The crumbling of the myth
Where do we go from here?
Hi Folks,
First, an apology. I know I said we would be back Tuesday and it is now Thursday, but I’ve spent the last few days doing a lot of reflecting and they got away from me.
I am currently in Charleston, South Carolina, where I grew up, visiting family for the week. It’s been six years since I moved out of South Carolina, and every time I return I can’t help but think that there are two Charlestons co-existing, and I never know which one to call home. It seems to me this way with many Southern cities— there is the old and the new, both of which seem to chafe up against each other. There are trendy coffee shops that take to social media with social justice infographics, all while their very existence contributes to displacement and gentrification in neighborhoods that have historically been residential. There are groups who appear along the edge of the peninsula each Sunday with confederate flags and pro-Trump memorabilia, while just up the street construction crews work to raise the wall that holds the water out. There are islands where the cheapest home starts at two million next to islands rife with what popular media describes as redneck culture. Don’t tread on me flags hang off of boats parked in the marsh beneath fancy new restaurants. Only one restaurant that my friends and I used to go to in high school remains on King Street, the main thoroughfare of the city. Everything else is new, and seems to change each time I come back, businesses appearing and disappearing in only a few months time.
This seems to be the case with almost all cities these days, and especially Southern and Midwestern cities, all of which have seen increased rates in population growth the last decade, and particularly in the last few years as people fled New York City during the pandemic. Charleston county ranks #22 on US News’ fastest growing places this year, and Myrtle Beach— just two hours north, often heralded as one of the most redneck beach destinations— ranked in the #1 spot. Around 30 people move to Charleston each day, largely from New York and New Jersey.
We often view Charleston as a very liberal city and while it certainly is more liberal than other parts of the state, it’s much closer to a mid-split. In the last election, 55% of the county voted Democrat; 42.6% voted Republican. The state still went red.
Why give you all this data? Because I think it is important to understand the context of where this place is to understand what is happening. Like many of you, I often believe that I am in the majority in my opinions in the places I find myself these days. I often find myself believing that the South has a difficult history, but that the people around me understand that and, like me, are trying to create something better for the future. And lately, I am often reminded how wrong that is.
With any ideology, when you surround yourself with those who agree with you, it is easy to begin to believe everyone does. You don’t see the opposing opinion, and sometimes it feels far away, as if it no longer exists. The more this goes on, the more we drift away, into our bubbles.
I see a lot of arguments these days about not engaging with opposing opinions in order to protect individual peace. That some of the views that are held by people in power and those who elected them are so backwards and offensive that it’s not even worth engaging. I don’t disagree. But I also don’t see any other way we get out of this.
I don’t know about you, but the Fourth of July this year felt particularly dystopian to me. How are any of us supposed to celebrate freedom when, just days before, rights were being peeled back each day? And within that comes a refusal of many— who now take to social media to proclaim the world is growing more and more like The Handmaid’s Tale and other dystopian media each day— to recognize that the world has already been like that for people of color, queer folks, and low-income communities. The rights and freedoms we are meant to be celebrating are— and have always been— reserved for a select group of people. What is there to celebrate in that, in a country on stolen land? Freedom always has a cost, and in the history of this country, that cost is usually at other peoples’ expense.
And that’s just the premise of the holiday. On the morning of, we all received news of another mass shooting. Over the weekend alone, 220 people were shot and killed, and another 570 wounded by gun violence. At least 11 of those were classified as mass shootings. Eleven mass shootings in only two days! It poured rain all afternoon here. And yet, when night fell, people still took to the streets in red and blue to set off fireworks. These days it’s harder and harder to tell the difference between fireworks and gunshots.
I believe that what we are witnessing is the crumbling of an empire, and the myths and stories of “greatness” that go with it. Historically, myths— and stories— have been the things that bound us together, allowing us to believe in a higher purpose, a higher power, a common connection. Myths celebrated and critiqued our societies equally. They were an essential part of human culture; storytelling was a respected art that spoke to greater truths about who we are and what we are doing here. In times of disruption, times of crisis, we were able to turn to those myths. As societies crumbled, those myths and stories provided unity— and the myths are what persist even today. So what do we do when it is the myth itself that is crumbling?
