Homo Mythologus

What is the destiny of our great race - to reach for the stars, or to speed towards the finish line?

Ever since the dawn of man, he has stood apart from and above the animal kingdom, and yet he is not the god of this world, but must behold the heavens above and know the scale of his insignificance in the grand scheme of the cosmos. This dual tension has characterized the nature of his self-consciousness from the very first moment that he began to create conjecture about what kind of creature he might turn out to be. Before this moment, even his dreams were sleeping, abed in the instinctive world of predator and prey. When man began not just to call and to answer, but to answer his questions, and to question his answers - then only did he truly awaken for the very first time. He woke up and asked, "Who am I?"

"A rational animal," decrees tradition, yet the spirit of man rebels against this reduction. "Is that all?", he wants to ask. "What else might I become?"

On this issue, tradition is largely silent. Man must discover his possibilities for himself: no other can provide for him a formula which delimits them adequately. To achieve some dim comprehension of what is possible for him, man must painstakingly accrue insights into his nature, only some of which will be fit for transmission to others. Each individual man must achieve his own moments of self-consciousness, rare moments when he suddenly sees himself clearly, and understands for the first time why he has always acted as he has. In these moments he has an opportunity to become aware of himself, an opportunity which inevitably blossoms into self-knowledge if he is up to the challenge. But is he?

The world calls out to us: "Who are you?" | "I am a man." | "What is a man?"

Man has been defined in many ways: homo sapiens means twice-wise ape, while humanity of course means compassion - perhaps an aspiration more than a description. Man has been called He Who Watches and He Who Knows, but he is at his core a questioning being. It is his curiosity which drives him more than anything else, and it is both his greatest treasure and his most dangerous weapon, a weapon he wields so impulsively that he will just as quickly cut himself as his enemies. But who are his enemies, if not other men? So he is destined to cut himself either way. The only question that remains is whether he can cut himself deeply enough to awaken, yet not quite deeply enough to end the dream.

He must awaken to his situation if he is to have any chance of resolving his problems. No more can he sleepwalk through life and yet live.

And he must be sleepwalking, for how else could he stand to be responsible for the widespread destruction which he wreaks upon the world? He has eyes, yet he does not see the suffering his every action causes, or perhaps he does not care - at least not more than he cares about himself. After all, it is this selfish self-interest of his which has served him best; he had to eke out his survival for millennia, and only recently has he become possessed of tools which allow him the power to control the entire planet. He had to invent these tools for himself, and it was not easy - Nature did not reveal her secrets willingly, but rather they had to be wrested from Her forcefully. His tacit harmony with Nature may have been fractured the day he learnt to question the answers he had come up with, but it was shattered the day he learnt to force Nature to give an unequivocal answer to a question which had been devised by the mind of man. 

Is it any wonder that he became disconnected from the mysterious meaning which pervades the cosmos, once Truth became his god? Truth cannot tolerate mystery, and banishes it to the realm of ignorance, insisting that this is all it ever was. Man has certainly grown in stature since the time of his ancestors, standing upon the shoulders of such giants that they would surely think him a god, but has he grown equally in insight? We stand in the midst of a meaning crisis which finds its origin in man's pursuit of the most elusive prize ever. The technological sophistication of modernity is a testament to man's understanding of the mechanics of reality, and yet it is somehow driving not only the most contagious epidemic of nihilism that the world has ever seen, but is in addition the cause of more extinct species than can be attributed to any event in known history. Will our merciless rape of Nature ever come to an end?

We call out to the world: "Who am I?" | "You are a man." | "What is a man?" | "A man is one who decides what it means to be a man."

Yet how can one decide who they want to be if they do not even know who they are? How can man understand his destiny without finding a way to remember his past? But history is a treacherous ground, and claims are only as credible as the hand that holds the pen; reliable scholarship on the past is notoriously hard to find. We can however choose to follow a more general method, which involves an inspection of the various terms which have been employed to name man since time immemorium. Those who come from a western background will no doubt be familiar with the genesis story from the bible, in which Adam is formed from dust into which God breathes life. The creation of Adam is intrinsically linked to both naming and stewardship, since it is his duty to name and to care for all the plants and animals in the land that his lord has given him, and in the biblical narrative this serves as the prototype for the calling of mankind.

