I’m pretty skeptical of your narrative around flying to NY to see the Buddhists. It sounds a bit too much like “The Secret” and other forms of popular wishful thinkingto me. I understand that you’re trying to sandbox this reasoning to “mythic mode”, but the way you write about it in this post (while presumably not in mythic mode) makes it seem like the sandbox might be a bit leaky.
The problems with believing in fate or Providence start to become real when bad things happen to you.
If you imagine that the universe is conspiring to help you when things go right, you can also imagine that the universe is conspiring to hurt you when things go wrong, and that’s terrifying. Ordinary failure and misfortune is easier to recover from than the creeping fear that you’ve angered God. I’ve been there; it sucks.
That seems to depend on the nature of the belief, though. Some people with a belief of fate seem to gain strength from it even during misfortune, thinking not “the universe is out to get me”, but something like “well I guess this was the universe’s way of [setting me on a better path / reminding me not to take for granted what I have / insert-some-other-benefit-here]”.
If you have sufficiently strong faith in the universe being benevolent, you can probably find some positive angle from any event and focus on that.
I understand that you’re trying to sandbox this reasoning to “mythic mode”, but the way you write about it in this post (while presumably not in mythic mode) makes it seem like the sandbox might be a bit leaky.
I was not, in fact, staying consistently outside of mythic mode when writing this post. I didn’t think what it was would convey well if I had.
Instead, I tried to weave in and out of it while highlighting signposts. When I talk about coincidences lining up and how one gets used to things like that while in mythic mode, or when I talk about seeing the gods… that’s operating mythically. When I then talk about how there’s an easy way of seeing how this could come from cherry-picking which things are significant, that’s outside of mythic mode.
I haven’t checked carefully, but I’m pretty sure I could insert <mythic> and </mythic> pseudo-HTML tags throughout the OP.
I’d be interested to hear more about what specifically bothers you. I agree that it “sounds like” The Secret, but just saying it “sounds like it” seems like a version of The Worst Argument in the World.
What are the negative effects you feel will come from doing this?
Two different possible failure modes (if continuing far enough down this path) are along the lines of trying to cure one’s cancer with magic instead of medicine, and/or fatalism/”inshallah”.
A milder possible failure case is simply spending too much time on this stuff, if it feels fun and effective even when isn’t working.
I’m definitely a bit worried about the milder one, but I’m so inefficient with my use of time currently that I doubt it could hurt too badly.
I don’t really worry about the first two, because we have powerful myths (e.g. Steve Jobs) warning us against those things, so paying attention to myth seems like a good way to avoid them.
I’m pretty skeptical of your narrative around flying to NY to see the Buddhists. It sounds a bit too much like “The Secret” and other forms of popular wishful thinking to me. I understand that you’re trying to sandbox this reasoning to “mythic mode”, but the way you write about it in this post (while presumably not in mythic mode) makes it seem like the sandbox might be a bit leaky.
The problems with believing in fate or Providence start to become real when bad things happen to you.
If you imagine that the universe is conspiring to help you when things go right, you can also imagine that the universe is conspiring to hurt you when things go wrong, and that’s terrifying. Ordinary failure and misfortune is easier to recover from than the creeping fear that you’ve angered God. I’ve been there; it sucks.
That seems to depend on the nature of the belief, though. Some people with a belief of fate seem to gain strength from it even during misfortune, thinking not “the universe is out to get me”, but something like “well I guess this was the universe’s way of [setting me on a better path / reminding me not to take for granted what I have / insert-some-other-benefit-here]”.
If you have sufficiently strong faith in the universe being benevolent, you can probably find some positive angle from any event and focus on that.
I was not, in fact, staying consistently outside of mythic mode when writing this post. I didn’t think what it was would convey well if I had.
Instead, I tried to weave in and out of it while highlighting signposts. When I talk about coincidences lining up and how one gets used to things like that while in mythic mode, or when I talk about seeing the gods… that’s operating mythically. When I then talk about how there’s an easy way of seeing how this could come from cherry-picking which things are significant, that’s outside of mythic mode.
I haven’t checked carefully, but I’m pretty sure I could insert <mythic> and </mythic> pseudo-HTML tags throughout the OP.
I’d be interested to hear more about what specifically bothers you. I agree that it “sounds like” The Secret, but just saying it “sounds like it” seems like a version of The Worst Argument in the World.
What are the negative effects you feel will come from doing this?
Two different possible failure modes (if continuing far enough down this path) are along the lines of trying to cure one’s cancer with magic instead of medicine, and/or fatalism/”inshallah”.
A milder possible failure case is simply spending too much time on this stuff, if it feels fun and effective even when isn’t working.
(I didn’t downvote you by the way)
I’m definitely a bit worried about the milder one, but I’m so inefficient with my use of time currently that I doubt it could hurt too badly.
I don’t really worry about the first two, because we have powerful myths (e.g. Steve Jobs) warning us against those things, so paying attention to myth seems like a good way to avoid them.