“In him we live and move and have our being” … Acts 17:28
For a Christian, Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life; he is the vine to which all branches are connected in order to receive the sap of life. Disconnected from him, we wither, dry up and die. As branches grafted onto Christ (Romans 11:11-24), it is in him that we live, move and exist; without him we can do nothing, since from him we receive our life, our salvation. Christ is for Christians the motherboard, the foundation, the bedrock on which their lives rest, the cornerstone that keeps them standing (Ephesians 2:20-22).
Worldview, the motherboard of our mind
The motherboard of a computer is a board, usually made of hard green plastic, with an electrical circuit imprinted in copper or aluminum that allows us to connect all the components of a computer - the processor, the memory, the CPU, the video card, the network card, the audio card, the computer’s communication ports to the outside that allow it to be connected to other devices.
The motherboard of a computer serves us perfectly as an allegory or metaphor of what a worldview is and how it is composed of elements that are individually different from each other, each with a different function, but which sit on the same board, on the basis of which they interact harmoniously. Let us see what these elements are and what their individual function or contribution to the worldview is.
Worldview, as a system or foundation of our thinking and our life, is an ordered collection of many elements. Just as our DNA or genetic code is composed of many genes, so a worldview is composed of many elements. Some of these elements are:
Myth
In today’s language, most of the time when we hear the word "myth", it is in reference to something that is not true. When we say or hear "this is a myth”, it means nowadays, "this is false”. In reality, a myth may or may not be true, that is to say, it is never historical, but it is never false either. Historical and true are not always synonymous. Historical means that it happened; myths are accounts that describe realities and as such never happened; however, what they say of these realities is completely true in the times and societies where they were born.
Within the context of cultural anthropology, myth is a pre-scientific explanation of reality, a fantastic and phantasmagorical account of oral tradition, usually involving gods who embody and represent the forces of nature as well as general aspects of the human condition.
Within cultural anthropology, myths belong to a discipline called cosmogony, which consists of accounts about the origin, nature and function of everything that exists and that human beings do not understand. As a collection of myths, mythology is a way of making sense of human existence. Its various stories were born to satisfy human curiosity about fundamental questions such as "Where do we come from?", "Where are we going?" or "Why is it raining one day and sunny the next?".
Examples of Myths
The myth of Cronos – Cronos was the god of time, hence the words chronology, chronometer, to measure time. In ancient Greece, the reality of time was explained by the existence of a god who was the lord of time; this lord bore children and after birthing them, ate them. Of course, this is not historical, but it is true.
That is, within a primitive mentality it serves perfectly well to explain the concept of time. Every day that I wake up and get up because I am alive, I have one more day in my existence, one day to live; at the end of it, when I go to bed, I have one day eaten up, consummated, and consumed, one day less in my existence.
The myth of Androgyny – In the Greek tradition, Zeus, the king of the gods, created a being that possessed both genders; like a man and a woman glued together back-to-back. Later, Zeus became afraid of his creature, just like the human being is afraid of so many things he invents, like the atomic bomb, and used the usual weapon, division: "divide and conquer" and divided the androgynous being into two, thus creating the male and the female.
This is how the reality of romantic love was created; since they were initially united, the tendency is to reunite; hence the sexual attraction. The two, man and woman, spend half their lives looking for their significant half or their soulmate, as they still say today.
The myth of Adam and Eve – The Bible says in three mythological accounts of the creation of human beings what Greek mythology says in one.
In Genesis 1:27 – So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. We are told that the man and the woman, both created in the image and likeness of God, are equal in dignity.
In Genesis 2:7 – The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. We are told that the human being is connected to all that exists, almost alluding to the fact that he is the result of a long evolution.
In Genesis 2:22 – And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. We are told that the two are flesh of the same flesh and belong to each other.
The myth of the origin of evil – Both the Greek and the Hebrew mythology blame the woman for the origin of evil. Just as they attribute to her the "scientific" curiosity for knowing and comprehending and discovering the reason for things. In Greek mythology, Pandora was the wife of Zeus who out of curiosity opened the box that contained all evils; upon discovering it, Zeus came running to close it, but many evils had already escaped and soon reproduced in many others, in a sequence of cause and effect. In Hebrew mythology, Eve ate and fed Adam the forbidden fruit.
