Myth Vs Truth Quotes

My mind was spinning from the symmetry of this equation I suddenly faced: magical on one side, scientific on the other, a dark pulsing myth and an acceptable reality.... The explanations were like two sides of the same coin, and the side that I favored revealed something essential about the person I was. Prior to investigating Ashley, with little hesitation I'd have believed the side most others would, the side that was logical, rational, exact. But now, much to my own shock, like a man who suddenly realized he was no longer a person he recognized, that other impossible, illogical, mad side still had a very firm grip on me.

I reached that point in my musings when it suddenly struck me that the present-day Communists were worse than Nietzsche. He claimed God was dead - intimating, at least, that He had lived; but to the Reds, He is not only now non-existent, but never had existence. That is a worse blasphemy. From it everything else in their regime follows quite logically: without God, no real authority; without real authority, no law and order; without law and order, no genuine freedom; without genuine freedom, no true human life or being. To such people, nothing is sacred; hence, nothing is truly human - for man is a sacred being. I shuddered as these truths seemed to grow out of one another. With God non-existent, the future life a myth, religion only a hoax, where can there be moral law? With no moral law why not lie, murder, rap, starve people, torture? Why not deceive?

Historically, white supremacy has venerated the idea of objectivity, and wielded a dichotomy of ‘subjectivity vs. objectivity’ as a means of silencing oppressed peoples. The idea that there is a single truth – ‘the Truth’ – is a construct of the Euro-West that is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment, which was a movement that also described Black and Brown people as both subhuman and impervious to pain. This construction is a myth and white supremacy, imperialism, colonization, capitalism, and the United States of America are all of its progeny. The idea that the truth is an entity for which we must search, in matters that endanger our abilities to exist in open spaces, is an attempt to silence oppressed peoples.17

This dialectic is present in many of the most ancient accounts of the early world. Both the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Genesis account, as well as almost every story that followed, deal with the same themes: the fight for wisdom, godliness, or perfection through the restoration of balance between extreme dualities. Whether it is good vs. evil, light vs. dark, wild vs. civilized, Heaven vs. Earth, the list goes on. It echoed throughout the ages and usually reaches its acme through what Joseph Campbell referred to as the “Hero's Journey” or monomyth. The ability of these two myths, or any myth for that matter, to resonate with people for so many thousands of years shows that the themes presented are a natural and ongoing part of the human experience. Myths carry a universal truth that is lost when only examining a literal translation.

Hiding beneath the details of each of these debates lies a common but harmful script—the myth that there are only two sides to every story and that we must give equal time to both sides in order to be fair, balanced, or truthful. This myth permeates our public culture as journalists report “both sides” of a story, politicians criticize the “other” party, and cable news hosts debate “for or against” the issue of the day. The biggest problem with this script is that the most important questions that we face usually can be approached in more than two useful ways. Many times, those who want to share misinformation will also invoke this false-balance script to demand airtime for ideas with little merit. We must actively work to resist this powerful myth. The antidote to oversimplifying into either/or options involves telling longer stories that embrace complexity and nuance.