Social Myths: Progress & the Golden Age

Join us as we discuss a couple of fundamental social myths of Western culture: the ideas of progress and the Golden Age. We take a look at the historical sources of these myths and how they ripple through our culture today. We explore the complexities of time and progress, looking to challenge the linear mythology that underpins Western culture and offer insights from various cultures and perspectives to broaden our understanding.

SHOW NOTES
Wikipedia references if you want to know more:
Euhemerus

Johann Gottfried Herder

Golden Age

Golden Age (metaphor)

Hesiod, Works and Days - Perseus database, Tufts University

The Myth of Progress: An Interview with Author Paul Kingsnorth, Emergence Magazine

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Transcript

Erin Branham: 0:22

Hello, and welcome back to Mythic U. We're your hosts. I'm Erin Branham.

Karen Foglesong: 0:26

And I'm Karen Foglesong. Welcome back.

Erin Branham: 0:29

Today we're going to be talking about a couple of myths. As we were working on this, we realize how kind of intertwined they really are in modern or contemporary, Western or American culture, progress, the idea of progress, and that, how it affects time and the idea of the Golden Age.

Karen Foglesong: 0:50

They seem to be totally opposite, but somehow we weave them together in our modern culture.

Erin Branham: 0:55

Well, I said, the more we've talked about it, I think there's some kind of interesting mythic paradox, maybe Ah, but we'll explore that as we talk. You have a great quote. Oh, right.

Karen Foglesong: 1:06

Yes, I do want to read us that quote, All right, and this quote is not from Campbell. This is from Scott Leonard and Michael McClure, Myth & Knowing. And they talk about the idea that"myth is extraordinarily powerful, how it is defined, and who gets to do the defining have far reaching implications for what counts as knowledge, and therefore far reaching cultural and political consequences. Thus, there is a great deal more at stake in the study of mythology than the exciting tales of heroes and their fantastic adventures." Those fantastic adventures sure are fun.

Erin Branham: 1:51

They are and they're, they're the hook.

Karen Foglesong: 1:53

You guys. They're the hook.

Erin Branham: 1:56

They're the hook.

Karen Foglesong: 1:57

It is part of us. It is really being used on us. And we are using it against ourselves as well.

Erin Branham: 2:04

It's a very good point. That's why we talked about this at Mythic U. What are the stories, the very powerful and meaningful stories that structure the way that we think about things, even the way that we feel about things? And certainly the way that we define our realities, particularly political realities. So the idea that we wanted to talk about today as you said, kind of the idea of progress, which is deeply embedded in Western culture. And as we were talking about it, the idea of the Golden Age also kept coming up. So we're going to talk about that. When we say progress. Karen, what do you think of?

Karen Foglesong: 2:39

Well, I think of the idea, well, in relationship to mythology, I think of this idea that we think that we are the pinnacle of human evolution, whether you believe in evolution or not, according to religion, you still have this kind of feeling that whoever is in your family and in your neighborhood were are much smarter than the people that we think lived in caves or in time periods before us. Definitely set the direction you're going?

Erin Branham: 3:09

Oh, sure. I think that's part of it is yes, we have this concept that people before us were less knowledgeable, more primitive, and potentially sort of less successful. You were telling me about one of the Greek philosophers though, because what we often find as we start to dive into contemporary mythic ideas is that they're actually ancient mythic ideas. And so you were telling us, you're telling me, you were told me about Euhemerus?,

Karen Foglesong: 3:41

Euhemerus of Mes-Messene. He lives around the period of 330 to 260 BCE. And he was a philosopher and a writer. And he really believed that the, his ancestors, now remember 330, okay. His ancestors were primitives who lacked the scientific method, philosophical principles, and the cognitive, cognitive sophistication of the modern world in which he lived. So he believed that the ancients were dominated by superstition and fancy and so he thought that like, say, Zeus had actually been a ruling King at one time, but the people around him were uneducated enough to talk to him to talk about him in a sophisticated manner. So they made up stories about thunderbolts and things like that to kind of replace the factual understanding that he believes his time period was coming to grasp.

Erin Branham: 4:59

Absolutely. Much as we would say today oh, you know those silly Ancient Greeks they thought that the weather changed because of Persephone. And and because, right, like What a ridiculous way to look at the world.

