Where we believe we come from, determines a lot about where we believe we are going. And, how we choose to get there.
WHY MYTH? WHY NATION? WHY CHARACTERS?
Before we dive into the American myth in particular. We have to answer the question, why think about myths at all? Why apply it to America? Why think about individuals and what they may or may not mean to us?
Why Myths?
There are some books that I choose to intentionally sort of pick up and put down, only ever reading 5-10 pages over the course of a few months. One of those books is “The Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell. On page 5 (don’t worry, I’m further along than that) of my edition of the book, he does this thing that’s very powerful and very few non-fiction writers do well. He actually comes out and says the whole thing. All at once. It’s almost it’s own sort of immediate relief to the massiveness of the question that assumingely prompted the reader to open this dense book in the first place.
Moyers: Myths are clues?
Campbell: Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.
Moyers: What we’re capable of knowing and experiencing within?
Campbell: Yes.
Moyers: You changed the definition of a myth from the search for meaning to the experience of meaning.
Campbell: Experience of life. The mind has to do with meaning…
Moyers: How do you get that experience?
Campbell: Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. … Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. It tells you what the experience is.— The Power of Myth
We are given what myths are, why they are relevant, and what they do for you the individual. In a direct, no nonsense approach. While dealing with, an otherwise, very cerebral topic.
So why myths? Because when we uncover and discuss the myths at play, shaping our national identity, we can understand life in our country, where it is headed, and how we can further new myths.
Which brings us to our next question.
Why Nations?
The GenZ poster answer would be “I love living through unprecedented historic events”. Which would get challenged by political nerds, asserting that our current years rank in the middle of American chaos periods, and what you are really experiencing is an unprecedented information firehose that makes it FEEL more unprecedented than it actually is.
But the serious question still remains, why does putting myths in the context of national identity really matter?
Well it’s not some breakthrough in understanding to say that we live in highly politicized times. And it’s not a new feeling that there are seemingly existential questions arising around America’s actions both abroad and at home. Whether it’s ICE Raids in LA or tactical strikes in Iran, subsidies for the coal industry or why the support of Luigi Mangione is so high. The national identity is in a reformation, and it’s unclear whether a moth or a butterfly will come out of that cocoon.
National identity is the horizontal through line between people held within one’s namesake borders. How we relate to each other and the basic shared ideals that creates the image of an American in our head when thinking about a random version of this identity five states away, determines how we feel about the nation itself.
In times of tension however, it is easy to give way to sub-nationalism. Breaking the nation up into a list of “others”. This happens, in my opinion, when the unifying myth of the nation has faltered in some key ways.
Why the focus on the nation? Because we all must wrestle with the effects of an ideal lost, if we ever want to enjoy the camaraderie of an ideal re-centered.
Which brings us to the final question in our pre-amble. The WHO of the equation.
Why Character?
Well, what is a story without characters? Can history even take place without them? And more importantly, how else are we supposed to realize these ways of experiencing life without characters? Let’s return to Joseph Campbell for a moment.
Moyers: Don’t you sometimes think, as you consider these stories, that you are drowning in other people’s dreams?
Campbell: I don’t listen to other people’s dreams.
Moyers: But all these myths are other people’s dreams.
Campbell: Oh, no, they’re not. They are the world’s dreams. They are archetypal dreams and deal with great human problems. I know when I come to one of these thresholds now. The myth tells me about it, how to respond to certain crises of disappointment or delight or failure or success. The myths tell me where I am.
Moyers: What happens when people become legends? Can you say, for example, that John Wayne has become a myth?
Campbell: When a person becomes a model for other people’s lives, he has moved in the sphere of being mythologized.— The Power of Myth
Characters (people like you and me) have the ability to act as a sort of universal channel for great human problems. We tend to focus a great deal of attention towards these people. They tend to be polarizing, because we are able to use them as symbolic scapegoats for our opinions on the underlying conflict they represent.
America never runs short on large personalities. Some truly arising to mythic proportions. It is through these people (both groups and individuals) that we can look at what is happening to the American Myth.
THE SHAPE OF THE AMERICAN MYTH
There are plenty of frames one could put the American Myth into. But I view the myth similar to a flow chart where you can always work your way back upstream. It gives it a tangibility to empower one to attempt to seek a new myth, which is the journey we’re on together right now.
