to the smallest increment of longitude and latitude. A definite orientation. Yet sometimes one is nothing but a happy worm. Or, a miserable worm as I have felt of late.

At this point things either entertain me, enhance me or not. I've learned the modern art of differentiating stuff.

A central myth for the time is this: One who is unhappy has at least the solace of knowing he can work miserably now to get up, again, to a state of happiness.

2009

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