Reinterpreting Ragnarök: Myths of Culture and Decline
The Stories We Tell, Chapter 2
In Chapter One of this series, The Stories We Tell, I introduced the idea of the personal myth, in which the reconstructed memories of a person’s past, their imagined future, and dominant cultural narratives are integrated into a coherent life story that reinforces that person’s identity and life purpose. When people hear the word ‘myth’, though, this isn’t usually what comes to mind. Instead, we conjure up stories about knights slaying dragons, semi-divine heroes overcoming great challenges, or catastrophic battles between immortal gods. These are cultural myths, stories that go beyond the personal. They seem to represent the unique values and historic experiences of the people who tell them.
These cultural myths, and their relationship to our personal myths, will be the focus of this second chapter of The Stories We Tell. This chapter is one of the load-bearing walls of the Mind & Mythos Project, so I want to make the overall argument clear. First I will introduce the idea of collective cognition, and highlight the cultural myth as a particularly important method by which we think collectively. I will then introduce the related concept of ‘master narratives’, and explore how our personal myths can both align with and oppose these master narratives. Finally, I will argue that not all stories are good stories, and show how bad cultural myths and master narratives can and have done serious damage to our individual and collective psyches.
Memory, Identity, Harmony: Why Cultural Myths Matter
There is an idea, defended by many prominent philosophers and cognitive scientists, that the human mind includes more than just the thoughts inside our heads. This idea has gone by many names—some call it collective or distributed cognition, others call it the Extended Mind—and while each version of this theory has its own emphasis and theoretical limits, all of its supporters agree that humans evolved to enhance their thinking with the tools, people, and even abstract concepts in the world around us.
We can debate whether cognition is the right word to use for this phenomenon, but either way, it’s undeniable that humans use both physical and conceptual tools to simplify difficult mental processes. Consider, for example, the calculations needed to run a small fruit stall. At minimum, the seller (let’s call her Philomena) must be able to count basic numbers to ensure that she gives the correct number of apples in exchange for a specific amount of money paid. To run the stall effectively, Philomena must also be able to track a constantly changing inventory, as well as the money held in her purse, all while exchanging pleasantries with customers over the course of several hours. Even at this small scale, the cognitive work involved would quickly become burdensome. Use of physical tools such as an abacus, and conceptual tools like multiplication and division, can make Philomena’s life much easier. I could expand this to include other people and more complex concepts and technologies, but you get the idea—extending your mind simplifies difficult mental tasks, allowing you to achieve things that would otherwise be impossible.
What does this have to do with cultural myths?
Stories are one of the most important tools in our conceptual toolbox. They help us to remember important events and information about ourselves and the world, and organise that information in a way that makes sense. As I showed in Chapter One of this series, a person’s life story is the foundation of their personal myth, an internally constructed narrative about who they are, what matters to them, and where their life is going. Personal myths offer a degree of coherence and wholeness to our sense of Self, and when we’re faced with difficult choices, the values encoded into our personal myth help us to determine which path is the right one for our story’s hero.
Cultural myths do for societies what personal myths do for individuals. Collective storytelling helps us to transmit and recall important events that might otherwise be forgotten; as these stories are passed down over generations, similar stories are combined, superfluous details are forgotten, and what emerges is a story grander than any of those which came before. This story provides a shared history and knowledge base around which a group can build a distinct identity, and expresses the unique character, beliefs, values, and norms of that group. This cultural myth is what emerges when multiple minds are extended over generations.
The Iliad, Homer’s famous epic which recounts the final days of the legendary Trojan War, is one well-known cultural myth. For the various city-states that dotted the landscape of Ancient Greece, the Trojan War was a pivotal event in their shared history, and many Greeks viewed heroes like Achilles and Odysseus as exemplars of a distinctly Greek form of manhood. The Christian myth—in particular, the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection—played a similar role for Medieval Europeans. Christianity remains one of the more influential narratives worldwide, but today Western nations are defined more by the stories they tell about World War II. For the Allies (Britain, USA, Australia, etc.), WWII is a story of triumph over evil, and the figure of Hitler is now invoked by many Westerners in much the same way that the Devil was by Medieval Christians. Indeed, our fear of this Devil runs so deep that many countries have reintroduced blasphemy laws in the hope of stamping out a perceived rise in ‘Devil worship’.
Cultural myths are thus a tool that humans have evolved to solve the problem of social coordination. In a small tribe, consensus decision making or a clan leader’s command are usually enough to maintain order. In larger groups, however, factions naturally form that represent different families, classes, professions, sub-cultures, or other distinct groups. These factions, seeking to protect their own interests, inevitably clash. If they are unable to unite over some greater purpose, this conflict can affect the stability of the wider group, risking total societal collapse. Having a shared cultural myth ensures that, no matter how different these factions are, they all still share a common culture, with similar values, rituals, goals, and agreed-upon rules.
