Three years ago I wrote an essay About Narratives and it feels like it is time for an update.

Recently, after a lively conversation over dinner, my friend Alex Holland shared something he had written, a perfect start for a new essay:  

The Human Condition:

How you choose to see yourself is your illusion;

How others choose to see you is their illusion;

We fly blindly, with broken wings,

Our individual mythology our greatest myth…

Now in retirement, I am reflecting back on my life and examining the myths I lived by. 

As a teenager, I was captured by the myth of THE Truth. I thought I had discovered the source of Truth, God, and His one and only True Church teaching that Truth. For the next twenty-five years I was a member of a benign Christian cult, the first chapter in my spiritual journey which I wrote about in Part 1 - My Cult Experience.

As a young adult, I was very impressed with the business world. I subscribed to Fortune magazine and devoured its contents. The myth of free market capitalism captured me. And, foolishly, I tried to be an entrepreneur but, thankfully, I failed. As part of my mid-life crisis, I left the business world and sought employment in the nonprofit sector, a move I never regretted. 

Today my thinking is more in line with Tomas Björkman who wrote The Market Myth.

We have created the market and we can change it. It may not be possible to imagine a world without a market, but it is possible to think of one where the market helps to discourage greed, selfishness, cynicism and exploitation, rather than positively encourages them. Like all social constructs, the market could be different.

Another myth I have lived by is the myth of progress. I was living the Canadian version of the American Dream. In my jobs I was often thinking about getting ahead, getting promoted and being successful, until at midlife when I hit a career plateau.

As a bachelor, I lived in a basement suite and later moved up into an apartment. My wife and I bought a starter home and years later upgraded to a house about twice as big. And now in retirement, I live even better than that.

I have mixed feelings about the myth of progress. There is a positive side to the story with tangible benefits. I see local Mexicans taking the bus and seeking to progress to motorcycles and later a car. I find it hard to be critical of those seeking such progress which is similar to what I did decades earlier. Yet now I am more aware of what the aggregate of all those additional internal combustion engines will do to the earth.

At midlife, I left my Christian worldview and began self-identifying as a secular humanist. My newly acquired worldview sustained me for twenty years. But early in retirement I yearned for something more.

Recently, I asked ChatGPT to Write an essay about the myth of secular humanism in the tone of Charles Taylor. 

One of the central tenets of secular humanism is the emphasis on reason as the ultimate arbiter of truth and morality. However, Charles Taylor reminds us that human reason is inherently limited and often fails to provide a comprehensive framework for understanding the complexity of human life. The myth of secular humanism lies in its assumption that reason alone can navigate the moral, existential, and metaphysical dimensions of human existence. In reality, humans possess a multifaceted nature that cannot be neatly reduced to rational calculation, thereby rendering secular humanism ill-equipped to address the full range of human experiences.

I was never a True Believer in the myth of science. At midlife, I began browsing the philosophy section of bookstores. I bought and was greatly influenced by SCIENCE AS SALVATION - A Modern Myth and its Meaning by Mary Midgley. There is a lot more I want to write about this and I hope to do so in a book report. Now I will only say that I am pleased to see the scientific worldview being put into its proper place by brilliant metamodern thinkers.

I am also interested in looking more deeply into the myths of modernity. Again, I asked ChatGPT for some ideas and quickly got an abundance of concepts which were all very good. I will quote one idea that particularly resonated with me.

Individualism and Autonomy: Modernity often celebrates individualism and personal autonomy as essential values. While individual freedom is crucial, the myth lies in assuming that absolute autonomy leads to fulfillment and happiness. In reality, human beings are social creatures, and community, connection, and a sense of belonging are also vital for well-being.

Finally, I want to confess to currently being in the grip of the Myth of Collapse. Intellectually, reason tells me that the future is unknowable, a great MYSTERY. I want to believe that we are living in a liminal time between two possibilities, Breakthrough and Breakdown. But I cannot shake the feeling that we are living in the early stages of a collapsing civilization.

But I also have hope. Recently I have been reading a series of articles by Brendan Graham Dempsey, Building the Cathedral - A New Series on Myth and Meaning, which have inspired me. I want to play a part in the grand project that he outlines.

This 6-part Substack series aims to propose a possible solution to this crisis. As such, it is addressed to that large and growing number of people who have no working, living relationship to myth. For those comfortably served by some religion or another, this series will offer very little. It is written instead for the seekers, the doubters, the individualists uncomfortable with creeds and dogmas and codes, and those looking to find their own way through the desert. It is written for the “nones,” that growing demographic of religiously “non-affiliated” souls who may slink from churches but still seek insight and assurances from their experience. It is for the “spiritual but not religious” folks, whose sense of sacredness exists outside the box, and will not be confined to what’s been given.

It is my belief that the New Myth is already living in such souls. It only remains to draw it out and build it up.