The myth about love and death – Orpheus, a musician and singer to whom his father Apollo had given a lyre, fell madly in love with Eurydice with whom he was going to marry. However, before the wedding, Eurydice was bitten by a snake while fleeing from an admirer and died; inconsolable, Orpheus descended into the world of the dead and asked Hades to return his beloved to him. Hades accepted on the condition that when he left the underworld with her, he would not look back. Distrustful, Orpheus, as always happens with romantic love, looked back and lost Eurydice again. Immersed in a deep sadness, he would not eat or drink or respond to the seduction of other women, so they decided to kill him; through death, he was finally reunited with his beloved.
The myth of Narcissus – Narcissus, son of the river god, Cephisus, possessed a stunning beauty that aroused the love of many nymphs, including Echo. However, self-absorbed, Narcissus was arrogant and proud, and in love with his own image, he spent his time gazing into the placid waters of the river at his own reflection. One day, while engrossed in his own reflection, he fell into the river and drowned.
In psychology, narcissism is the term given to a concept developed by Sigmund Freud that determines the exacerbated love of an individual for himself; synonymous to selfishness, a self-centered person who denies the social dimension of the human person.
Legends and Folk Tales
The protagonists of mythological narratives are always gods; those of legends are always humans, heroes of antiquity at a certain historical moment who stand out for their contribution to humanity. For this same reason, myth is historically timeless, legend is historical, although it exaggerates the facts, distorting them, giving them a fantastic and excessive air to increase the fame of someone important from the past.
They are the characters of human imagination, half historical and half fictional, that captivate the human mind because each of them reflects a facet of our personality, like King Solomon, Pericles, Achilles, Hector, Ulysses, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Spartacus, Charlemagne, Godfrey of Bullion, Joan of Arc, Marco Polo, Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Robin Hood, etc...
Characters like Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, Tarzan; Superman, Spider-Man, Snow White, Cinderella... are fictional characters that belong to another literary genre similar to that of legend: folk tale. The only difference is that a legend starts from a historical character and magnifies him beyond reality, while a folk tale is timeless because it always starts with "once upon the time, in a distant country"; it never places us in time or space, but within the human psyche, revealing aspects of it.
Beliefs
Much of what we said about myth applies to belief. Because every myth is a belief, but not all beliefs are myths. Belief is more generic, that is, many of our beliefs are also myths. Myth belongs to the realm of philosophy, cultural anthropology or cosmogony; belief belongs more to the realm of psychology, religion and spirituality, because it is an inner conviction about an aspect of reality that is beyond the five senses and all empirical verification.
Belief is the mental acceptance or conviction of a "truth", idea or theory with or without empirical evidence. It is to hold something as true that cannot be proven or dis-proven by science. In this sense, it enters the field of intuitive knowledge so it does not belong to the logic-deductive knowledge of science.
Belief can be irrational, that is, superstitious or it can be reasonable. The First Vatican Council defines Faith as a reasonable belief. Witchcraft, magic, conferring on a material object, like a key, a horseshoe, a horn, spiritual value or power is an irrational belief and therefore a superstition, a return to the time when animals spoke and things had souls: to animism.
There are beliefs in modern life demonstrably false, and yet they continue to exist because they fulfill a positive function. Even children know that Santa Claus does not exist; however, in the collective conscious or unconscious imagination, he represents, personifies the love, kindness and generosity of a father, of a mother, of God as our Father.
Rituals
Because myths are narratives that explain the “why” of many human and nature realities, rite or ritual is to put into practice, acting out, expressing, or applying the myth or belief in real life. The purpose of the acting out or expression of the myth through ritual is to reinforce the belief in the myth.
A ceremony ritual, sacred or non-sacred, is an act that is always performed in the same way and celebrates a belief or myth that is important in the context of a culture or religion. The performance or celebration of rituals has a very important psychological and spiritual function; it relieves stress and anxiety, increases self-confidence, and reinforces faith or belief. Rituals remind us of what is most important in life and keep us united to the vital source; they give us a sense of stability and continuity in our lives.