In fact, the name Adam (which in Hebrew names the original man just mentioned) comes from the Hebrew word for ground or earth, Adamah. One thing most people don't know, though, is that this name is an echo of an older name, Adamu, which is the Akkadian word for human. Both derive from the same semitic root, meaning earth or soil, which makes sense since tropes are repeated and refined through the transformations performed by various cultures on the ideas which are inherited from a root culture. Another name for human is Manu, which is rooted in the Indo-European man- prefix, meaning 'to think'. This is perhaps the earliest recorded instance of the conception of man as He Who Reasons, or He Who Knows. In Greek, man is called Anthropos, which is the root of the modern field of anthropology - the study of man. This moniker is perhaps the most enigmatic of the various names man has given himself.

Oftentimes the translation which is put forward with respect to the term anthropos is a surprisingly spiritual one - man is He Who Looks upward, towards the heavens specifically. This implies a kind of transcendent orientation, suggesting that human beings are distinctive in being the sort of creature that looks beyond the logistics of their immediate survival, aiming instead at ideal modes of being. Yet the exact nature of the term anthropos is unclear, which scholars explain by suggesting that it likely originates in a pre-Greek, non-Indo-European substrate - a language lost to the sands of time. Anthr- probably names man, and -opos refers to the face or the eye, suggesting an upward orientation which is the root of the poetic idea of man as he who gazes upward, into the heavens. For all its flaws, this conception of man is certainly one which inspires us as individuals to dream of the possibilities that man might someday aspire to.

Perhaps the most straightforward translation of anthropos is "upright-facing man", though such an interpretation practically cauterizes the poetry of things. On the plus side, this characterization rhymes with Eastern concepts of man, which consist in a depiction of a being who stands upright on two legs. Interestingly, the old Chinese character which depicts this upright man is a homophone with a term that means benevolence and humaneness, implying that to be human is to be morally cultivated. One can even find this notion implicit in the uprightness of the man, in that to be upright is a kind of metaphor for moral integrity. Of course, perhaps another way of translating anthropos is as "forward-facing man"; in this case, we find the origin of the other common conception of man, and the one which is perhaps the root of the notion of man as He Who Knows - He Who Watches. Man is the only animal who pays attention to all things.

So what then is man? Has he paid sufficient attention to surmise this fact, or has his famous science failed him in this respect?

Before him lies a sprawling map consisting of more than a dozen distinct fields of study, each of which gives an accounting of some aspect of the nature of man. Biology tells us that we are mammals, which are a kind of warm-blooded vertebrate that gives birth to live young. Genetics tells us that man is not just related to other mammals, but is in fact of a piece with all other life on earth, existing as one link in a chain that stretches back through history for billions of years. Anatomy tells us that man is possessed of a larger brain relative to his body size than any known animal, with a ratio nearly double our closest competitor, dolphins. Neuroscience gives us more specific information about the brain structures that are responsible for the kinds of complex cognition and communication which are characteristic of human beings. And on and on it goes: science is the microscope, and we the eye, taking our never-ending series of notes.

This world of ours is rich and intricate, to say the least, and human beings are determined to study every detail they can manage to see. It is an admirable ambition, and one which has served us well, but for all that we now know about the functioning of our body-brain complex, it has not helped us to find the facts that really matter. Has our evolving scientific knowledge made us compassionate, has our growing penchant for truth made us wise? Has our incessant striving for answers yet satisfied a single one of us, or has it at least helped us to identify what is essential about us, what defines us as human beings? It must be admitted that for all our scientific advancements, in some ways we are still as children, playing with powers we do not comprehend. The difficulty lies in our complete confidence, which itself is rooted in our childlike innocence. We do not know, and that allows us the freedom to believe whatever we wish.

The goal of course was for science to break the grip magical thinking had on the mind, but the magic of language is so subtle that one can never guess how each new shift in the dynamic will form a fresh veil over the face of things. All we see is that we are freeing ourselves from the old way of seeing, that we are becoming open once more to new possibilities. And this is the key concept if we wish to understand the role that language plays in man's fate and in his destiny; more than any other factor, the way in which we name ourselves and talk about our world imposes upon existence a set of constraints in the form of expectations that organize the information one perceives into an intelligible form. There is a logic implicit in the language we use which subtly guides one's perceptual experience into certain pre-established grooves. It was in this spirit that Wittgenstein said, "The limits of my language are the limits of my world."

Hence the microscope-approach to the etymology of man's many names, since they are not only the fossilized history of his attempts at self-understanding, but serve simultaneously as fetters of and windows into his essential identity. Only by performing a careful conceptual analysis of the various ways in which man has imagined his identity can one uncover the shape of the self who thinks such things. After all, a persona is crafted to fit a purpose by a mind, and the purpose speaks to the contours of the mind even as the mask presents a false impression of the face. Once one has discovered the dreamer beneath the dream, then and only then is one able to speak to his possibilities, for these are not constrained by the dream in which he is currently immersed. This is the essence of many eastern teachings, that all one has to do is to stop for a moment and realize that you are not a drop in the ocean, but the ocean in a drop, the all in the one.