What is the founding myth of America?
Here we welcome our first argument. Is it “in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue” or is it chiseling into Plymouth Rock in 1620? Well considering Columbus most likely made land in modern day Bahamas, and Plymouth Rock is in modern day Massachusetts, I think we can put this to bed rather quickly despite our elementary school stories.
Let’s remind ourselves who these Pilgrims are. At their core, they are looking to separate their denomination from the Church of England. Spent seven years living in Holland, in exile from England. And while in Holland, raised funds to venture to the New World to establish a settlement they would later call Plymouth Colony.
A venture backed Christian denomination, seeking religious freedom through an independent city-state in the New World. The returns for such a venture bet? On a long enough time horizon, 27.72-Trillion dollars of GDP last year.
All on the backs of religious freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.
The freedom of religion. The freedom from English rule. The freedom to bear arms. The freedom of slaves. The freedom of women. The freedom of industry. The freedom to go and help other countries get freedom. The freedom for an abortion.
The American Myth is rooted in freedom. This is unwavering and steadfast. To attack this core is to attack the very nation. It is the root of many of our pivotal points of national history and debates. Which brings us back to the flow chart → Freedom to do what? The answer of this high level question is what everything else flows out of.
Using a little help from ChatGPT, we mapped the freedom myth through these eras:
Freedom of Religion (1620-1690) — the Founding/Divine Myth
Freedom as Opportunity (1690-1760) — the New World Myth & self-governance
Freedom from Tyranny (1760-1800) - the Revolutionary Myth
Freedom as New Order (1787-1820) - the 2nd Founding Myth
Freedom through Expansion (1803-1860) - the Frontier Myth
Freedom as Moral Reckoning (1861-1877) — the Emancipation Myth
Freedom through Industry (1870-1914) — the Industrial Myth
Freedom as Arrival (1890-1929) — the Immigrant Myth
Freedom as Safety (1930-1945) — the Depression Myth (New Deal & WWII)
Freedom as Order (1945-1963) - the American Dream Myth
Freedom as Personal Liberation (1964-1980) - the Countercultural Myth
Freedom is Market (1980-2008) — the Neoliberal Myth
Freedom to Scale (2008-present) — the 2nd Frontier Myth
PILGRIMAGE: LEAVING ONE MYTH FOR ANOTHER
Going from one myth to the next is sort of like the first law of thermodynamics. It’s a transfer. Not created, nor destroyed. You can see this energy in funny ways.
All of these freedoms are held in its (the country’s) people, in each of us. So, it should be observable in each of us.
One observation you can look at, is the dominant energy spent at a place like Harvard Business School. In the early 2000s, HBS students were focused on entering the dot-com bubble and finance. Technology then dipped and finance continued to climb while consulting remained a constant ~20%. Then in the 2010s once the financial bubble popped, we see HBS grads moving back into tech but also ~5% entered nonprofit roles (Woke Myth?). Now, not only do we see a large return to technology, but specifically 15% “entering” entrepreneurship.
Said another way, over 50% (consulting/trad-fi) are stuck in the old myth — while 15%+ are correctly feeding into Freedom to Scale.
MIGHT I INTRODUCE ANOTHER LAW OF MYTHS, BORROWING FROM MCLUHAN’S TALKS ON MEDIUMS → THE NEW MYTH WILL ALWAYS ABSORB THE OLD MYTH.
The Countercultural Myth doesn’t kill the American Dream Myth. You can have your home in the suburbs in this country, it doesn’t get in the way of our acid in San Francisco.
The Market doesn’t want to kill counterculture, no far from it. In fact let us package it up for you, and that’ll actually help the American Dream Myth minority too.
And hey, Freedom to Scale loves the Market Myth. We don’t hate you guys, you’re just not thinking big enough is all.
Here’s an interesting example of a senator stuck with the language of the previous myth, with Putin and Trump are working the new myth.
Lindsey Graham, “I don’t want to give that money and those assets to Putin.” That’s the market myth. A focus on money and assets. Putin in the Ukraine invasion is utilizing the new myth Scale. (and yes I realize I’m applying this across countries now but let me continue.)