The technical definition of myth has two sides: it is at once both a traditional story embodying the ideals of a society or segment of society and a false or unfounded notion. These days, it seems our most common American myths exist on the line between, telling the world how we see ourselves, even if those stories are unfounded.
American exceptionalism, American greatness, American freedom— these are all myths. But they are myths that, to a select group of people in this country, make up foundational ways of existing. They are myths that are vital to how some people live. And when they begin to crumble, the ways of being that have moored many to this country appear to be stripped away. These myths are lifeboats, and we are watching this country cling to them in the form of flag memorabilia, fireworks, the Constitution, the outdated, traditional structures of government. Symbols of the old order, that we know cannot and will not last. We are watching them fall away in real time, and that is terrifying to some people in this country. Those myths are the ways they have survived; they have structured entire lives around their belief in them; they will not just give them up. They can— and will— clutch on to them as if they are the last thing to save this country.
Because without those myths we are left with what lies behind them, centuries of abuse of power and histories that were written out of our books and the stark view of reality— all of which is far more frightening than continuing to buy into the story this country wants you to. For most people, the denial of those truths is far easier than the recognition.
But looking at that reality up close is necessary. The author Claire Vaye Watkins once said of her return to the desert in order to write about the American West that she didn’t want to be writing about it from far away anymore: “I didn’t want to write about it in an elegiac or nostalgic mode,” she says. The Los Angeles Times says that “her fiction knows that paeans are lovely, useless things. The West needs to come alive in fiction, but also to die.”
I agree wholeheartedly. And it’s not just the West— it’s the South, the Midwest, New England. It’s this entire country. We are not looking for an elegy. We are not looking in the rearview, but looking up close. What we find will inform the stories we tell about ourselves from here on out, and make no mistake— those stories will be key to our survival. Those stories will be the things that help this country cope with its crumbling. They will also be the things that help us build anew.
The Dark Mountain Project approaches this in terms of ecocide and the artistic response, but I think the challenge is the same:
“Yet for all this, our world is still shaped by stories. Through television, film, novels and video games, we may be more thoroughly bombarded with narrative material than any people that ever lived. What is peculiar, however, is the carelessness with which these stories are channelled at us — as entertainment, a distraction from daily life, something to hold our attention to the other side of the ad break. There is little sense that these things make up the equipment by which we navigate reality. On the other hand, there are the serious stories told by economists, politicians, geneticists and corporate leaders. These are not presented as stories at all, but as direct accounts of how the world is. Choose between competing versions, then fight with those who chose differently. The ensuing conflicts play out on early morning radio, in afternoon debates and late night television pundit wars. And yet, for all the noise, what is striking is how much the opposing sides agree on: all their stories are only variants of the larger story of human centrality, of our ever-expanding control over ‘nature’, our right to perpetual economic growth, our ability to transcend all limits.
So we find ourselves, our ways of telling unbalanced, trapped inside a runaway narrative, headed for the worst kind of encounter with reality. In such a moment, writers, artists, poets and storytellers of all kinds have a critical role to play. Creativity remains the most uncontrollable of human forces: without it, the project of civilisation is inconceivable, yet no part of life remains so untamed and undomesticated. Words and images can change minds, hearts, even the course of history. Their makers shape the stories people carry through their lives, unearth old ones and breathe them back to life, add new twists, point to unexpected endings. It is time to pick up the threads and make the stories new, as they must always be made new, starting from where we are.”
I don’t have any particular answers for this. I don’t know yet what those new stories will look like. All I know is that we must tell them, and I want to be part of it. I believe that there is no greater tool for human understanding than storytelling. And I know that we will not survive this transition, this unlearning of all that we have been taught and force fed and inundated with from an early age in this country, without it.