MYTHOPOETIC WATER

Something about the human mind yearns for explanation. We live in a world which primarily understands the world through the rational lens. Cause and effect, based on the scientific method and empirical inquiry. Seeing is believing today. Modern society relies on what is observable to deductively conclude how the of the world operates. This has not ever been the case, though.

 

At one time, most societies understood the world through the mythopoetic lens. In the absence of modern instruments, people created their own explanations of natural systems and phenomena. Mythopoetics entail “the exploration through story and metaphor of complex phenomena.” The methodology of mythopoetics is the “practice of gaining insight to these complex phenomena through bringing intuition and imagination to bear on known elements of the empirical world.” (Shan).

 

Mythopoetics often relied on analogous references to narratives which explained natural phenomena such as bodies of water, and they were employed by early agriculturalists by at least 2000 BC, if not earlier. For example, the Ancient Egyptians, when faced with the ebbs and flows of the Nile, explained the fluctuations of rivers’ water levels from season to season as the result of their respiration, or breathing. Mythopoetics were often inductive in their logic. Egyptians, like all humans, were well acquainted with the experience of breathing. They mapped their experience of witnessing the ebbs of the Nile onto their understanding of human respiration, and concluded that the river must also breathe.

 

This conclusion was borne out of a mirroring of experience. While the mythopoetic method is not the most scientifically dazzling way to explain phenomena, it remains one that is sound in terms of harmonious relation to the earth. If the river was breathing, it had to be living. This led the Egyptians to respect the river as a living thing.

 

The scientific, rational lens is a valid way of encountering the world, but it almost invariably lacks the deference afforded bodies of water. This is because, if we know the component parts of natural phenomena, we are more likely to exploit them to a greater extent than if the various aspects were mythical. Knowing expands the room we have to push natural systems to their limits. We are, through the scientific lens, able to understand how much we can pollute a river before natural balances become imbalanced. Mythopoetic agriculturalists, on the other hand, knew that no amount of pollution was allowed because rivers were living things. While the Egyptians may have had a limited understanding of the detailed machinations of rivers, their cognitive model was most certainly more conscientious than ours.

 

Mythopoetics were adept at coming up for reasons how natural phenomena such as rivers occurred. They were less interested than us modern rationalists were with why rivers, for example, occured.

 

 

Life’s Little Essential, NOVA 

 

Mythopoetic Scholarship, Steve Shan 

 

A Brief History of Water and Health from Ancient Civilizations to Modern Times, IWA 

 

 

NOTES ON MYTHOPOETICS OF WATER, from lecture by Jim Malarkey and Sue Van Allen

 

 

 

GLOBAL SEMINAR

Week 1: Mythopoetic

No water no humans. Amniotic fluid is water.  

Water is water, you know it when you see it like porn.

social life and political life of egypt revolved around water, status of a (god)dess.

 

The belief that earth is sacred held by native people, an ancient awareness not to mess with nature could have, has and may be able to prevent horrific situations and effects of manipulation of nature.

 

Size of community yields differences in use of resources and access/ distribution and systems.

 

Intentionality: Man can interact with water and bring about good back into that persons world. Working in hamony with natural systems.

 

through building that relationships, man starts to do agriculture, starts to get more out of daily activities. Through that relationship: We can get more out of the land then we can assume by using water. Create systems of city-states, political, commerce, population increase, idea of property.

 

Tension between use of resources and social systems