Reinterpreting Ragnarök: The Cultural Dynamics of Narrative Identity
In Chapter One I discussed the work of psychologist Dan P. McAdams, who has dedicated his career to the study of life stories. In recent years, researchers Kate C. McLean and Moin Syed have expanded upon McAdams’ work to construct a dynamic model of narrative identity based on the concept of master narratives. Master narratives are “culturally shared stories that tell us about a given culture, and provide guidance for how to be a ‘good’ member of a culture”1. McLean and Syed contrast master narratives with personal narratives and alternative narratives. In their words:
“As individuals construct a personal narrative, they negotiate with and internalize these master narratives – they are the material they have to work with to understand how to live a good life. For many individuals whose lives fit in with societal structures, these master narratives are functional and unproblematic. Others, however, may need to construct or adopt an alternative narrative, which at minimum differs from, and at maximum resists, a master narrative.” - Personal, Master, and Alternative Narratives: An Integrative Framework for Understanding Identity Development in Context (2016)
The basic idea is that we all have a personal narrative, our personal myth, and this story is written using themes and ideas drawn from our society’s dominant cultural myths. This isn’t a problem for most of us, but for a person whose identity and lifestyle choices clash with these master narratives, this conflict can become problematic. The only way to overcome this problem is to adopt or create a plausible alternative narrative, one that provides an atypical but nevertheless coherent basis upon which a person can rewrite their personal myth.
The most enduring master narratives are those communicated by our cultural myths. I described earlier how stories like the Iliad/Odyssey and the life of Christ have historically served to unify large groups of people, and I suspect that their unifying power comes largely from their ability to communicate deep psychological and spiritual truths that transcend time and place. Who among us cannot relate to Odysseus’ desire to be reunited with his home and family? Who is not moved by Christ’s great suffering, and even more so by his forgiveness of his torturers? The suffering endured by these characters is excessive, but they do endure it—and if we know these stories, we can look to Odysseus’ perseverance and Jesus’ compassion for inspiration when we face difficulties in our own lives. These stories teach us that, if we model our own lives on the lives of these great figures, we too can become like gods.
The themes in these stories are universal. Even so, there are some among us for whom these figures do not inspire worship. Alternative narratives offer a source of meaning and narrative cohesion that these people would otherwise lack, and as more people adopt these alternative narratives, they can themselves become master narratives. I believe that even this, the psychological conflict between master and alternative narratives, is represented in many of the great cultural myths. Consider the old Norse myth of Ragnarök. Ragnarök, the ‘twilight of the Gods’, describes a series of climactic battles between the Norse gods and their eternal enemies, the jötnar, supported by a variety of monstrous creatures. One by one, the old gods are killed: Odin is slain by the great wolf Fenrir; Thor dies to the venom of Jörmungandr, the World Serpent; Heimdall and Loki kill one another after Loki betrays his fellow gods. The battle ends with the utter destruction of the world, but out of the ashes rise two humans, Lif and Lifthrasir, who go on to repopulate a world that is more peaceful and prosperous than ever before. This story has been interpreted in many different ways, but to me, one particular interpretation stands out. Empires will fall, gods will be slain, old ways will be forgotten—and from the ruins, the potential for something better will emerge. In the same way, all master narratives will eventually be replaced by alternative narratives, and this is not always a bad thing.
Narratives around gender roles are an interesting example of this master narrative/alternative narrative dynamic. Traditional master narratives encouraged women to place homemaking and childrearing above careerism, and encouraged men to hunt, work, and go to war to ensure that their families and communities remained safe and well-fed. For most people throughout history, this wasn’t a problem. War and starvation were always very real threats, and without technology to level the playing field, most men and women were naturally better suited to their respective roles anyway. The result was that very few people questioned the dominant story. But there have always been a select few for whom society’s master narratives didn’t fit. Over time, the stories of women like Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, and Amelia Earhart have become more widespread, and the popularity of these stories has led to the rise of a new master narrative: Feminism. Time will tell whether this narrative remains a compelling one, but it’s undeniable that it has caused a seismic shift in our society’s moral foundations.
In short, the relationship between personal and cultural myths is a complex one. On one hand, our personal myths are deeply entwined with our culture’s master narratives, which in turn draw heavily from our shared cultural myths. This has its drawbacks, but one of the benefits is that it gives us a shared moral framework, with shared values, rules, and customs, upon which we can build a harmonious society. On the other hand, times change, and old stories can’t always account for new problems. Sometimes alternative narratives are needed, so to make this possible, we have (either consciously or unconsciously) embedded tales of death and rebirth into our greatest mythological traditions. By this revolutionary act we have provided ourselves with a narrative logic to justify the writing of new stories, giving ourselves almost limitless control over our own destinies, for good or ill.