Karen Foglesong: 5:13

The thing that I've never been able to totally go down the rabbit hole with that one is yes, we can say the Greeks thought that the weather changed because of Persephone. But we also haven't been able to figure out the mathematics in Parthenon. Is that right? I get them confused. But it's the Athena's Parthenon. Yes. So Parthenon in Greece, right? Athens. Yes. And she, like the mathematics in the construction of that building have just started to be understood by modern humans, what in the last two decades, maybe, for instance, the stairs are created on a mathematical equation so that they look a certain way up close and look a certain way from a distance. We don't do that. We create stairs to be functional stairs. And that's all we do. Like, we like we haven't even been there. And there's lots of things. It's there's the mathematics in the structure itself. It's not completely level in all aspects. But it was built not to be level because of sightlines. So there's all this sophisticated, complicated math that these people were doing, that were saying that Persephone was changing the weather. And we didn't, we still we didn't get it, we don't know, we don't understand some of Herod's designs, we've just been able to replicate in the past half a century. You know. So I think I've never been able to take on a Euhemerist perspective because there seemed to always be ample evidence to me that it was not

Erin Branham: 6:59

Definitely, certainly have this idea within true. our culture, as we're saying that that somehow or another, civilization is advancing, progressing. That's where we call it, the idea of progress, or the myth of progress, is this idea that things were once you know, less sophisticated, and are now more sophisticated. And the assumption typically is, is that it's going to continue to get more sophisticated, that all of these things are going to continue to advance. I mean, we have people, you know, writing ideas and our geopolitical sphere and things that will say, Oh, you know, what is it the book, The End of History, which just says, you know, we get to liberal democracy and all cultures are are just, you know, inevitably going to evolve towards this liberal democracy, because of course, it's what we have, and therefore, it's the best. And that was the idea that I think you were saying, Karen, is that every age has this idea that it is the most sophisticated, the absolute pinnacle of all human evolution that has so far occurred in a civilization. And we're more advanced, we're more technologically advanced. So technology is part of it. And I think that's one where you could really argue, yeah, absolutely. There's been a general advancement over time in terms of technology. But we also do, say we think about civilization, we think about economics, that, that we're just going to one of the ideas of core ideas of capitalism, is that you can grow forever, right? There's no end to the creation of wealth. And we're going to so that's why it's fine. If you know, there's a bunch of poor people, and we haven't solved kind of the social problems, because well, eventually, you know, there's not enough of the pie to go around. I've had this argument. With hardcore capitalists, there's not enough of the pie to go around. And you say, but there's not enough of the pie, like we eventually we're gonna have to, like, share the pie a little bit more evenly. And they're like, no, no, no, the pie is always gonna get bigger. It's always gonna get bigger. That's the beauty of capitalism. And

Karen Foglesong: 9:10

so I'm sorry, I know, I can't take that seriously. It's, it's

Erin Branham: 9:15

hard to but it's true. We see now, right that it goes to well, we have limits to the actual resources of planet Earth. And therefore, there are some pretty hard limits on these things. Right. But we believe in this, we believe also, it goes down to the personal right. I myself have lived this kind of thing where I have this idea that kind of as long as I'm advancing in my career, as long as each job that I take is more responsibility and more money. I am doing what you're supposed to do to have a career. That's what what you do. So there's this way of also this idea of progress that we pull into our own lives an idea of growth. You and I, Karen have both hung deep in the self help area of civilization and culture and all of those things. And I've definitely known these people who are like, you know, if you're not growing forever and ever, you're not working on yourself, you got to optimize everything. Always, if you're not, then you're just being lazy, you're just not being, they never say you're being lazy, they say, you're just not being all you could be,

Karen Foglesong: 10:25

You're not reaching your full potential

Erin Branham: 10:26

Not reacging your full potential, there's a good way.

Karen Foglesong: 10:32

There's more in there, you just have to dig a little deeper. And

Erin Branham: 10:35

it really goes as well to like this emerging, and I think growing idea around grind culture, is that really what we want to do is just like grind out more and more wealth is that it's really the idea. So it's interesting, because there's always been a counterculture, right, that has questioned the concept of progress. And the idea that we should just keep, you know, doing more and finding more and exploring more, and using more resources, and just more and more, more, more more, because we need to use all that stuff to reach the next stage of human development so that we can progress because that's what we're doing here. Right? We're progressing. Yeah. So you can see how deeply embedded that idea is within our culture. Well, there's

Karen Foglesong: 11:22

a and this is a generalization, as opposed to civilized culture, but a kind of tribal culture that exists all over the world that says exactly the opposite. That the there's finite amount of resources, and you have to learn to manage them and work within the niche of the environment that you live in. We tend to ignore those people. Like when the movie Avatar came out, the Cameron one, not the not the animated one, you know, with the big blue people. Like I just, I was so frustrated with that movie, because it's the same story. We why are we still telling each other this story? We know this story, you don't go in and take the resources for - Like, we're gonna kill mother tree, who speaks to all of us. Because we need to make room for a power plant.

