Peaeater

A myth is not a lie. There is a lot of confusion about this.

A myth is a story that embodies a belief regarding some phenomenon of experience.

Some myths, you might think, can be lightly dismissed as primitive explanations of natural mechanisms. The sun is not pulled around in a sky chariot, it is a very large ball of gravitationally active gas. Silly historical people.

But this overlooks the primary function of a myth, which is to understand ourselves and our way in the world, and is about our psychology. It's all too easy to "disprove" a myth through the observation of physical facts, but this entirely misses the point. 

We certainly feel comfortable telling children all kinds of stories, and these are not merely to entertain, but to help them absorb the knowledge and values we feel are important. I've never met a child who didn't love stories. On the other hand, I've never heard of a child who demanded more flashcards at bedtime.

When you wake up in the morning with the remembrance of a dream still lingering on in your foggy brain, how does it come out when you're describing it over the breakfast table? As a bulleted list of data? Or, by gum, in story form?

Is there a religion in the entire history of the world that has not been encapsulated and proliferated through a collection of canonical stories? Or a nation?

History is a story of what happened. Today's top news story is a story of what happened. Every event retold, ever, is a story construction about what happened.

Some stories, whether based on literal events or not, crystallize into myth because they capture something essential about the events they describe. It's often hard to put your finger on just what that essence is, but it seems that the harder it is to define, the more fruitful the myth is, and the more staying power it has.