Introduction

Everybody is a symbol, everything is a symbol, every action is a symbol.

At some level, symbols are universal because everything we describe is a narrative and, as such, ipso facto, follows the structure of a myth. Even if we only describe it to ourselves, and even if that description is not a conscious narrative but what we term perception it is, after all, structured as a narrative. Archetypal impulses inform that structure of perception, as they inform all mythical narratives. This means that the framework of deep culture can be usefully applied not just to all manner of explicitly “fictional” narratives, but indeed to all narratives even if they are a different sort of “fiction” that is not recognized as such. Among these are narratives of politics, religion, and everyday life. In this chapter, we discuss how the framework of deep culture can be used to identify archetypal impulses in descriptions of these cultural domains beyond fictionalized myths.

First, though, as we pointed out in the introduction, we have taken a different view of “myth” than is common in ordinary parlance or even in much social research. People tend to see myth as a “false,” constructed discourse and so something that is opposed to the truth, as in “myth vs. reality.” Such views tend to stop at the literary or aesthetic value of myths. Indeed, from this perspective, when myths are employed in the “real” world, they are either seen as puerile—such as obviously nonfactual cosmic origins of humanity—or as downright destructive, for example, the “Aryan myth” of nationhood promoted by Nazis during the Second World War (Lincoln 1999).