If mythology "naturalizes" the cultural traits and the culture creates the mythology then this is a kind of self sustaining perpetual motion. Outmoded myths are "discarded" in favor of new ones. Technology and scientific understanding are two primary causes of this "discarding" of mythology. We might imagine many discarded mythologies, perhaps one of the most obvious in anglo saxon societies is the catholic church. Discarded or "denatured" from its place of "natural" cultural institution by means of the printing press - and of course, literacy. The myth of the suburban domestic mother, once the image of all american women, largely discarded in lew of modern time saving devices and mass communication in the late twentieth century. Although these myths may fall into relative irrelevance or obscurity their impact still emanates in the society for some time. So that the catholic church still remains - its mythology still serves some culturally relevant function. Other myths still live on in decontextualized forms. The myth of masculinity lives on but now in both women and men. It is our own society which invests these myths with "meaning" and "value" and retells them in its popular media. Whether it be the myth of the "lone wolf hero" or the "rags to riches" story, or any other of dozens of popular mythological tropes. These mythologies seem natural as long as they are culturally relevant and seem backward and old fashioned and "unnatural" as soon as they are no longer relevant. They may be denatured by changing socio-politico-economic realities, or just run their course and end in some other obscure fashion. There is always a strange way that chance (fate?) plays in these myth constructions, the way clint eastwood becomes the anti-hero post-classical western cowboy, why not charles bronson or any of a dozen other actors? Too specific of an event to really say. Nevertheless I believe it is still sufficiently probable to believe that technology (and an american taste for beef) brought the cowboy - and his mythology - into, and out of, existence. The clint eastwoods are just the faces on these myths. Achilles by any other name might as well be captain america. Or alcibiades, nixon (by which I mean they where both crooks). If we sufficiently examine these mythological tropes it seems you may even be able to understand the inherent "nature" of any culture (at least through one slice of time). Im somewhat apprehensive about that conclusion though, so many variables, so many tropes, isnt pop psychology like this fundamentally flawed? Isnt there always an inescapable chaos we cannot quantify? A ghost in the machine? And dont we tend to an inescapable confirmation bias in these cultural investigations, in which we invest with meaning which has already been invested with meaning? Like anthropologists digging through our own trash bin attempting to draw objective conclusions about how we ought to think of ourselves.This is typically where science might step in, quantify, make objective, experiment. But how do you quantify culture? Crime statistics? Occurrences of the word technology in the state of the union address? GDP? A "happiness index"? Arnt we left spinning tales about trash heaps again?
That paragraph is way too long, anways. I have a feeling we are examining things on the wrong level. All of this semiotic analysis stuff. Structuralist or post structuralist, seems flawed in its totality of scope. On some level, yes, all cultural value, all that is "natural" - marriage between a man and a woman and so on - is arbitrary. But at some deeper biological level culture is anything but arbitrary, genetics, evolutionary development and so on are truly the "cause" of all culture, all myth, all notions of "natural" behavior and ideology. This is the true "deeply inscribed" structure of human language and human culture, indeed all human behavior. It seems to me, I dont know why, like european intellectual thought is frightened of this conclusion. And has been for decades. They reject these objective conclusions about humanity and its causes. Well not just in europe, lots of people in america too. But the beauty about objective scientific analysis, and let me steal one of zizeks aphorisms, the beauty of objective scientifically substantiated facts is that they work even if you dont believe in them. Gravity, radio waves, the venturi effect, all continue undaunted by humanity. All of humanities "signs" have meaning until you stop investing them with meaning, all of natures "signs" mean precisely what they appear to mean even when you dont see them. So that "X" genetic markers mean you will develop MS and so on.
There is so much complexity involved in reconciling these apparent contradictions. On one level "I" - and here I mean the denotation and connotation of "I" not simply the arbitrary letter- means nothing. "I" am nothing. A notion at best. A vague concept. And yet "I" most definitely emerges from some biological fact. Some confluence of electrical signals and pharmacology and, well, perhaps in something else we can not yet quantify. Really though now im getting off into some weird metaphysical territory. I shouldnt write and watch the news at the same time like this.
