software update.

on the inevitability of mythology.

Animals evolve. We adapt. It's a miracle.

It's the miracle, I think.

Think about what we have learned how to do, in response to beauty or praise or dysfunction or time, or all of that.

They say the brain is plastic.
It rewires itself all the time, based on what it is asked to do and what goes on around it.
I suspect this is why I can love my kids but have no idea why they do what they do.

Different stories, different software.

So tell me your story. I want to know your big idea.

Your mythic sensibility is your operating system. If I know that I know you in a way more fundamental that knowing what you wear or how you vote or what the various algorithms think you want to see or buy, which amounts to the same thing.

The machines can know our commerce, but they cannot know our story. It is the difference between knowing where the storm has been and feeling the rain on your face as cleansing tears and new beginnings.

Do the people who love you know the legends that are written on your heart? Do you know theirs? Is your exchange one of obligation, or of mythology? What matters, and what is replaceable?

Will the story be passed down?

What happens in a world where there is no time for myth, no value placed on legend, because it cannot be associated with a price? What happens when stories are not allowed to be told?

What would HR say?

Here's what I know:
We are not biological or economical or physical or geographical or material or literal.
We are mythopoetic. We are art. We are the song, singing itself.

You are a poem.

So the story comes out. Comes in.
Create a mythic vacuum, and your heart will fill it. Remove stories, and you will find one, even if you do not know you're doing it. Even if it does not match what you know to be true.

There are lots of places to hear bedtime stories.
Convenient lies and handy scapegoats.
I have stumbled into those churches.
I have praised and worshipped and testified
Insensate, unconscious, asleep
I put money in the plate.

People say they are not religious.
But everybody is, all the time.

We are all of us high priests. Every moment is a ritual reenactment of our myths.

Are they the stories you want to be true? Are they tales worth telling?

Because we are telling them.

An implicit myth is harder to interrogate and upgrade and replace than an intentional one. Bad software does not know it's bad.

So choose what you know to be good. Pick a true story, and watch the upgrade kick in.

Tell me the legend of you.