Erin Branham: 12:15

For sure. We certainly heard that story before, because it was FernGully.

Karen Foglesong: 12:19

Yes, I mean, we tell it over and over again, in various ways to each other, because it is a true cautionary tale. You know, be careful what you're doing, is there going to be food for tomorrow? Like, it's great to eat today. But, you know, we got to save some seeds, at least. That's what we're really talking about here with the myth of progress in the myth of the Golden Age, which we still need to bring into the conversation fully. But these are constructs of a different thought pattern. And somehow we need to come up with a different construct, not just change our mind in the construct that we have, which really shift

Erin Branham: 13:03

Absolutely. There's my sermon. No, I think that's very good. Actually, there was a tweet earlier this week by Lizzo, in which somebody had said something about, oh, you know, these old people who are keeping these bad habits going in politics and things like that, the young people are coming up, and they're going to replace them, and it's all going to be better. And she wrote back and she was like, No, unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. Because these things are not about the individual people. It's about the system. And the system is faceless, and will continue, no matter who's driving. And I think that sort of what you were saying about, you got to look at what's why we say you have to examine the myth that is driving us if you don't know what that is, and understand what it does, then you are being driven by it rather than having control over it. Yes. Where did this idea of of progress come from an art culture doctrines of progress first appeared in 18th century Europe. And they were really about the optimism of that time. There's this belief and progress that continued to really flourish into the 19th century. And it did have a lot to do with, with emerging technologies. And because our technology has carried us forward, and there's been this constant wave of innovation, and technology, I think that's part of what keeps that concept really deeply alive. And then it goes far into the 20th century. And then it hits a kind of a roadblock, with World War Two and all of the horrors that happened during that time. And that's been during the 20th century, they've worked, you know, really strong movements against it, you get environmentalism that comes along there as well. And now we're seeing kind of how all of this is clashing and running together, I think in our time, but you can see, one of the issues of progress is that it is a completely linear way of thinking about time and about ourselves. And I think this may be where we'll be able to bring in the golden age as well because it's also connected to the is In your time, and this goes to the idea that like Christianity, which again is one of the major influences on Western culture is a historical mythology, it has an idea of the world was created, it went through a number of years at this point, Jesus came into being. And there's a number of years until he comes back. And then that represents the end of the timeline. And that is all yes. And so there's a concept of it just moves in this way. Well, many other cultures, many other places, Plato and Aristotle that had the idea that time is cyclical, that everything - they were Plato and all those folks were really, really into circles and spheres. And this idea that they that those were such perfect, yes, the idea that those were such perfect shapes that they must represent true structures in the universe. And, you know, that's mathematics that's, that's the kind of mythology of mathematics is that when you use that to describe the universe, you're actually describing these perfect shapes, somehow they are embedded in the structure of the universe. So they were very, like, no time, turns over and goes back and come back and go round and round. But progress is a very straightforward moving along this line.. So the thing about the Golden Age is the idea that, at some time in the past, along that timeline along that linear timeline, there was a time that was as near to perfection, as humans have ever created. So this is why it's kind of in conflict with the idea of progress because the idea of progress is now. It's when we have the greatest age that we've ever created, right? Right this minute. Yep. That's the That's why when World War Two came along, they were like, oh, huh, yep. I my understanding of it, of course, I grew up we felt like we're Generation X, long after the war was that there was kind of this idea of like, Oops, well, wow, we really went backward there, didn't we? So I guess this idea that we're going to just keep going forward is not so much. That was a really shattering thought for people.

Karen Foglesong: 17:10

Well, I mean, we didn't move forward in peace, but we did move forward and technological advancement. So just, you have to shift your perspective just a little bit, you know, that we invented new ways of killing and torturing each other while we're at war. But

Erin Branham: 17:24

I think that was part of the problem. Because that before that idea of progress was pretty philosophical. It was also this idea that humanity was becoming more and more enlightened, and more and more compassionate and better and morally, better and better. And so then when we have the Holocaust. Everybody goes, Oh, well, we were wrong about that, were we? So it's been very interesting.