What has been one of Trump’s obsessions? Squarely in the Freedom to Scale, which we called “The 2nd Frontier Myth”. He’s trying to scale the United States with a new frontier, and as a result receives the market myth, with all the natural resources Greenland has.
One final interesting example of pilgrimage, is the anti-pilgrimage. Said another way, directly working against the arrival of the new myth.
Nothing exemplifies this better than this period:
Freedom through Expansion (1803-1860) - the Frontier Myth
Freedom as Moral Reckoning (1861-1877) — the Emancipation Myth
In trying to secede, the South worked directly against the expansion myth — can’t expand if you’re chopping the country in half. And brought on the Moral Reckoning - Emancipation Myth.
To work directly against the present myth is to openly state conflict, hastening the subsequent myth.
MYTH IS THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY NET OF A NATION
Now pulling from the second law of thermodynamics…
“The second law states that the entropy of an isolated system can only increase or remain constant; it never decreases. This means that natural processes tend to move towards a state of greater disorder and that some energy is always lost as unusable heat during energy transfers.”
Something started to happen… right… here:
Freedom as Personal Liberation (1964-1980) - the Countercultural Myth
More people started falling through the cracks of the American Myth. Not aligning to it. Wanting to hang back in the previous myth, or just get on to the next myth, or if everything is about the “personal” why focus on the national at all.
This is the underlying myth that undid the support for Vietnam. This is the same underlying myth that created the support for Civil Rights and broader identity consciousness.
This myth, in my opinion, is the first and only “inner myth”. It took you away from the experience of living in and for the nation, and instead brought the questions of the nation into your experience. No longer was it “I am Black man contributing to this country.” A myth that, while fragile, existed as a result of the Emancipation Myth and Freedom as Safety (WWII). But during the inner myth it turned instead to, “this country does not allow a Black man, which I have been told I am by my country, to contribute to it.”
Now the “inner myth” is obviously extremely powerful, but it is also a double edged sword. Held briefly, the awakening the inner myth provides unlocks barriers to participating in the myth. For example: as a function of civil rights, Black talent was structurally unblocked (to a degree, not perfectly and not immediately) from participating in the Freedom is Market myth. However, it still requires a pilgrimage from one myth to the other. Even today we see a percentage of Black Americans stuck on the Personal Liberation myth not able to simultaneously hold Freedom is Market or Freedom to Scale.
One might say that “myth stragglers” can utilize staying on their myth as a sort of “inertia-scapegoat”. One might also say you can look at the recent backlash towards DEI as forced-movement to push “myth stragglers” to get on to the next myth. But I don’t want to get stuck on these ideas as they are a bit more sensitive and would take more time to work through.
What both of these ideas represent, along with the earlier point of entropy, is that myth is a psychological safety net for Americans.
It answers the creative direction question of “where are we going, and who am I in this direction?”
Looking back to the image at the top of this section, we see the pilgrimage from Freedom is Market to Freedom to Scale. The cataclysm ending the Market myth was the 2008 financial crisis. From 2005-2010, you had the “early movers” towards the Freedom to Scale myth. We see the founding of Airbnb, Uber, Facebook, and many more. In 2010 we are given the mythological symbol. An introduction of characters, an unveiling of the myth itself. “The Social Network” is our last great modern American mythological film. As great as “Oppenheimer” was, it was a retrospective on a completed American myth.
Now 17 years into the Freedom to Scale mythological journey, we’ve seen characters rise and fall. The greatest polarizing triumphant character being Elon, and the primary sacrifice of the era being Elizabeth Holmes. The country is well aware of this myth, and GenZ only knows this myth as the primary mover of American society in their life time.
This was a little hard to look up, so I might be wrong, but approximately 9.6m* people were employed in the technology sector in 2023 — representing 5.9% of the overall US workforce. So the question comes up, is Scale enough of an encapsulating myth to rally the country. Or do we continue in losing each other in the cracks?
Because when that safety net is gone, when the overriding myth doesn’t include enough Americans or the contribution path seems to be only for the elites, chaos hastens.
