The Great Human Story
One of the biggest discrepancies between science and cultural tradition is in the history of our human past. At first glance, this seems like an inconsequential subject, and there is nothing explicitly menacing about a culture celebrating its unique heritage of oral and/or written tradition. However, when looked at from the perspective of the entire human species, the fantastic contradictions in the different stories act as divisive barriers between cultural groups. These myths also tend to stifle the curiosity of the naturalistically inclined and prevent billions of people from realizing the great human story, one that all humans share. This great human story is a saga that is more than a hundred thousand years old and is far more enthralling than any mythological construct. It is a story that has the potential to bring the human race together and to discard the superficial differences that we judge each other by. Most important of all, it is a story that can influence public policy to be based on truth rather than on the whims of religious groups that are concerned with protecting their own version of fantasy, often in conflict with that of others.
Political Implications
There have been numerous creation myths in history, some of which survive today. When dealing with the political implications of cultural mythology, it is those myths that offer a distortion of human history that truly affect us the most. The predominant creation myth of our time is the one found in the Christian, Islamic, and Jewish traditions. There are many political events in the past few hundred years that have been influenced by the belief in the Biblical story of the holy land and the creation of the human race. The most well known of these are the crusades that took place during the Middle Ages and the century-old conflict in the Middle East that continues today. In today’s lobbyist dominated political arena, policy decisions are the product of a complex interplay between public opinion and corporate power, and usually cultural misconceptions are played upon to achieve political ends. Ayodhya in India has been a region of intense rivalry between Hindu and Muslim forces because of the Hindu belief that a 16th century Mosque, now destroyed, stood on the site where a mythological figure was born over a million years ago. This dispute has been highly politicized and has flared into a major point of contention between the two religions, resulting in thousands of deaths. These are just two examples where differences in cultural history lead to disastrous political consequences. History is, of course, full of such political misadventures.
Cultural Implications
Humans, like most social species, are colonial in nature, tending to group themselves into factions. In the pre-civilizational past, groups were probably divided along genealogical lines, with kinship being the major factor, although sometimes non kin-based group structures may have also been forged in order to ally together against others. However, unlike other species that show this trait, we are the only species to possess a great deal of cultural knowledge that has been passed down the years, and in modern times this cultural knowledge is what is used most often to divide ourselves into factions. As with most oral traditions, cultural knowledge is constantly being modified, with the result that over the time it has taken humanity to spread around the globe we have developed highly differentiated and localized cultural traits. In many cases, these ideas are immensely useful on a local scale in dealing with the environmental and social aspects of human life.
In recent times, cultural advancement has grown parallel with rational and technological knowledge, creating this global amalgamation of the human species that is evident today. This has finally brought the international rational community to a head with cultural forces throughout the world. More importantly, it has brought together cultural ideas that are contradictory, often with unpleasant outcomes. It is a pitiable state of affairs when people in the same community are opposed to each other’s view of our human past. This creates a dysfunctional society that is superficially placid, but seething with discontent underneath. This is to say that we are a homogenous society only in appearance, and in fact may be more discontent communally because of the inherent heterogeneity in the belief systems of the members that make up the community. Political and legal systems are in place to regulate living conditions of such societies. However, when it comes to our beliefs about our human past, we are more divided at the local scale than ever before.
The Rational Solution
The scientific community has uncovered a wonderful story of the human species. There is sufficient consensus internationally among the member of this group to reject all creation myths as containing no objective truth. Instead, we are presented with a story of human history which points to a common origin and evolutionary development. This scientific story tells us that the human species developed over millions of years in Africa, where at one point the total number of the entire species, our ancestors, was less than 5000, before some members undertook a global migration, crossing continents and even oceans, to reach far off lands that humanity had never known before. There is some debate as to the exact paths that different groups took on this journey, but the molecular and fossil evidence shows that the theory of a common evolution is as immutable a fact as science will allow. Knowing this story, it is easy to see how many of the creation myths may have originated and evolved over the thousands of years that it took for humans to adapt to strange, foreign environments.
The rational solution involves a dissociation of myth from fact. Culture, as we have always known it, comprises elements of both these qualities. In general, culture is a complicated system of tradition steeped in ritual, that combines the two elements of myth and fact in order to enable social living. Traditional forms of attire, language, food and social norms are facts that form attributes of culture that do not in general cause social conflict; not unless they are associated with the mythology that often surrounds these traditions. Modernization requires that these facts be separated from the myths that are propagated along with them, and the historical purpose of the myths understood in clear terms.
It must be made clear that culture is not something that ever dies, but is a phenomenon that constantly evolves and adapts. For it to be suitable for today’s modern society, the proper place of mythology must be recognized. Mythology's role in human art will always be celebrated, but it can no longer possess much explanatory power over the history of our species. We can always enjoy the influence of myth in human art and culture, while replacing the evolutionary role of these stories with scientific reason. It can be argued that the truth is vastly more enthralling than all the stories of creation that primitive man invented to stifle his sense of mystery. It is certainly possible to celebrate the vast and amazing diversity of human culture without the baggage of mythological untruths. Maybe some day our art and literature will tell of the great human story, instead of isolating people and destroying community with falsehoods. Maybe some day, flights of imagination will be appreciated for being just that.
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