left brain right brain

So the second chapter of my book on myth is exploring different research within cognitive psychology concerning memory and analysis. Essentially, the authors imply that our "left" brain, bound to analysis, automatically searches for and creates an explanation for previously unexplained events. It's function is to discover why an effect occurs, to discover a cause. The dawn of writing (and therefore recording) infinitely increased our great capacity store data, and we no longer rely on our memory to hold information. What I thought, then, was we don't need myth in the same way as was needed it, say, during the time of the ancient Hawaiians.

This saddened me in some way. My first response and implication was "well if "science" can explain "causes", the left brain has a more accurate response to the question "WHY", and if myth was previously a response to the question of causation, and myth is deeply tied to what are considered religious beliefs of a group, then both religion and myth become obsolete in the face of literacy and science." My world vaccumed into itself, and I was alone in its cold calculation. But then I got to remembering...

On our trip home from St. Louis, we passed a mega-church with a giant billboard sign reading "TRUTH". I felt angry at the sign, shoving itself into my line of sight, claiming its intellectual authority over all other possible notions of truth. Narrow, aggressive, and finite, it spoke to me of something near the opposite of God. This sign, to me, resembles the notion of religion and/or myth existing only as an explanation, only as a cause, only as a reason why to this complex, curious, inquisitive world. But myth (like most forms of effective communication) utilizes devices like redundancy and embellishment to effectively convey important information to generations after generation. Perhaps Hawaiians from the XXXXX? century thought a big chief of the underworld caused the explosive fire of volcanoes, and now we believe clashing chemicals instigate the eruption-- but what is important lies beyond this detail. In the case of myth, what is important is that the volcanoes happened-- the myth effectively encodes information through devices of embellishment and story telling to warn its future generations that this big mountain might blow! This is an overarching theme of the book-- that myth was and is deeply important to people, and it addressed a whole range of issues concerning reality. What I came to, from my spout of uncertainty, is that the places in which religion or myth did try to explain phenomena don't matter nearly as much as the intangible reality of something deeply sublime and beyond the materiality of our world that is so often urged through myth, and lies at the essence of a religion. What science answers is wonderful, but what God means is Love. A deep emotional quenching, comfort, compassion, a never-ending wellspring of love does not exist in the material, and cannot be measured, collected like data, or memorized. It is rediscovered, each rejuveinating moment, as we realize we were dead upon the grace and joy of rebirth. What I feel that sign should boast is "LOVE".