We perform many rituals, even in our modern lives, and we do not even realize that we are doing them. But the fact that we do so proves their importance and function in our emotional and rational balance. The entry into adulthood, the bachelor parties, the ribbon cutting at an inauguration, tossing of the hat on graduation day, the bride tossing her bouquet to unmarried women during the wedding reception, the birthday celebration, the blowing out of one candle for each year.
Our Christian life is full of rites. All the sacraments have a belief and a ceremonial act behind them. The imposition of hands, the blessing, the baptism, are the gateway to the community – in fact, the priest comes to the door of the church to receive the neophyte. The Eucharist is the reconstitution of Christ's life, doctrine, his passion and death, for we do it in memory of him and it keeps us united as a community. Confession is a liberating catharsis from the negative actions of our lives; when we hear "I absolve you" ("ego te absolvo" in Latin) we feel cleansed, willing to start over. The anointing of the sick is a refreshment in our pain.
Religion
As we said before, it is itself a worldview, because it answers the questions "where we come from" and "where are we going", as well as it gives meaning, reason and purpose to everything that exists, structuring not only nature, but also the life of men in relation to themselves, to God and to nature. Among many things, religion encompasses beliefs, myths and rituals.
Archetype
It is an element of Greek philosophy, especially neoplatonic, which designates ideas, models, primigens or prototypes, paradigms of human behavior that reside in the collective unconscious of humanity, as demonstrated by Carl Jung, Freud's disciple. For Plato, archetypes are mental forms, primordial ideas imprinted in the soul before it takes on a body.
Jung discovered in our collective unconscious 12 paradigms, models or patterns of behavior that may or may not coincide with the functions of individuals in society or professions, but they also configure a way of being and behaving towards oneself and others. These are: the Sage, the Innocent, the Explorer, the Ruler, the Creator, the Caretaker, the Magician, the Hero, the Villain, the Lover, the Fool, the Orphan. The list could go on and on, even in relation to significant characters who shape standardized models of behavior.
In addition to these that are restricted to forms of behavior, there are other paradigms imprinted in our collective unconscious, which refer more to society and the way it operates. For example, I have as a paradigm or archetype of process: Egypt - Desert - Promised Land. Karl Marx, despite being an avowed atheist, consciously or unconsciously followed this archetype in his historical materialism. For him, Egypt was capitalism, the desert was the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Promised Land was communism or a classless society.
Recovery from an addiction also follows this archetype. Egypt is the addiction that has taken away your freedom and the control of your life; the desert is the price to erase or the purification of the body and mind from the toxins that enslave you; in the desert you feel the urge to go back, like the Jewish people after they escaped Egypt, or the withdrawal syndrome for the one struggling with an addiction, and finally, the Promised Land when you are completely free from this addiction.
Symbols
Emblems, shapes or signs that contain a powerful meaning within the culture, representing its model of life or its ancestral tradition, or some element considered iconic or totemic and identifying it, such as, for example, the cross for Christianity.
Norms, Rules and Laws
Every worldview also contains a code of laws, norms or rules of conduct to harmonize the coexistence among individuals, to determine the rights and duties in the relationship of individuals with each other and with the community at large. A regulation by which companies choose to govern themselves, either explicitly (legal format), through a protocol or subjectively.
Not all laws are spoken or written in stone. There are unwritten laws or norms, and yet everyone observes them. The way we dress often obeys an unwritten norm; similarly, opening the door for someone and letting them pass first, not picking your nose in public, and so many other little things we obey that are not written anywhere or obey any code of conduct.
Values
They are more inherent to human nature in general than to a particular worldview. Values such as freedom, equality, justice, truth, honesty, love, fidelity, are invariable in time and space. Duty, commitment, shape human life and are invariables from culture to culture or from time to time. A given worldview may have a slightly different interpretation of them, without varying the fundamental.
Conclusion – Inserted in the motherboard of a computer are all the components that make it work as a harmonious whole, likewise, a worldview is composed of myths, rites, beliefs, norms, symbols, archetypes, and values that give meaning and shape to our lives.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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