Mythopoetics

The genesis of monarchies in Ancient Mesopotamia offers a clarifying picture of the different economical and ideological narrative forces which form the social persona of the King-God. The King-God is the synthesis of the Sangu, or spiritual leader, the Lugal, or military leader, the Ensi, or landlord, and the Ugula or great merchant. The Sangu is the evolution of the personae of the Shaman and the priest. It is the mediator with the ancestors and the unknown forces of life. It is the royal persona with higher prestige and the unquestionable figure which controls the basic narratives of life and death, the giver of the referential valuation for social action, a valuation which has its roots in successful economic actions of the past. The persona of the Lugal emerges out of the needs of war. It is an active extension of the Sangu, and only the Sangu can justify and support ideologically his performance. Lugal and Sangu represent also two different ways of ascension to power. Th...

(Link to text in Spanish)     In Ancient Mesopotamia, monarchy was one of the Mes contained in the bronze Tablets of Destiny which the god Marduk wore as a symbol of his power. The Mes included abstract concepts as well as physical objects. Me is lordship, kingship, truth, the shepherd like care of the elite for their masses, the legal language, sexuality, prostitution, art, musical instruments , and several other actions and symbols which somehow function as civilizing tools, the knowledge needed to organize a city. The Mes represent the universal law, or better, the universal law is an induction from the Mes , the way things are on a cosmological scale which includes the order of the city. The unstable homeostasis of social order unveiled the divine pretenses of the King-Gods: both Isis and her divine royal family were exposed. Naked to the eye of the intellect, kings could only maintain their prestige bowing themselves to the law which they were supposed to r...

  I thought it was rather curious that one of the few Greek kings of the Iliad that returns home alive, the blond Menelaus, was killed by Eric Bana at the doors of sacred Troy as a prelude to the war. The version, indubitably unsuitable for the rapsodos of the Mycenaean courts –which sang the myth to the heirs of the Atreidai- would have surprised greatly Homer for -as Borges noticed- Paris and Hellene are but a footnote to the epic. Hollywood’s versions of classical myths have always produced the condescending smile of theorists of culture and historians. To Adorno and Horkheimer [ Dialectic of Enlightenment ], culture industry was a form of mass deception. However, in order to have a deception we need to have a real thing which is being supplanted, and in relation to the Iliad (and myth in general) there is not such a thing. Besides the fact that on the big screen we are only seeing Brad Pitt and never Achilles (Hollywood actors are always themselves, in opposition to what trage...

A concept like this, entertained by mainstream physics, is problematic even as a metaphor, for it is postulating some sort of   sacred text  for reality (R). Beyond the obvious paradoxes -like the one that says that the set of postulates which conforms the theory would contain itself as a postulate- such Pythagorean proposal mistakes the model for the modelled thing. Theories are conceptual models, at best, consistent with their own principles, but not necessarily with our basic intuitions and conceptions (Lebenswelt). An example of this is the mathematical discipline of Analysis, whose foundations sustain the edifice of physics. The difference between the original and the model, something purportedly solved by the traditional platonic appeal to the imperfection of the human sphere in relation to the sphere of the gods, has been expressed in contemporary epistemology as the asymptotic approximation of our science to truth (or reality). But in relation to TE, their suppo...

The obvious linguistic dimension of myth  is not exempt from philosophical problems. The first approximation to the relation between language and myth would make us think that the latter is a species of the former, for there are communicative forms, like a political constitution, or a mathematical reasoning , that, in principle, do not create scenarios with categories  of traditional myths . However, if we examine a political constitution in more detail, we can see scenarios that in a direct or derived manner make reference to mythological settings. Thus, for instance, in the Constitution of Athens , [1] underlying the comments of Aristotle  concerning the administrative proceedings of democracy  itself and the laws, we find concepts such as those of Diké , justice , or Eunomía , order, that appear in Hesiod ’s poem as the consorts of Zeus , [2] addressing to a specific mythological world. In fact, the poems of Solon  that appear in the Aristotelian ...

   La neurociencia afectiva muestra que las congregaciones humanas son fuentes de opiáceos internos para el individuo. Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus , dice el viejo dogma de la Iglesia Católica, fuera de la Iglesia no hay salvación , o salud, u opio. La misma Iglesia se encargó siempre de que el adagio se cumpliera al pie de la letra, quitando la salud a cualquiera que la contradijera. El grupo es sacrosanto, cualquier mono lo sabe, pero no el grupo rival. Naciones e Iglesias ceden hoy bajo el peso de las comunidades virtuales en nuestra nueva Edad Media. Estas luchas de poder entre señores feudales (corporaciones) y reyes (naciones) son mediadas por la nueva Ecclesia Cibernáutica que tiene la última palabra sobre masallases al controlar la memoria colectiva. Agotado por las recurrentes metafísicas de la ley universal, echo de menos una vida mejor que nunca hubo, una Atenas que no mate o exilie por no creer en los dioses, un mundo capaz de vivir sin la superstición del dinero,...

According to Kant the concept of genius has only validity in the artistic realm, not in the scientific. We can reach the immaculate intellectual heights of Saint Einstein of Princeton [he uses the example of another father of the Church of Geniuses (Saint Newton), although it works for our purposes] by simply reasoning orderly and hard enough, but we could never reach the heights of the artistic geniuses, for they are nature’s voice transmitting a transcendental message. Today we have extended the adjective not only to scientists, but also to race horses, as Robert Musil noticed in his wonderful book. Life is intelligence (adaptation and overcoming   of problems) as much in the bacteria as in our more complex symbolic creations. The narrative of the genius is no more that the modern myth to justify priestly beliefs of social stratification, old schemes in new disguises. In order to maintain the ideal of arête (excellence) (we are symbolic creatures and need a continuous pro...