The Invisible Mythology of our Modern World
Why our ideas of human progress could destroy us
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In the modern world, our civilization has a story. It conveys our vision of who we are, the expression of our self-image. There are many versions of the story, but they all have a similar theme of progress. Our stories of progress permeate our culture.
The story goes something like this….
Millions of years ago at the dawn of the human race, our ancestors were ignorant savages. As their intelligence evolved, they constructed myths to explain natural phenomena. They believed the gods caused the rain and the thunder. They tried to appease those supernatural beings with sacrifices and superstitions. Their mythology was full of gods, they believed the world was inhabited by spirits and invisible sentient forces.
But as our knowledge progressed, humans discovered science and rationality. This period in our history is known as The Enlightenment. Science and rationality liberated us from myth and superstition. We discovered there were no gods and the world was an insentient machine. Because the world is a machine we can predict its behavior and manipulate it for our own purposes.
