Miopia, myth and analysis.

Pasting up some thoughts I jotted down last night. These often come to me right before sleep...

It's an often recognized fact that two things happen when you focus your attention on the study of a particular concept:

First, you see it everywhere. This is exemplified in the concept of a meta-narrative, whereby reality is reduced to a simple principle like the subversion of subliminal sexuality (Freud). These provide an often useful insight into an aspect of reality while at the same time distorting reality around the contours of the concept. What conceals often also reveals, and the inverse is also true.

Second, you likely deconstruct your core concept to such a point that it ceases to mean what it does for everyone else. For example, "will" to Schopenhauer, Neitzsche, or Crowley: their ideas of "will" in all three cases go so far beyond what is commonly meant by the term that many so-called lay-people will easily mistake their actual meaning. ("Lay-person" in this sense means someone who is simply not familiar with a sufficient whole of their work or worldview, which is actually requisite to understanding a core principle like this.) Similarly, this word "will" does not lead to the same concept in all three cases, but rather is a sort of key to a unique thought process for each.

I am fully aware of both of these factors in my ongoing exploration of the concept of "myth." Rather than attempting to escape them through the posture of "scientific analysis," which itself biases outcome, I do my best to embrace them simply to see what comes out on the other side as a result of the process-- the process of inquiring into a concept such as this one likely loops back on itself time and again, and in that process unravels any hope of being understood in a particular instance without a preconceived familiarity with the whole. An entire book could be written on "myth" or even "hope" or "alienation," and if written by different people the results would vary greatly: this itself is a recursive principle of what myth really is. As a result there is a danger of doing a great deal of work that is only valuable to its author. I don't believe this to be the case, as more remains similar about us than dissimilar in the big picture, but even if it is I'm willing to accept that in this work, if not in my fiction, art-- in the myths that I create themselves, rather than the analysis of the process that is going on behind it.