Karen Foglesong: 17:46

Or you just say, oh, that didn't happen.

Erin Branham: 17:48

So people, which you You're right, from what I've read of and looked at in terms of sort of white nationalist thought, which is deeply mythological thought, meaning it is where you've constructed a mythology that is so all encompassing, that you can block out, you know, huge sections of reality, which is one of the ways that you know, really powerful, mythologies are dangerous, because that idea that yeah, they're just gonna go, no, that didn't happen, we're still on that thread of perfecting ourselves if all these other people will just quit getting in our way. And, you know, if they won't, then we'll kill them. I mean, that seems to be living really seems to be sort of the idea or it's not if it's not yet it didn't happen, then it was, it should have happened. Right was like it's the Hitler's right version of white nationalism, which is certainly out there.

Karen Foglesong: 18:36

Well, that is the white nationalist movement. I don't know if you're familiar with herder and his Volker theory. This is connected to this idea of the Golden Age that somewhere in the past there was the the perfect where they call it the ur-people?

Erin Branham: 18:53

Oh, yeah, ur-people

Karen Foglesong: 18:57

Yeah. Or the ur-language

Erin Branham: 18:58

The source.

Karen Foglesong: 18:59

Yes, the source material that just somehow genetically lessened and less able to understand these greater concepts and then we devolve into having to like use technology or you know, like, hands and feet technology. So that idea this is - Herder is a great example. He wasn't a proponent necessarily, but the World War Two, Nazi Germany used his ideas to talk about the perfect human. And this is, you know, how they were measuring people and some people didn't match up to their perspective and and that's how we you know, this is how mythology can become ridiculously dangerous.

Erin Branham: 19:44

100% And that's the goes to show you the power of these kinds of ideas. Yeah, I think also the the idea of the Golden Age you find it in you know, Christianity, the Garden of Eden the idea that at one point or another there was perfection. And there was a fall out of that perfection into a less perfect world. Yeah, it persists in political ideas of the idea that oh, everything was, you know, so great back, everything was better when I was a kid, I have no people who are my parents generation who are still like, oh, man, if we could just go back to the 50s. Everything was great in the 50s. Like, yeah, if you were a white man like that, just it's very bizarre to hear somebody say that. And we hear that a lot. Again, on the right, I think you hear this, we have to get back to right there's this idea of getting back to this pure time, but you realize that like, what was interesting to me is the idea of progress. And the idea of that golden age, they seem to operate at this point, and kind of different levels of time. Right idea of progress feels ancient, it feels like it goes back to the beginning of humanity. And you know, it's is involved in in evolution. In fact, it's gotten confused. In evolution, people like the general public's conception of evolution is that that it progresses when evolution doesn't really work like that at all. No, evolution is not trying like the survival of the fittest, this idea that there's a perfect competition that creates, you know, an apex creature always, like that's what evolution is doing. Like evolution has a goal, like it's directed towards this perfect model. That and that is like, not at all how evolution works. Evolution wanders about it. It just, it just wanders about and it. It figures things out in a very messy very complicated kind of a way, it does seem true that the universe has some thing like if you know, if big history do you know Big History care, started by a guy named Christiansen as a university course. And somewhere like Arizona or New Mexico, I can't remember exactly where. And he decided to start teaching the history of the universe as a course. Wow. So he wanted to look at human history embedded within the history of the universe. So it's a course and it became a big thing. I think Bill Gates got interested in it and gave a whole bunch of money to it. And they started up a middle school curriculum. And I love it. It's great stuff.

Karen Foglesong: 22:21

So do we have a paragraph of a paragraph? On what it is? Yeah, I'm

Erin Branham: 22:25

gonna tell you. Yeah. So yeah,

Karen Foglesong: 22:28

no, I mean, I know. I mean, like, Do humans have makeup a paragraph in that timeline? Do we get that much

Erin Branham: 22:34

a little bit more. But what's interesting about the space? way he does it is he looks at it at it in terms of thresholds of complexity, and that there have been six, or six or seven, maybe eight so far. And so it starts like at the Big Bang, where the you know, in the seconds after the Big Bang, you have an undifferentiated mass of energy. But then it begins to differentiate, ah, that's complexity. Now, you have a level of complexity. Next up stars form, and star formation is another level of complexity. And then it goes to like galaxies and this kind of things, and then it goes into the planet, and looks at the formation of planet Earth. And then it gets to the emergence of humans. And then humans have several levels of complexity that they are traveling through. One of them is one of the thresholds is collective learning. So when humans learned how to share knowledge, that represented a new threshold of complexity, and that, I don't know if it's true, you know, true, true, but it's a really interesting lens to look at everything, because there's something about it, that feels right. You know, you know, I'm a big fan of complexity theory, which is the scientific theory. Yes, that has a lot to do with this kind of same idea. Yes. So it makes sense in reference to complexity theory. So it's very interesting.

