The Paradox of Rational Mythology
We live in a civilization that claims to have evolved beyond myth, yet operates entirely through mythological thinking. The West's foundational narrative—that it has transcended superstition through reason, science, and democratic values—is itself the most successful myth in human history. This story has become so pervasive, so naturalized, that questioning it appears almost heretical in our supposedly secular age.
Yet question it we must, for this myth serves a specific function: it justifies a system of global exploitation while positioning its beneficiaries as humanity's enlightened vanguard. The story of Western exceptionalism isn't just wrong—it's a carefully constructed narrative that enables the very inequalities and ecological destruction it claims to oppose.
Mythopoesis as the Engine of Human Progress
Before examining how this myth operates, we must understand mythopoesis itself—the fundamental human capacity for myth-making. Far from being primitive superstition, mythopoesis is perhaps our most essential faculty. Every innovation, every social transformation, every technological leap begins with someone imagining what doesn't yet exist. The internet was science fiction before it became infrastructure. Democracy emerged from philosophical myths about human nature and social contracts before it became political reality.
This reveals a profound truth: stories don't merely describe reality—they constitute it. The tales we tell about human nature, social organization, and our relationship to the natural world become the frameworks within which we build our societies.
The Dark Arts of Justification
But herein lies mythopoesis's shadow side. The same narrative capacity that enables us to imagine better futures also allows us to construct elaborate justifications for existing hierarchies and harmful practices. Slavery, colonialism, genocide—all were sustained by mythologies that made the unnatural seem inevitable, the constructed appear timeless.
This is where the relationship between history and myth-making becomes crucial. Historical narratives are never neutral recordings but selective stories that shape collective identity and justify present arrangements.
French students learn they are fortunate to be part of "the West"—defenders of liberty, bringers of education, champions of democracy. This story positions Western civilization as humanity's natural leader while obscuring the violence required to maintain this position.
The Manufacturing of Western Superiority
The myth of Western exceptionalism requires several interconnected stories to function effectively. First, the narrative of inevitable progress—that human societies naturally evolve from primitive to advanced, with the West representing the pinnacle of this development. This story depends on dramatically exaggerating the "darkness" of medieval Europe while minimizing the sophistication of non-Western societies.
Recent scholarship has revealed how distorted this narrative is. The so-called "Dark Ages" were far more dynamic and innovative than previously portrayed, while many Indigenous societies possessed sophisticated systems of governance, medicine, and environmental management that European colonizers systematically destroyed. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy influenced American democratic ideals, yet their own democratic traditions were dismantled as "primitive."
Second, the myth requires the story of Enlightenment liberation from superstition. This positions Western societies as having achieved objective, rational superiority over cultures still mired in mythological thinking.
The irony is profound: a civilization claiming to have transcended myth while being entirely structured by unexamined mythological beliefs about markets, human nature, and progress.
The Sacred Mythology of Capitalism
Nowhere is this contradiction more apparent than in capitalism's mythological structure. The system presents itself as the natural expression of human behavior while requiring elaborate artificial mechanisms to function. Property laws, police forces, financial regulations, patent systems—none of these exist in nature, yet somehow this constructed system gets presented as natural law.
The mythology works through several key beliefs that function as secular dogma: the invisible hand of the market as benevolent deity, infinite growth as both possible and necessary on a finite planet, human nature as fundamentally competitive and acquisitive, and private property as sacred rather than socially constructed. These stories are never questioned because they're presented as scientific facts rather than chosen narratives.
The Double Standard of Natural Law
Perhaps the most revealing contradiction lies in how Western societies invoke "natural law." When capitalism produces inequality, exploitation, or environmental destruction, it's dismissed as unchangeable human nature—we're competitive, selfish, acquisitive beings simply expressing our biological programming. But when other societies organize differently—with collective ownership, gift economies, or consensus decision-making—these become "unnatural" arrangements that civilized people have evolved beyond.
Meanwhile, Indigenous societies that actually lived within natural cycles for millennia get labeled as primitive for failing to transcend their environment.
The Violence of Intervention
The myth's practical consequences become clear when examining Western interventions in the Global South. The pattern is consistent: destabilize peaceful resistance while supporting violent proxies, then point to resulting chaos as proof these societies need liberation. From Iran in 1953 to Chile in 1973 to Libya in 2011, Western interventions destroyed functioning societies and blamed resulting instability on local "authoritarianism."
This creates a perfect self-reinforcing cycle. Western powers disrupt stable, often democratic societies, then use the ensuing chaos to justify further intervention while positioning themselves as reluctant saviors of populations too primitive for self-governance. The myth obscures how Western "advancement" has always depended on systematic exploitation of the majority of humanity.
The Anti-Human Nature of "Human Nature"
The accusation that questioning these myths is somehow "anti-human" reveals perhaps the deepest inversion of all. What could be more anti-human than systematically destroying the conditions that make human life possible? What's more hostile to human flourishing than poisoning the air, water, and soil that sustain us while calling this progress?
The real anti-human position is insisting that humans are so fundamentally flawed we can only thrive by dominating everything around us. Recognizing our embeddedness in natural systems—that our wellbeing is inseparable from ecological health—is perhaps the most pro-human position possible.
It suggests humans are capable of wisdom and restraint rather than being mere cancerous consumers.
The Murder of Imagination
But capitalism's greatest crime against human nature may be its systematic destruction of imagination. Children enter educational systems as natural mythmakers, constantly wondering "what if?" By the time they emerge as adults, most have been trained to accept that "there is no alternative"—that current arrangements represent the natural order of things.
This process doesn't just teach facts; it teaches a specific consciousness that can only perceive a narrow range of possibilities. We can imagine elaborate dystopias or technological fixes, but struggle to envision fundamentally different ways of organizing human relationships or our connection to nature. Tech evangelists speak constantly of "the future" but it's always more consumption, extraction, and artificial substitutes for authentic human connection.
Indigenous societies often organized around preserving dreaming capacity—vision quests, storytelling traditions, practices that maintained connection to the realm of possibility. We've replaced this with "innovation" that mostly produces new ways to monetize attention and extract resources more efficiently.
Toward Sacred Materialism
As ecological crisis intensifies and social inequality deepens, growing numbers recognize the need for new myths—or rather, very old ones. If we need divine authority to motivate ethical behavior, why not acknowledge the actual source of life and death in our lives? Earth literally has power over human survival. Climate, soil health, water systems, biodiversity—these determine whether civilizations flourish or collapse.
The dream of transcending nature is pure mythology, but unlike functional myths, it's actively destroying the conditions for human life.
Reclaiming Mythopoesis
The solution isn't abandoning mythological thinking—that's impossible—but consciously choosing better stories. We need myths that situate humans as part of rather than separate from natural systems, that value sustainability over growth, cooperation over competition, imagination over optimization.
This requires recognizing that the most "rational" position is acknowledging our complete dependence on ecological systems. The most "progressive" stance is learning from societies that maintained sustainable relationships with their environments for millennia. The most "pro-human" approach is nurturing rather than murdering our capacity to dream of worlds that don't yet exist.
The West's greatest myth—that it has evolved beyond myth—must be recognized for what it is: a story in service of power that has outlived any usefulness it once possessed.
Only by acknowledging this can we begin the essential work of conscious myth-making for an age that will either rediscover its place in the web of life or witness the collapse of the systems that make complex civilization possible.
The choice, as always, begins with the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what kind of world we want to inhabit.