Bad Stories (and How To Rewrite Them)
Not all stories are good stories. We forget the very worst of them, and we laugh at some that are ‘so bad they’re good’. But sometimes a bad story can seem good, and when we take these stories seriously, they can have a corrosive effect on our lives and identities. Indeed, some stories have the potential to destroy whole nations. Now that we understand the difference between personal and cultural myths, and know a little about how they interact, let’s consider some of the ways that narrative thinking can fail us, and what we can do about it.
Narrative Dysbiosis
In his essay The Narrative Microbiome, Heliotroph proposed a concept that I’ve found very useful when thinking about personal myths. In his words:
“Where the Narrative Environment is the range of stories and formulas that surround a person situated in a particular culture and social order, the Narrative Microbiome is the selection of stories and logics that a person has absorbed and integrated into their own mental functions. Exactly as we absorb bacteria and enzymes through our diet that colonize our gut and affect how our body absorbs and redeploys nutrients, the Narrative Microbiome affects how we metabolize new information, how we assign ideas value and legitimacy, and how we relate them to already-integrated information.” - The Narrative Microbiome (2022)
A person’s Narrative Microbiome is the specific selection of narratives that they have internalised as true and relevant to their life and identity. The distinction between the Narrative Microbiome and the Narrative Environment is an important one—it acknowledges that not everyone who was born into (for example) a white, upper class Melbourne family in the 1990s automatically internalised the same ideas and values. Some held on to ideas that led them to be happy and successful in their chosen endeavors, while others held on to ideas that led to depression, anxiety, and eating disorders.
How can two people living such similar lives experience such radically different outcomes? It seems to depend upon the kinds and amounts of unhealthy ‘foods’ (narratives) each person ingests over the course of their life, as well as their innate susceptibility to such narratives. In the same way that a child raised on a diet of fast food and Pepsi will fail to meet their physical potential, a child raised to believe that they’ll never be financially stable, the world is about to end, and peak beauty can only be achieved with Ozempic pills and Botox injections, will probably not grow up to be very emotionally stable. To extend Heliotroph’s metaphor, we can think of this narrative-driven emotional instability as a kind of narrative dysbiosis.
Is there a cure for narrative dysbiosis? I think the solution to this problem is more obvious than we realise. Heliotroph identified many of the worst sources: alarmist news journalism, toxic social media feeds, cheap entertainment that glorifies our worst vices, addictive video games that dull our desire for genuine accomplishment, pornography that encourages unhealthy and dangerous sexual activity. Anyone who can eliminate these things and replace them with more nourishing narrative sources will quickly find themselves feeling healthier, happier, and more fulfilled. Reading good books, talking walks in nature, working with your hands, spending quality time with friends and family, falling in love, becoming a parent, finding your calling, cultivating a spiritual life—this may all sound trite, but I promise you, a few of these things together can counteract the all-too-common narratives of doom, gloom, and deconstruction that fuel our postmodern nihilism.
The Postmodern Crisis
We in the 21st century face a crisis. It is a time of great psychological unrest; we need new stories more than ever, but we have deconstructed our myths and condemned our heroes, so we have no good material left with which to write them. As psychologist Kenneth J. Gergen explains:
“Under postmodern conditions, persons exist in a state of continuous construction and reconstruction; it is a world where anything goes that can be negotiated. Each reality of self gives way to a reflexive questioning, irony, and ultimately the playful probing of yet another reality. The center fails to hold.” - The Saturated Self (1992)
In simple(ish) terms, Postmodernism is a philosophical position which asserts that all values are subjective, all truth is relative, no single narrative or tradition is the correct one, and the dominance of any one tradition in a society is a reflection not of that tradition’s fundamental truth, but of power dynamics. Defining Postmodernism accurately has always been a hopeless task, of course—ask five philosophers for a definition of Postmodernism and you’ll get ten different, contradictory answers—but for our purposes, this will suffice.