Karen Foglesong: 23:59

I agree. I am a proponent of complexity theory to, most likely from your influence. On I've read, it seems to make sense. And that's what I was referencing earlier, when I was saying we need a new construct is that at some point, you have to go beyond the shape, even of what you know. And hopefully, according to complexity theory, hopefully, we're reaching the tipping point, you know, hopefully, there's enough chaos happening that something new is about to emerge. We'll see.

Erin Branham: 24:33

We will see indeed.

Karen Foglesong: 24:35

I would like to go back to if you don't mind to the Golden Age, because we didn't exactly define it. And I want to talk about the fact that it comes from Hestia. Absolutely.

Erin Branham: 24:45

Let's do that. Sure. Because it does go like this is a parallel idea in in Western culture that has come up alongside the idea of progress. It's really interesting. Absolutely. Take us back to the ancient Greeks.

Karen Foglesong: 24:58

Right, here we go again, right. So it's hassy odd. And he wrote of the gods on Olympus creating mortal men numerous times. And where we're at now, for those of you who are curious is the fifth race of mortal men. But that's kind of it could have shifted. We could be six by now, I'm not sure. Because fifth was when he was speaking, right? What do you think? Or do you think we're still probably

Erin Branham: 25:27

we're still pretty Greek and Roman, I think at our core. So

Karen Foglesong: 25:31

each race of mortals is associated with a metal. So this is where we're getting the Golden Age, the initial first people were golden, right, and then we go to silver. And then bronze. The second, the silver is a little bit inferior, but still highly honored. The third we got dedicated to might end to violence, and then it you know, it's just going downward from there. So the time we get to the Iron Age, which is where we're at, we are a blend of good and bad, and we will suffer with growing cares. And the best we can do is try to kind of develop these ancient philosophical ideals in ourselves to move forward. Because

Erin Branham: 26:25

it's just yeah, see, that strikes me like the Garden of Eden that feels like a mythic golden age. You know what I mean? Because they're actually saying, yeah, that humans were of a different substance at that time. So and it's also again, it's an it takes place in mythic time. It sounds like because this was one thing that came up for us as we were researching this, is how kind of conceptions of time go into this in mythic time. There's often the the idea that it happened a long, long time ago, right? That is actually a doorway to a mythic story. They're often started with a kind of ritual saying such as once upon a time, which tells you that this happened, but in some time, so long ago that we've kind of lost track of when it was, we know of other mythic formulations that are that are things like, in the time before your grandfather or in your grandfather's time, which is this idea that it's not within the living memory of anybody currently on Earth. It happened before that right, and that sets out mythic time. So there's the idea of a mythic Golden Age, such as what you're talking about Greek Golden Age, the idea of the Garden of Eden. And then like I said, the other idea, the sort of it was, everything was better when I was a kid is a different kind of concept for our golden age, because it happened. Like I said, it happened within one's own lifetime. Right? It's something. Yeah, that and yet, it still seems to have a kind of mythic cast. And it should be obvious to anybody who's listening to our podcast that Karen and I are both pretty liberal or leftist in our political and social leanings. But I've always tried to understand where the conservative mindset comes from how it works. What you know what there because there's a mythology there that I don't want to be ignorant of, just like liberals, just like liberals have their own mythology, right. And both sets of mythologies include the idea that was more more moral than the other side. Yes, a functional part of those kinds of mythologies. Yeah. And so this, this hungering for this simpler time, frequently, a hungering for a more religious time, I think in my experience of it, because again, my experience is from the south and speaking of other members of my family, people that I grew up around, there's this kind of idea that right now in the contemporary world, I hear a lot it's moving so fast, things are changing so much. You can hear this while you're trying to figure out what that pain is that makes people hanker after when I was a child, I don't know if it's just because we grew up in the 70s Karen, I have no hankering for when I was a child at all. And and I see people like on social media post all these, you know, incredibly nostalgic memories of growing up in the 70s and I'm just like, I don't know what those people are on. I

Karen Foglesong: 29:42

liked the colors like the avocado green and the and that weird, like burnt orange.

