Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Paleo-Future Stories (Slightly Abridged) by Panos Koutrouboussis

Here are a few words which may or may not be pertinent to the Historias. I imagine the following possibility:

One day, humans will discover that they are incapable of producing individuals or maintaining "undeveloped" societies with the gift of the particular temperament that is essential for the creation of myths and poetry. This sterility will be the result of the increase and acceleration of cerebral activity, as of the entire rhythm of human life. Of the "overpopulation" of natural knowledge via technology. Of the increasing all-encompassing interest in wealth and power at the expense of creativity. And - closely related, although inversely proportional to the above - of the near-disappearance of the external psychic environment and of the internal psychic personality; those that we heretofore called belief, imagination, humor, heart.

Nevertheless, these future humans will be well aware, by the epistemological studies they will have accomplished, of the cosmic role played by myth and archetypes for all creatures that have intelligence and consciousness of the absolute necessity of the existence of myths for the spiritual and physical health and survival of a conscious Species - for, as usual, when something has all but disappeared, it is only then, at the very last moment, and if we are lucky enough, that we realize its great value.

Until recently, the dominant belief was that the human communities-tribes developed separate "alphabets" of symbols and myths, depending on the conditions under which each one of them had come about. Now, however, new evidence shows that there are common sources of psychic symbols in the unconscious mind of all tribes and peoples. Thousands of myths taken from numerous cultures of the Earth reveal enormous, radical similarities; the archetypal symbols are thus the same for all. A pair of psychologists, Tiger and Fox, established the term "Biogrammar" to designate those common psychic archetypes which are deeply engraved in the spirits of all peoples and all eras of Humanity, unchanged from the primitive eras until now, irrespective of the language and linguistic structures of each people.

So, when people lose their power of myth-making, they will be forced to construct an electronic machine Poet, whose aim will be to undertake the transmission of ancient archetypes and symbols and their rearrangement for the creation of new Myths for humanity; and its name will certainly be Mythographer.

Yet when they do construct this machine, they will have to program it and then keep updating this program with new input. Many of the things they will teach the Mythographer we cannot know as yet. But, along with all the existing evidence concerning the raw materials of all tribes, ranging from myths, epics, beliefs, religions, fairy tales, stories, songs etc., and all the treatises written about them, there are certain recent "lessons" and instructions which are impossible not to include in the Mythographer before it starts its creative work.

On the work of Carl Jung on Archetypes, Symbols, and Dreams, and the work of Einstein and Heisenberg on the laws of relativity, probablity, uncertainty, and chance.

On the fact that the phenomenon called "the cause temporally precedes the effect" is valid only in statistical terms - as revealed by research in the inner microcosm of the atom, where everything is possible - and thus the relations between events, the very nature of time and space, may in several cases not be Causal. For example, a girl may have brown eyes because that will be the favourite color of the man she will meet when she grows up. Or, something may occur today that influenced one's behavious last week.

On the fact that the extent of a Probablity can never be verified. It is, by definition, a forever-unknown quantity, always in a state of uncertainty. Everything in the universe, from the inner world of the atom to the cosmological scale, time and space, the past, present, and future, morality, human relations, all things we know around us are constantly Relative. And...relatively constant.

On the fact that mythic events, by their very nature, often do not obey the various rules we impose on objective (?) reality or the rule of Cause and Effect.

On the fact that it is best to consider the universe as a psychic phenomenon.

On the fact that two or more opposite realities may be equally true.

On the fact that one plus one is not always two.

On the importance of Belief and its relation to knowledge.

On the importance and the activation elements of the Marvelous and the Enchanting.

On the intoxication of unknown pasts.

On the work of Dada and Surrealism.

Let us, however, allow the future to sleep. Many of these Historias Bizarros are closely related to all of the above (the hyper-three dimensions; the past-in-the-future or the future-in-the-past; the present mixed up in both; the machines; the dematerialization; the beyond of reason). Others have almost nothing to do with the Mythographer; they are but a mere facade, a tissue of images aiming at the reader's pleasure.

Yet they are all related to the influence of the "unprecedented" on the "everyday." They all live around a nucleus of para-time. We know them all, yet they are always elsewhere in time and space, like the phantom images which appear sometimes on TV screens. There is something very odd which is never localized, but which may not even exist. Like fairy tales told to children who believe everything they hear.

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