How seriously one takes the metaphysical underpinnings of such a belief notwithstanding, there is a certain practical wisdom contained in this statement that is difficult to capture in a more direct fashion. Non-attachment, mindfulness and meditation have myriad benefits that go well beyond the metaphysically-loaded concept of enlightenment which is touted as the goal in the traditions from which these techniques are inherited, and many seemingly esoteric statements are in fact expressions of insights which can only be attained and understood by those who have learnt to disentangle themselves from the hustle and bustle of their own minds. Until one can separate themselves from their idea of who they are, and stand apart from that idea, reflecting on it, questioning it, critiquing it - until one is capable of seeing through their idea of themselves for a moment, an authentic relationship with the Self will be impossible.

But how can one see through what they have not yet seen clearly? How much detail is too much, and how much is not enough? How might we adjust the focus on this makeshift microscope we have been building together, to ensure that the human specimen can be seen clearly beneath our analytical lens? Let us return to the first name I mentioned, which in fact appeared in two forms: the rational animal, and homo sapiens. The first definition finds it root in Aristotle, while the second of course is the modern scientific name for our species, which was presumably inspired by Aristotle's conception, since it means "wise man" in Latin. Of interest is that Aristotle's conception is more scientific, since it avoids the primitive (as-yet undefined) "man", and instead describes us as animals. It also describes man as "rational" rather than "wise", which seems altogether more apt if we want description rather than aspiration in science.

Well, it cannot be denied that we are animals, and yet we are indeed possessed of an extraordinary capacity to reason which seems to far exceed that of other animals, an ability which thereby seems distinctive of humans. It seems that since the beginning of time man has felt that he is something other than an animal, that he is in his own category. Of course, he is ALSO an animal, but he feels that he is something more than a mere beast, and in fact this belief is perhaps one of the most persistent and defining features of humans - we have an intrinsic desire to rationalize our feeling of being above other animals. A natural counterpoint arises in the consciousness of man; as his pride grows, a storm brews off in the distance - a potential begins to awaken that, when it arrives, will shock him so sharply awake for a moment that he will be humbled by how helpless he is in comparison to the mighty and destructive powers of Nature.

From this moment on, he begins to conceptualize himself as a being who stands between gods and beasts, and seeks to humble himself by recalling his connection to the earth. He never forgets his original idea, that he is no mere beast, but he adapts to the necessities imposed upon him by a life lived in subservience to powers which transcend his understanding. He seeks somehow to remain grounded while reaching for the stars, and so he stretches himself between the two, in spite of the fact that this puts him under great strain and might one day cause him to snap. To compensate for the risks introduced by the double bind which seems the signature of his existence, he seeks a way of living which is harmonious with the order that pervades the cosmos, and this is when his religious ideas begin to evolve. A thousand thousand men dream of the face of god, and in so doing they risk making him in their own image, and thereby perverting the sacred.

To prevent this from happening, men had their gods compete through stories, and the best stories won worship. Though the gods and their origins varied, the stories always began the same way for us.

Homo Sapiens, the discerning man, is born from spirit breathing life into dust. And in fact, the word homo ultimately derives from a proto-Indo-European word that means earth, ground or soil, which also serves as the root for the Latin word humus, meaning earth or dirt. This relationship with the earth seems conceptually central when it comes to what it means to be human, and this connection is often explained by pointing to the implicit context, the contrast that it establishes between heavenly or divine entities, and earthly or mortal ones. This is surely an important aspect of the meaning of 'man', however the discerning reader will no doubt notice that there is something strange about this definition, in that it seems to leave entirely unexpressed the more primitive concept of man, which one would suppose arose earlier in the history of his development, namely that of man as non-beast, man as distinct from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Well, considering that in Latin we see that the word for earth split off from a shared root meaning the same into a separate term, the connotations of the differential, homo, might be worth investigating. Homo is a concrete noun, but there is an abstract form, humanitas, as well as an adjectival form, humanus. Key Roman philosophers such as Cicero and Seneca excavated and elaborated upon the meaning-content of these notions, and although the specifics of their accounts differed, the overall shape of the ideas remain remarkably consistent. Both thinkers linked these terms with concepts such as reason, moral virtue, compassion, and duty, not only paving the way for future humanist thought but also most likely continuing a prior conceptual tradition around the nature of man which is now lost to time. This same concept is echoed in early eastern languages, which link the name of man to the idea of moral cultivation via a homophone.

