You are using interesting symbols that also happen to be the same symbols used by humanity in mythological structures as found in cultures all around the world. There are some great points but I would like to bring up the possibility that you are exhibiting some biases stemming from your current perception of the world. In your words:
Imagine that your river of Babble at its source, the subconscious: a foaming, ugly-colored river littered with half-formed concepts, too wild to navigate, too dirty to drink from. A quarter mile across, the bellow of the rapids is deafening.
Downstream, you build a series of gates to tame the rushing rapids and perhaps extract something beautiful and pure.
The image of water or ‘the deep’ is universally used in mythology and one of its traditional meanings is the ‘unknown’ which of course coincides here with the subconscious. Notice that you are painting a picture of it being ugly-colored, littered, half-formed etc. A more useful approach would be to see it, for example, as deeper, less differentiated, ancient and thus shaped by evolutionary time, hiding treasures within dangers etc.
In the same manner you can start understanding in more depth the emerging symbol of the stream. As a rationalist you tend to idealise this part of the metaphor but you need to balance your assessment. Of course it can be seen as a kind of purification but it can also be seen as something that dries out if not kept in connection to the sea or of course littered. There are so many symbolic threads that have been explored deeply in organically evolved mythological structures.
I am barely scratching the surface here but I hope you will find this comment useful.
I’m very much interested in these mythological structures—thank you for adding some depth to the metaphors. One of the big projects the rationalist community is already working on (it seems to me) is the rebuilding from scratch of mythology for the modern era, and hopefully these posts can be a small part of that. It seems that this kind of rebirth and refreshing is necessary as our environment shifts and our understanding grows crisper, but perhaps it would benefit from more dialogue with classical ideas.
You are using interesting symbols that also happen to be the same symbols used by humanity in mythological structures as found in cultures all around the world. There are some great points but I would like to bring up the possibility that you are exhibiting some biases stemming from your current perception of the world. In your words:
The image of water or ‘the deep’ is universally used in mythology and one of its traditional meanings is the ‘unknown’ which of course coincides here with the subconscious. Notice that you are painting a picture of it being ugly-colored, littered, half-formed etc. A more useful approach would be to see it, for example, as deeper, less differentiated, ancient and thus shaped by evolutionary time, hiding treasures within dangers etc.
In the same manner you can start understanding in more depth the emerging symbol of the stream. As a rationalist you tend to idealise this part of the metaphor but you need to balance your assessment. Of course it can be seen as a kind of purification but it can also be seen as something that dries out if not kept in connection to the sea or of course littered. There are so many symbolic threads that have been explored deeply in organically evolved mythological structures.
I am barely scratching the surface here but I hope you will find this comment useful.
I’m very much interested in these mythological structures—thank you for adding some depth to the metaphors. One of the big projects the rationalist community is already working on (it seems to me) is the rebuilding from scratch of mythology for the modern era, and hopefully these posts can be a small part of that. It seems that this kind of rebirth and refreshing is necessary as our environment shifts and our understanding grows crisper, but perhaps it would benefit from more dialogue with classical ideas.