Mythology

• Apollo

  • God of plagues
  • Still used now-a-days (Coronavirus books)
• Achaea= Greeks (not Greece yet)
• Apollo sacrifice- Flung barley into cattle ring

  • Slit throats after lifting head
  • Cows, still allowed under 1st amendment
  • Skinned and carve meat from thigh bones and wrapped in fat
  • Double folded sliced clean and topped with strips of flesh
  • Burned over dried split wood and over the quarters poured out glistened wine while men held 5 pronged forks
  • Burned bones and tasted organs (burned trash in cattle, ate good stuff cuz cattle rare)
  • Cut into rest of pieces and cooked it over fire
  • Ate it, poured 1st sip of wine to Apollo
  • People still pour wine over bodies
• Cultural Hegemony is a concept developed by Antonio Gramsci to explain how the bourgeoisie dominates the working class and why the working class has not yet revolted.
• Cultural Hegemony is the domination of the society by an upper class via the embracing of the beliefs of the upper class by the dominated class.
• Divine right is the idea that it's easier to rule if you can connect the ruler to religion, as it reduces the need for guards and expenses.
• Cultural Hegemony can be understood as "common sense", a culturally universal world where the dominant ideology is practiced and spread.
• Because the lower class believes the same ideals as the upper class, there is little meaningful revolt.
• Myths functions within cultural hegemony to..

  • influence what people view as normal and even heroic
  • Stories are better than set of rules
• Groupthink-

  • Janis (1991) labeled this syndrome groupthink: "a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action"
  • Challenger: knew it wouldn't work in weather but agreed anyways
• Social identity is important to human survival.
• The central hypothesis of Social Identity Theory is that group members of an in-group will seek to find negative aspects of an out-group, thus enhancing their self-image.
• Groups provide a sense of social identity, a sense of belonging to the social world.
• Humans had to work together to be at the top of the food chain and make achievements.
• The terms "in-group" and "out-group" are used in Social Identity Theory.
• Social Identity Theory was proposed by Tajfel in 1979, stating that the groups to which people belong, such as social class, family, and football team, are an important source of pride and self-esteem.
• Othering is the dehumanization of "thems".
• Social categorization is a process where people put others into social groups.
• Peoples beliefs are encoded in them from birth
• Self identify as a member of groups, which often similar to those of their parents (religions, politics, sport fans, socio-economic classs geographic identification, etc)
• If the beliefs of your group are shown to be false or unverifiable, cognitive dissonance occurs and many deny facts to maintain their belief and maintain their group membership
• • Smarter people less likely to change mind
  • Dunning theory
• • Benefits of Denying Facts-
  • Maintain self esteem
  • Maintain group membership
  • Rhetoric doesn't prove facts, evidence/science does
  • Can be dangerous
  • Ani-vaxxers dies, morbidity and lifestyle choices, many people across history have believed their beliefs or deities will protect them from various natural events
  • Just world theory- world is naturally good
  • Bad things don’t happen to good people
• Examples of myths-

  • Earth is flat
  • Astrology is accurate
  • Precession- earth buldges as to spends, rotates earth on axis, earths tilt affects so not exact constellation behind sun
  • Breakfast is the most important meal of the day
  • Used to sell breakfast food
  • The American dream
  • Hard work leads to success
  • The Founding Fathers were Christian and wanted a Christian Nation
  • Founding fathers were dionist (some sort of deity who made universe and left)
• Myth and religion common lay person difference (not scholarly and possibly offensive)-

  • Religion- what you believe (live religions), or something close to what you believe
  • Myth- what others believe (dead, distant, exotic religions)
• Scientific definitions myth and religion-

  • Myth- the sacred stories that encode or represent the world view, beliefs, principles, and fears of a group or society
  • Myth of Moses
  • Religion- the rituals practiced as part of worship (may include myth)
  • 10 commandments, going to church on Sunday 
• Monotheism, polytheism, henotheism-belief in 1 god

  belief in 2/+ gods

  belief in polytheism system or only worship 1 god or think 1 god in chargebelief in polytheism system or only worship 1 god or think 1 god in charge
• Myth-

  • Comes from Greek word mythos, which means word, speech, tale or story
  • Traditional stories a society tells itself that encode or represent the world view, beliefs, principles, and fears of that society
• Classical vs classic-

  • Classical- referring to the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome
  • Classic- a text that is an enduring work that has withstood the test of time and is judged to be of superior literary merit
• Mythic retellings-

  • fanfictions, popular
  • The seminal retelling by John Gardner is from the beast in beuwolf  (Grendel)
• Etymology-the study of the history of language and words
• Storytelling Genres and Truth

  • Legends-plausible, possibly true, occur in the real, non-sacred world, invite themselves to be proved or disproved. Often secular and can provide national mythologies such as sacred origins of populations
• Storytelling Genres and Truth

  • Tales:-
  • not true, fictional
  • Didactical- teaching in nature
• Storytelling Genres and Truth

  • Myths:-symbolic truth, and for some, literal truth. When myths touch the mundane we get miracles
• Storytelling Genres & Time

  • Legends-in the real historical world, usually in the past
• Storytelling Genres & Time

  • Tales-in a fictional world of no particular time (once upon a time)
• Storytelling Genres & Time

  • Myth/s-before or at the formation of the world, after or at the end of the world, or posing eternal principle's that infuse but also transcend human history. Occur before or after our everyday realm. Often narratives of creation- of the cosmos, of the earth, of people, and of aspects of culture
• Saga/Legend

  and examples-

  • Stories that have a perceptible relationship to history, however fanciful and imaginative, it has its root in historical fact
  • Examples- Iliad, Odyssey, Beowulf,
• Urban Legend-Modern folktale consisting of stories believed by their teller to be true
• Carl Jung-

  • Archetypes
  • Collective unconsciousness
  • A Priori- existing in the mind prior to and independent of experience, as a faculty or character trait
  • Part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, a people, or all humankind that is the product of ancestral experience
  • We are born a blank slate