PARADISE LOST, WOLVES IN MYTH’S CLOTHING, & REDEMPTION MYTH
The feeling I cannot shake, is the empathy for those that fall through the cracks of the myth. Either due to the myth not being strong enough for their benefit, or due to their own myth straggling. A weak myth create a societal ceiling that has to get broken by the following myth.
Falling through the cracks of the myth, or a myth not getting replaced legibly, can lead to chaos. But what does chaos look like? It looks like a perversion of the myth. Onlyfans is a scaling of one’s sexual output. Crypto scams is a technological scaling of financial fraud. If myth is meant to clue us into the higher potentialities of life, the perversion of myth show us how deprave we might become within that same myth.
Beware of wolves in myth’s clothing. For they look to dangle the benefits of the myth, through cheaper means. And if the myth is meant to give clues to elevate your spirit, the wolf is seeking the cost of eating your spirit. What was previously intimate, becomes a broadcast and para-social-sexual financial scheme. What previously represented value, becomes pure vapor manipulation.
I believe we are in the potential end times of Freedom to Scale. It seems like, more and more, the culture (Silicon Valley startup/venture norms) and characters that made this myth fruitful and available — are turning sour. And in about a year or two, we will have some sort of 2008 financial crisis event for technology. Most likely with AI. What are the precursors to this event, that points to the myth’s dissipation?
Nothing could be clearer than the current way pseudo-M&A is being conducted. A hollowing out of Character AI, Inflection, and most recently Windsurf. Where the founders abandon the bulk of their team, bringing only the top 20-30 researchers/critical members, investors are made whole (and profit), and the company is left to run independently as a shell of its former self.
This is a complete 180 on the values of the previous myth that got us to this point. And as a result, a new myth will have to form as a correction and absorption for this behavior — should it continue.
We are in dire need of correction. Those characters that can give us the next “Social Network” that makes clear the following myth. But what is that next myth? To me, there can only be one answer.
Freedom as Moral Reckoning II - The TechnoCorrection Myth (still workshopping the name)
Remember the laws of myth, this doesn’t kill the myth of scale. It holds the scale myth it within itself, allowing it to press onward with the physics of the new myth.
After the previous Moral Reckoning period, we had the Industrial Myth. Perhaps after another moral reckoning, we might unlock an Automation Myth that holds human dignity at it’s center.
This would both redeem the moral blunders of the scale period, bring more Americans into the mythological fold, and restore the culture we hold dear within technology.
I’ll leave you with this quote, but swap out France for America.
It is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny. With Debray we might say, 'Yes, it is quite accidental that I am born French; but after all, France is eternal.
Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson
I don’t do edits really, so excuse typos and things that don’t make sense.
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Much love.
Live in the light
BONUS MATERIAL - THE WEST & DIVINE PULL
Out of the 13 myths in the original list, 5 of them have a “West” orientation. I found this interesting, and I relate it to a concept I simply call “Divine Pull”.
Divine Pull is a recognition of energy. Perhaps it’s the energy that accumulates from entropy, reorganizing itself to get used again. Even when we think about our next great theater of power, it is no longer centered around the Atlantic — America and Europe. Instead it’s about the Pacific — America and China.
When in doubt, when having to bet on the new myth formation, look West. The odds are always good in the West.
DOUBLE BONUS MATERIAL — CONSTELLATION OF MYTHS THEORY
Wow, hello, I can’t believe you’re down here. Amazing.
I was reading this and said, ok but even in the list of myths there’s overlap. What would happen if we made a sort of “constellation of myths” theory to represent the sort of “sub-nationalism” environment we’ve been increasingly finding ourselves in since the 60s?
In short, the constellation of myths theory takes into account that entropy in the myth system has caused many to fall through the cracks and instead of dismissing them to a pure state of entropy disorder, we should take their myth making more seriously. For example, the Onlyfans Myth has a character through every rich Miami pornstar that flaunts the high order myth of the market economy.
While I think that celebrating entropy furthers entropy itself, I do think there’s something to the competitive nature of myths and that being it’s own meta-myth of sorts.
References for personal research:
The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson
Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan
The Brutalist (film, 2024)
Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen
Laws of Thermodynamics
How The Ivy League Broke America - The Atlantic
Things Hidden Since The Foundations of the World by Rene Girard
*and 9.3m of them work at Docusign — HA zingggggg