Messing with Myths

Thomas Jefferson provides a particularly poignant example of the danger -- and ultimate futility -- of attempting to reconcile a heroic image with the historical figure that inspired it. In Jefferson's case, historical scrutiny of his character and actions suggests that he was anything but admirable by today's standards, and perhaps not even by contemporary standards as anything other than a supremely gifted writer. Contradictions abound throughout his writings and actions. Yet his image is held with reverence as a symbol of the American dream, the voice of liberty standing forth and asserting itself as the natural condition of all human beings.

People get understandably upset when you mess with their myths -- they represent what we hold most dear. When we honor our myths and heroes, we are celebrating images that evoke those things for which our souls most yearn. We are in effect reaffirming our identity. To attack someone's hero is (at a psychological level) to attack their very existence.

We often speak of historical figures who ascend into the pantheon of Heroes, but this is a false image. It might be a less troublesome formulation, if somewhat less poetic, to speak of a historical figure giving rise to a heroic image, for the fact is that while the Hero takes on a life of her own, the historical figure remains a fixed reference.

So too it is with celebrities; forgetting the distinction between one's public image and one's private self can cause no end of anguish for all involved.

This points to the central problem with any attempt to reconcile history with myth: history is a reflection of past events of which we are simply observers, whereas our myths are a reflection of ourselves.

Taken in this light, debate over the historical accuracy of the Bible is a further example of our tendency to confuse historical figures with the images they create, or worse, to deny that there is a difference.

This is not to suggest that historical study is unimportant, or to undermine the legitimacy of any mythical figure. It is only to point out that these two entities are distinct, that we have fundamentally different relationships with them, and that our understanding of each is driven by different forces.

Historians may feel that their subjects are distorted -- even maligned -- by popular imagery. Conversely, devotees may feel that historians are attempting to destroy their heroes with inconvenient and irrelevant facts. Ironically, living heroes may feel that their identity has been hijacked and their own reality cast aside through the admiration of the public, causing no end of anguish for all involved. This is a failure to admit the separate existence of a mythical image, based on the historical person, but now entirely distinct and owned exclusively by the public that created it.

It may be thought tragic that we go to such lengths to deny the existence of a distinction between the historical and the mythical, preferring instead to secure the Truth for ourselves: this formulation necessarily pits one camp against another in a fight to the death, since two contradicting understandings of the "same thing" cannot both be True.

But we are complex beings, and we improve ourselves sometimes by looking outward, deriving new insights by analyzing the past, and other times we look inward, increasing our wisdom by understanding ourselves.