Postmodernism is a revolutionary project. On the surface, the tools of Postmodernist critique appear strictly academic, and perhaps they once were; but Postmodernism’s tools and vocabulary have slowly wormed their way into even the most mundane of society’s institutions, and now concepts like reflexivity and deconstruction are regularly used by HR harpies to guide professional ethics seminars and workplace DEI policies. Like Marxism and Liberalism before it, Postmodernism’s primary purpose has been one of socio-political critique, the destruction of existing master narratives. However, unlike its Modernist forebears, Postmodernism offers no new narratives. On the other side of the chasm is nothing but a deeper, darker chasm.2
The Postmodern condition is one of perpetual psychological chaos. In place of a coherent life story, each of us is left bewildered by a simultaneous selection of too many narratives and none at all. This uncertainty breeds anxiety, alienation, depression, despair, and finally—if we’re lucky—a semi-comfortable apathy. Collectively, we fare no better. Without a shared story to guide us, we are becoming ever more divided, to the point that many of us now feel more fellowship with nameless internet weirdos than with our own neighbours. Our social bonds are breaking. The centre has failed to hold.
What can we do about this? The good news is that people seem to be getting tired of playing Postmodern language games. Endless deconstruction is exhausting, and it ultimately goes nowhere. If there’s one thing we can learn from the recent Trump re-election, the resurgence of nationalist politics in Europe, and the fact that young people are currently flocking to traditionalist churches, it’s that people want to be for things again. We—yes, I include myself in this—want to live fulfilling, meaningful, enchanted lives again.
How we get there remains an open question. McAdams suggests that, while no single story can account for all of the narratives that might be used by someone to construct their identity, “some stories are larger and more integrative than others and come closer, therefore, to functioning as identity formats for a given person”3. But choosing a broader, more integrative story is just one of many solutions, and I think this particular solution is vulnerable to the same Postmodern critiques that got us here in the first place. Johann Kurtz’s Zetetic Blade, influenced by emerging ‘Metamodern’ trends, offers another vision:
“Our conception of knowledge and meaning must embrace our humanity, and not deny it. To be human is to perpetually entertain both knowledge and doubt as harmonious constants. This is a philosophy in life, not a philosophy divorced from life…
“Metamodernism will be an era of competing understandings of truth; but that does not equate to the relativism of postmodernity. Metamodernism allows for the possibility of an absolute Truth, but, skeptical that we can capture that Truth entirely, acknowledges that our different assertions will be more or less true. Our task as zeteticists will be to come as close to the Truth as possible, and to form the truest existence possible.” - The Zetetic Blade (2024)
A lived-out process of Truth-seeking that embraces both knowledge and doubt. I think Kurtz’s vision shows more promise. But zeteticism is a tricky concept, and the zetetic blade may not be the right weapon for everyone. After all, while some of us appreciate the finesse of a well-crafted sword, others prefer to ‘philosophise with a hammer’…
But this is a topic that requires more space to fully unpack. I will return to these and other related ideas in Chapter Three of this series.
Final Thoughts
The stories we tell are important. Far from being mere entertainment, they are the building blocks we use to construct our identities and our communities. It’s no wonder, then, that after decades of nitpicking the stories gifted to us by our ancestors, we find our lives deprived of meaning, and yearn for the return of sense, truth, goodness, and beauty. In the third and final chapter of The Stories We Tell, I want to explore how we can use stories to reconnect with these qualities, and in so doing overcome the despair that Postmodernity has forced upon us. It’s a difficult task, but it’s one that needs doing. See you soon.
Further Reading
Gergen (1992), The Saturated Self
McAdams (1993), The Stories We Live By
Clark & Chalmers (1998), The Extended Mind
Conway & Pleydell-Pearce (2000), The Construction of Autobiographical Memories in the Self-Memory System
McAdams (2001), The Psychology of Life Stories
McAdams & McLean (2013), Narrative Identity
McLean & Syed (2016), Personal, Master, and Alternative Narratives:
An Integrative Framework for Understanding Identity Development in Context
Storm (2021), Metamodernism: The Future of Theory
Heliotroph (2022), The Narrative Microbiome
Kurtz (2024), The Zetetic Blade
This is not to say that those activists who wield Postmodernist tools lack a positive vision. The very existence of DEI policies is evidence to the contrary. But it’s a flawed vision, a paradoxically exclusive vision, and, evidently, one that has not yet been subject to a proper Postmodern critique. Deconstruction is, to its credit, a scalpel which cuts indiscriminately.
"In the third and final chapter of The Stories We Tell, I want to explore how we can use stories to reconnect with these qualities, and in so doing overcome the despair that Postmodernity has forced upon us."
I think that is great, what you are doing. To my mind the problem is that you will have to eliminate the idea of human rights first, or simultaneously. I say this because it seems the concept of human rights has led, over time, to what I call a sacred-victim, entitled parasite culture. And the engine behind this is the concept, invented by intellectuals, of rights as privilege without obligation. You merely have to be born a acquire "rights."
And humans, being prone to pride, envy, lust, greed, etc., are unable to resist the siren call of this sacred-victim, entitled parasite culture – that myths are competing with – and which has captured pretty much everyone.