Erin Branham: 29:48

You can still get those. Nobody's keeping you from having those in your house.

Karen Foglesong: 29:53

Right. But yeah, I'm with you. I don't want to go back. But I've given a lot of thought to this. Because I swore when I was a kid, that I wasn't going to let that generational gap be an issue for me when I got older. And it really does get difficult because I and I think this is why this is a part of the equation why people look fondly on their childhood is because as like, think about how easy it is for a child of 15 to navigate the Internet, you know, and, and then when I look, I work in a library, and I see older people come in, and they want the card catalog. And the younger people have no idea how the card catalog works. So it's, it's a, I think it's just a matter of what feels comfortable, and what you got used to. And because we don't deal with our shadow very well, as you get less and less comfortable, this builds and builds and builds and becomes thick. This wistful, like, Oh, if only if only there weren't computers, I could just file this thing. It definitely

Erin Branham: 31:12

thinks above it, you know, whatever that is keeping up with the changes changing nature of things. I am just now because you know, I'm pretty nerdy and computer oriented. I had an apple to eBay back in the day, y'all. That was the kind of computer you got your kid in, like 1982 so that they can learn programming. That was right. So I'm just now kind of reaching the point at which I, some sometimes feel the technology getting away from me, of having being able to keep up with it. But I certainly see the pain around me of many people who are our age, like I said, Who are you know, sort of, I think at this point, if you're 40 or above, you probably sort of are like, Oh, am I going to be able to handle the next thing that comes up? Right, the next set of technology and how it works? I mean, how many have we gone through like our just our like musical media in our lifetime? That's right, that's gone. From vinyl to tapes to no vinyl and a track finally track to cassette tapes to CDs.

Karen Foglesong: 32:22

I was gonna say yeah.

Erin Branham: 32:25

Yeah, to all of these things. I like I have machines left in my house that can't, you know, they don't make media for anymore. Right, those kinds of things. It definitely turns over so quickly, it is remarkable. And I don't blame anybody for feeling lost and wishing for a simpler time. in that fashion. I do sometimes worry about what the idea of the Golden Age does is it drives political likes I kind of drive and political movements. I think a lot of you know what you see in the the kind of against woke Act, or what all that stuff can't say gay. And so are these kinds of efforts to hold back the tide of change? Because it's so upsetting. Yes. And sometimes I think it's not I certainly know people in my own life, again, in my parents generation, who are much less upset by the concept behind some of these changes. Like they're much less upset about the idea of let's break down gender. And there are non binary people in the world. I'm not sure that's what upsets them. I think what upsets them is the fact they have to change their language. And they're like, I'm old, and I want to change my language. No. Yes. So

Karen Foglesong: 33:40

yeah, my mom just refuses. She just refuses. Yeah, that's, that's fine. Honey. She says, that's fine. That's fine, honey. Right.

Erin Branham: 33:52

Like I say, like, get the sense. It's not the concept so much as the actual thing that's required of them, which I'm sure as I'm saying, if there's anybody who's 20 listening to this, they're going firebrand on what's wrong with older people? Because I know there's a lot of impatience on that score.

Karen Foglesong: 34:10

Yeah. Well, this, this myth of progress kind of plays into this generational gap that that I see that in it, it adds to ageism. In that the youth, it is part of being youthful that you want - you see the wrongs in the world and you want to change it, right? That's, that's the place that you're at in your whole cycle of life. But to assume that the world isn't changed as much as you want it. So it's the fault of the pe- person standing in front of you. That's old is really, you know, I'm really grateful for this Lizzo comment that there's a system that is faceless that has to be shifted also, the people standing or you're standing on the backs of the people standing around you. I mean, I figured that out when ah, I was going on my Feminazi phase in my 20s. And I was angry at the women around me. And then I finally started listening to what they were telling me. And they had been rebels in the only way that was available to them. And sometimes that was just saying no to their husbands. Absolutely, you know, but that that creates the shift in consciousness, you know, so we got to be careful of blaming anybody, except for ourselves. Because the more we don't deal with our own shadows, the more scary every little change, every little difference is, and the more likely we are to explode on another person. Or another

