Hey all!
So, as usual, when starting down a path believing you know the path you are on, the path has other plans. When I started this series on myths, stories and dreams, I had an “idea” on where I was going at the outset. Aha! Wrong again.
I mean, I will get back to writing about dreams and myths in direct relationship with actual dreams, but this whole path of exploring mythmaking based on a true story has been really profound for me – I hope for you, too.
And, I feel I would be remiss in not writing about how mythmaking is not just about what we do about the past – personal and cultural and societal – but what we do every day. Day to day.
I want to say that to explore mythmaking in real time is especially on the table because of all that is happening in my country, here in the U.S. I want to say that the magnitude of mythmaking that is happening on the dailly in our political arena is more astounding at the moment.
Unfortunately, that is not true. All countries in all history have worked hard to revise current events to be based on a true story but to change the actual facts to fit particular narratives.
Master of the Story of Joseph, Neatherlandish [ca. 1500]
Like, look at this piece of art. It is a “telling” of part of the story of Joseph of the Many-Colored Coat but putting it in current, to the times, times. I mean, look at how the story is woven into the mythology of not the times when the story of Joseph would have happened, but with modern dress, modern settings, all the characters being white, non-Jewish and non-Egyptian. It is a retelling and reshaping of the story that was done in real time.
Again, all societies have done this throughout human history. It is how we justify and shape reality to fit with, well, justifications for actions.
In the political climate here in the U.S., it is pretty astonishing how deeply obvious this is on display at the moment around changes being made across the country.
Now, you may be saying YES YES, look at what this side is doing and saying and look at what that side is doing and saying. I am saying that all sides do it.
For example, the current administration has created a fear-based narrative around people who immigrate to my country seeking asylum and a better life. In the current administration’s spin on the the narrative, all immigrants seeking asylum are terrible people. They actually use that phrase – terrible people. Calling them rapists and murderers, etc.
This is not a new twist of narrative twisting. When my grandfather was an immigrant from Italy, the narrative that Italians were terrible, violent beasts was widely used. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was approved, and was law for 10 years. Part of the law included that state and federal courts were not allowed to grant citizenship to Chinese resident aliens – but they could, of course, deport them.
The reason was, of course, because of terrible racism. Chinese folk came to the U.S. to do things like work on the railroad [like my grandfather did] and, because there was so much discrimination and racism against them, they were forced to work for low wages. Which, in turn, made American workers squeezed out of jobs because American workers required more pay.
So stories were circulated about how terrible the Chinese immigrants were – how, in the neighborhoods they settled in, there was more prostitution and drugs and gambling and violence. The narrative also floated that having this influx of immigrants from China lowered the moral and standards of the U.S. This is even written in the act:
In the Opinions of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities.
They called it the Yellow Terror.
Here’s a terrible editorial cartoon from 1899:
Here it is – the terror of immigrants raping white women and pillaging the high moral code of the U.S. society. Ugh, I even hate putting this in here, but it is important to show how violent the rhetoric was.
Immigrants were lynched, attacked and neighborhoods destroyed. Using this narrative as justification.
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Sound familiar?
In current times, this story is being propagated around immigrants coming from Mexico and countries in South America. Using the same kind of language. Which is as violent now as it was then.
But where in the narrative is the direct look at corporations and companies mistreating people, paying terrible wages, creating terrible prejudice. The cause of the problem was not the immigrants – but the system of the abuse of immigrants to spend as little on labor so as to maximize profits.
So, one part of the political landscape works to change the narrative around immigrants and immigration for many reasons. One is to create fear and sway voters to vote based on the fear narrative. Another is to create tension between people, to divide neighbor against neighbor. And, of course, all of this also distracts from the actual issues at the heart – the violent dehumanization of people in society based on racial and ethnic discrimination in order to create privilege. In my country, it is white privilege.
Oh, and yes, the other side of the political divide uses the same kind of based on a true story narrative twisting for political purposes, too.
The last president of the U.S. poured over $17 billion dollars to Israel to support the Israeli government against “the war against Hamas” since the terrible attacks by Hamas in October, 2023.
The attacks were terrible and are absolutely war crimes.
But the brunt of this military spending has been used not to target a terrorist organization, but to attack an entire country and commit war crimes using racist and inflammatory language.
The facts are that the majority of the people killed directly or indirectly by American weapons in Gaza during this one-sided campaign are mostly families who are not terrorists. In my country, we have let the narrative of fighting against terrorism justify supplying weapons to target innocent citizens. Citizens like journalists and doctors and aid workers; and places like hospitals, schools, universities as well as entire neighborhoods and towns. People and places that were reported to harbor terrorists, but with evidence that this has been true in most cases.
Military force is being used to ethnically cleanse Palestine. And there are even videos of soldiers and leaders in the Israel government saying as much.
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Again, this has happened historically over and over again as well as happening real time. Everywhere, propaganda is used to justify and change facts to a narrative based on true stories. Not on fact. From large examples like these to examples happening in our own neighborhoods.
From the British justification of colonization, to the US justification of enslaving people for centuries and our continuing denial of the facts and continuing consequences, to violent occupations of one country by another throughout history – based on a true story is endemic in our history making.
History is written by the victors, as the saying goes.
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Why does this matter to our dreams, to our personal journeys. It matters a great deal!
When we live in cultures and societies that twist truth to create a better narrative for that culture and society, we learn that it is okay and normal to do that. We find ways to do this for ourselves, for our own lives.
Both in how we are in relationship to the world at large and in relationship to ourselves.
If I believe the propaganda around my own culture or race, I internalize that and live from those assumptions. As a person of European descent, I internalize ideas that I am superior or entitled because of the color of my skin and my ancestry. Then I treat people around me accordingly – with privilege and fear. I can even justify violence because of it.
If I am part of a culture or gender that is deemed less than, then I will internalize this, as well. As a woman, I have internalized a great deal of misogyny and gender hatred. Some women even harm themselves and others because of this internalized hatred of women.
On a personal level, I am still working on both my internalized misogyny as well as my internalized white privilege. Will be forever because both are so deeply ingrained in me and my DNA.
Which is why working with both the power and danger of mythology, mythmaking, storytelling and narrative is so important around the process of healing and becoming, around the process of working with our dreams. Our dreams help us to see what we cannot see because, in our waking lives, what we see and live is often the “norm” even when it is terrible. What we believe about ourselves and the world around us is shaped by the world and mythmaking around us.
Breaking this and working with this in new ways helps us to break free in new ways.