This should not be that surprising - after all, the concepts just mentioned would develop through the French language through the term humanité, which would then be received into English as 'humanity'; this of course names not just the species, but also our aspirations surrounding moral virtue, namely that we have learnt to be more skilled in the art of empathy. So much of our self-identity seems tied up not in descriptions of how we are, but in descriptions of how we wish to be, that it might be worth taking a moment to pause and consider whether this might be, rather than some kind of mistake or confusion, a genuine revelation in itself, a mask the motivation for which hints at the true nature of the one who dons it. It seems that the human being is the sort of creature who aspires to be better than they are, who hopes to one day become wise and compassionate, and who names himself in virtue of his ideals, not his current state.

Thus, the discerning man might begin to suspect that there may be a forgotten meaning hiding in the earthling definition like a seed, ready to sprout up provided that the conditions are right. Given that mankind is so concerned with civilization, which is to say, with moral cultivation, and given also that this immediately strikes the discerning man as an obvious figure of speech, a metaphor and a borrowing, it might occur to such a man that the context from which it is borrowed is not only quite literally entrenched in the earth, but in one and the same stroke serves to provide man with a clear distinction between himself and animals: man is He Who Cultivates the land. Thus, his identity was born in the dirty labour of agriculture, and shaped in synchrony with the land. From here, it is just a short stroll to arrive at the idea that man cultivates much more than the land upon which he lives. Man, you see, is He Who Cultivates HIMSELF.

"Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself and then comes to resemble the picture." But he can always reimagine himself, and thus, "the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands."

If man is indeed He Who Cultivates Himself, then one's attention naturally turns towards the question of how. How does one achieve this impossible-seeming task, of becoming something other than one is? The answer, fortunately, is simple: he asks himself hard questions, and he invents stories to answer them, and those stories become dreams in the collective consciousness that are charged up by the continual attention which is paid to them until they begin to come true in strange and unexpected ways. The more he believes in his stories, the more they come to define him, and the more he comes to resemble them in all their honest complexity. It is said that art imitates life, and it is certainly true to say so, yet life equally imitates art, and the best living is inexplicably intertwined with the best art, with not a critic alive who could tear them apart, or find the joints at which he might begin to cut. His entire history is a story he tells himself about his past, and it is woven of the stories being told by individual groups of humans, all over the world. How much is true, how much is conjecture, how much is distortion, how much is deceit? Who can find the thread which will help him to unravel the knotted mysteries of the past, that he might find again the tapestry which depicted the whole, the part, and the relation therein. How can man remember who he is supposed to be?

We stand in the space between dreams, where the old myths have fallen away, but the new ones are not yet fully formed. Staring into the abyss, is it any wonder that good men and women succumb to the downward spiral, the very spirit of destruction? In the absence of hope, or, more precisely, in the absence of something to hope for, something to believe in, one can muster no defence against the vast emptiness which threatens to erase all significance, and any recollection thereof. But myth-making is not dead, it is just forgotten, for we have invented a new name for it: fiction. This is a spurious category which seeks to oppose fact and fiction, as if 'fact' is a completely spotless concept, absent any kind of bias or prejudice, while fiction is portrayed as airy-fairy make-believe. Well, imagination is equally operative in faction and fiction both, and factual interpretations are discarded at least twice as often as fictional concepts serve as prototypical conceptions of future technologies, yet both still happen with surprising regularity. There is an ancient and venerable tradition of cross-pollination between the sciences and the arts which only recently fell from favour, and that tradition was itself rooted in an awareness man has carried with him since ancient times: this world of bits and pieces is, in some strange way, all one world, and thus every insight is an insight into the whole.

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." What this means is: our concept of what is possible radically conditions the space in which our imagination is allowed to play, and thus we are put in the straitjacket of sanity, where the standard is conformity.

But only you can know your path. This is why efforts to know oneself lay at the foundations of philosophical inquiry as well as at the peak of every mountain of Truth, as each new revelation about the macrocosm subtly lifts the veil concealing the microcosm within, and as each insight into the microcosm serves to illuminate the great cavern of the Self in which the individual burns brightly. The most important way in which we get to know ourselves is through the stories we tell and the stories to which we attend - these give us hints about the kind of person we are, and the kind of person we aspire to be. Ultimately, man is a creature who tells himself a story about who he is, and, slowly but surely, becomes the story that he tells.

The world calls out to us: "Who are you?" | "I am a man." | "What is a man?" | "A man is one who decides what it means to be a man." | "So tell us then: what kind of a man have you decided to be?"