Erin Branham: 35:44

Good point, definitely. Yes, I was, I was being. reflecting as you were talking on a recent moment with my eldest daughter, who is taking AP American history this year. And I had asked her, I said something about, like, are you enjoying any of your classes? You know, she's in the last bit of the grind of the junior year. So no, she's not really enjoying any of her classes. She's tired. And I was like, so are you enjoying anything? And she said, really just history. And it took me a second, I was like, wait a minute, you. You're enjoying history, because I can tell you this girl for up until this moment, was not a fan of history class. And okay, so it's like, really well, how is that possible? And she goes, Well, it tells you how everything got to be the way it is. And I was like, YES! Okay, you realize that and too, the fact that he was interested in it. And that was part of what I remember as well coming to consciousness at that age, like, right when you're like, 17. And you've just been annoyed by the fact that your parents watch the news every evening. And you're like, why do you want to listen to that depressing stuff? And then somewhere around 17, you're all of a sudden are like, Oh, wait, this is connected to that is connected to this is to oh, oh, that's why that is the way it is. And, and part of that is coming to the realization because I know I've had this conversation with with her. And I remember doing it myself at that age of realizing that like, up until you have that moment, you do blame the your, like your parents or your teachers, or the older people right around there or right around you. Because you're like, why? How did you let it get this way? And until you get that larger historical perspective, that you start to realize it's a system, right, that there's so much that's out of the control of any individual, you know, all of us together have created the system that we're currently living in, and nobody actually has control over it. Which is, I think, part of the reason why ideas like the idea of progress are really powerful, because it gives the sense that somehow there's an order to the universe that is heading in a certain direction, and it's an optimistic direction, it's a direction where, you know, we're, it's, it is gonna get a little bit better. There are ways in which we truly have progressed, in that, you know, I there's also a lot of doom and gloom, and we're all an outrage culture now. And all everything is designed for just everybody could be like, Oh, my God, we're on the edge of destruction every single second. Because that's what the news spits at us all day long. And I have arguments with people, sometimes I'm like, no, there are actually things that are getting better. Yes. And I recently had this with my mom. And she's like, what? And I was like, look at world poverty. world poverty has been cut in half in the last century. That is see like, to me that's real progress, right? When we can say more humans are doing better than 100 years ago. That's Yes. Like that's a real, that's a progress. I would like to

Karen Foglesong: 38:52

Yes, yes. Especially since we're feeding more people too so that's a really impressive.

Erin Branham: 38:58

It is. 100%. And some of it has to do with that it has to do with scientific advancements. I was recently reading about I think it's called dwarf wheat. And that is, you know, if you remember back in the 70s, when we were growing up, there was real concern about whether or not the world the Earth's current yields of food would be able to continue to feed a rapidly growing population. And we were really, really scared about it. Yes. And it was something that you saw in, you know, again, these things when we have a fear like that it seeps into the stories around you. That's part of the way that mythology and humans as mythic creatures work. So there are lots and lots of stories about you know, giant populations of people. Soylent Green, everybody's starving, this kind of stuff. Yeah. And then somewhere along in that period of time, there was the development of dwarf wheat and dwarf wheat changed the game was a bred wheat, humans created it and it completely changed the game. The problem with wheat was it grew really, really tall. And when you made the yield heavy that's in the top part of the stalk, and it would fall over and die and become moldy, the part of it that you needed to harvest so somebody developed one that have short stalk. That was it changed the game. On feeding the human population.

Karen Foglesong: 40:18

There's progress.

Erin Branham: 40:19

And well, it's just I find it very interesting. My kind of my biggest issue with progress is the idea of it is sort of regular moving along, because one of the things that's been shown in some, like evolutionary biology and stuff is that it actually moves like the evolution tends to go along in a fairly stable state without any big changes until all of a sudden, there's a huge change. And then it goes along at that level for a while, then there's a huge change. So it has this, I'm trying to remember what it's called, like dynamic equilibrium or something like that?

Karen Foglesong: 40:53

I'm not sure. But I understand anecdotally what you mean, very interesting idea. And one of the things that I find interesting, and this is another comparison is one of my favorite technological advances is indoor showers with hot running water. Like that is one of my all time favorite. And it hasn't changed much in a long time. But people tend to think that we came up with that in modern times, but we didn't. There's evidence that what is it Mohenjo Daro, in the Indus Valley had indoor plumbing, and then flash forward to London, and we forgot how to make indoor plumbing. And everybody's sick, because we're throwing waste in the streets. It goes in it, I definitely think there's more of a cyclical nature of complex advancement, then there's a straight line. Like,

Erin Branham: 41:52

definitely, when I used to sit around and contemplate this in my early days, you know, and you'd like smoke a joint and get really philosophical your brain would go places, that'd be like the line, it's not really a line, it's not really a circle, it's a spiral. It's a moving spiral. Do you know what I'm talking about truly, and you said, I've actually seen this visualized in some like evolutionary posters and things like that, that go up in the classroom, where at the very bottom, it there'll be a spiral, sort of telescoping across the poster, and at the bottom will be where it's very tight, will be the, you know, singular celled organisms, and then it loops out and loops out and loops out till you get to, you know, dinosaurs and us.

