Myth works by telling a story from a super‑privileged spot – as if the narrator knows how everything started. That’s how it sets the stage for understanding the whole world.
Think of creation myths: the narrator is like a secret witness to the very beginning (that chaotic “urtid”). If you were there to see, you have insider info no one else can touch. From that vantage point, the narrator can simply report on the cosmic rules and how they came to be. It’s almost like ancient journalism.
Myth isn’t just reflecting order; it’s creating authority through this foundational witnessing. By claiming direct access to “ur‑events,” a simple story is upgraded into the ultimate truth about how things are and how they cannot be otherwise. Basically, the power of myth is all about when and where the story is told from. Once it’s set, time actually starts working for the myth: distance, repetition and ritual turn those claims into something that feels like eternal truth.
End‑of‑the‑world myths (eschatology) use the same playbook, just at the opposite end of time. They claim to know how it all wraps up. Origin myths authorise a description of how the world began; end‑time myths authorise an end in sight with explanatory auxilliaries. Once you’ve got both beginning and end locked down, all you need is the rulebook for the middle – that’s where ethics, morals and institutional rules come in. Mythic time becomes a huge tool for enforcing power, because very concrete norms get tied to absolute beginnings and inevitable endings.
What’s wild now is that this whole myth production line is starting to mix with something we normally see as its total opposite: high‑end science and technology. Mesopotamian creation myths seem miles away from making microchips in Taiwan, but maybe the distance isn’t as big as it looks. People keep doing the same thing: using big stories and ritualised procedures to try to control the world and ourselves. Doom narratives are everywhere, like in an ancient society that suddenly realises it doesn’t actually control its gods.
That strategy may be just as counterproductive as it always was. An objective stance is almost impossible for humans - Machine Messiah perhaps can sort it out for us?
TL;DR
Myths create authority by speaking from an impossible vantage point – “I was there at the beginning” or “I know how it all ends” – and then using that privileged timeline to justify the rules in between. The same structure seems to be sneaking into how we talk about AI and technology today: origin stories (“just a tool” vs. “alien mind”) and doom/utopia scenarios function like techno‑eschatologies that legitimize present power structures and policies.
Loose inspiration from Jean‑Pierre Vernant on myth and social order, and recent work on “techno‑eschatology” in AI and futures discourse.