Karen Foglesong: 42:38

So it's like the spiral. I like the spiral. Yeah, absolutely. And, and this, this brings me to another point, and stop me if I'm leaving anything unfinished. But we talked earlier about the linear time that is inherent in progress myths. And so opposite of that we have dream time in that Aboriginal Australian culture, which is happening. It's a multiplicity kind of event. It is not and it is so different from Western concept of linear time that Aboriginal populations in Australia have a hard time showing up on time, because they don't get how we tell time, they can't get the linear. And this is not a judgment of intelligence. Be careful, please, with this idea. It's a it's a different perception of the world, right? It's alien perception not better than or just different. Yeah, just different. And so they're not able, like they're having a hard time correlating interactions with westernized culture and Aboriginal culture. Because of that, that difference in perceiving time is so very real. And then there are other cultures like Mayan and culture and in Hindu culture, these cultures all have an idea of cyclical time, huge, like tiny movements, and then they relay into bigger and bigger movements that are larger cycles of time and constant.

Erin Branham: 44:24

Both of those in reckon time and in long ages that were basically like, life flourishes and then goes back and then flourishes and then goes back to nothingness, right creation and destruction cycles. Yeah,

Karen Foglesong: 44:38

I just want to make sure that everybody has some basis to move in. Like if, if you're feeling stuck in linear time, if these myths of progress and and these ideals are feeling bound to you, then maybe there's a different way of perceiving the structure that will feel more comfortable to you. Now you still have to build bridges to your mom and your dad and your job you like.

Erin Branham: 45:05

Absolutely no, that's, that's what's helpful about thinking about things, or learning about myths from different cultures, because they do introduce you to that different sort of a mindset. And, you know, it's if you start to think about time, and because that's a good point, even the way that we reckon time is literal, is linear, for the most part, right? We don't. And, and time itself is not actually linear, right? It's once around the sun, that is actually a circular kind of a motion. It's not a perfect circle, it's an ellipse, but still, you go back and forth. Of course, this is like say, this is where you get into the spiral, the sun is actually circling around the galaxy and the galaxy's moving to so you actually have all of these kinds of circles on circles and circles that are rolling around. Okay,

Karen Foglesong: 45:56

wait, which means my Spirograph was the only thing that was telling me the truth when I was a child.

Erin Branham: 46:02

Correct! Believe the Spirograph 100% Because that is actually the kind of motion that you're talking about sort of repeated but slightly off every time. But the way that we count years, right, because we say this number after this number after this number, you have a sense that we are progressing down a timeline down a number line in a linear fashion in a way that it can be very helpful to stop and think about cycles, cycles in life because there are other ways to reckon time, there's lunar reckoning, that's why there's a Lunar New Year, yes, in many cultures, women are naturally, or people who menstruate are naturally attached to the lunar cycle, because the body works in that same on that same rhythm. We do, uh, you know, celebrating a birthday is, is in one hand linear, because you're adding a number and another way, it's you do it on the same day, every year, it has that circular aspect to it. So thinking about cyclical time, or just time in general in a different manner. And I definitely invite everybody to consider what they think of as progress. And what does progress mean in your own life? What does a golden age mean, in your own life? Have you had one? Are you shooting for one? Do you believe in that sort of thing? And we would love to hear about your experiences in the comments.

Karen Foglesong: 47:22

Tell me what you think about Hesiod or I've always been tickled by Euhemerus because he's saying this, that all the people before him are primitives in 330. He is a primitive to me. So I always thought it was funny. Tell me what you think about Euhemerus.

Erin Branham: 47:45

Definitely. We want to hear always your thoughts on this and how these symbols and stories may bring meaning to your life. Thank you so much for joining us today. And we hope that we'll see you next time. We hope that if you haven't already you'll subscribe to this podcast. Yeah, because we love having you with us.

Karen Foglesong: 48:01

Bye everybody.

Erin Branham: 48:09

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