This post follows Roland Barthes sociological model of language and uses his examples from his brilliant essay, Myth Today. This is one of the most beautiful and useful essays I've ever read and will reward anyone who can chew through it (don't be afraid to Google that shit). Link
"If you built yourself a myth, you'd know just what to give." - Myth by Beach House
Sign
The precise object, quality, or event that indicates the presence or occurrence of something else. The language. This is made up of both a Signifier and what's Signified.
Signifier
Object or Denotation - The physical iconic form or image existing within the world. This could be an actual observed tree, this could be the written or spoken word "tree." A signifier represents a meaning to the observer.
Signified
Subject or Connotation - The meaning or concept evoked by the signifier. The "experience" or feeling of the signifier. This is communicated through the sign. Tree could mean the Hemlock you're pointing at. Tree could mean the last tree in a fictional desert world. Tree could be code for weed. This is subjective context. However, the signified is made up of more signifiers and signifieds. This is a recursive system that points to more sound-images and meanings to fill its void, and those lower meanings recurse even further. Taking it this way, we can make two opposing, powerful conclusions.
The first conclusion we can make is that objects are independent of their subjective meanings and that the subjective meaning can somehow points toward the truth about the object, since they can be observed by multiple people and described in a similar way and then related across multiple objects. However, this requires what expands into an infinite self-referential structure to fully define in human terms. This is the Infinite in continental philosophy. Those lower or unspoken meanings are considered Unconscious since they aren't directly referenced, and the direct perception of the object is what's Conscious. I'm using these terms because these conclusions on consciousness shaped Freudian thought, though they go as far back as the Greeks.
The opposite conclusion is that there isn't really an object, and that what's described is really a synthesis of feelings in an ever-turbulent sea of meaning. The context then becomes not tangible-yet-ethereal ideas of objects, history, and environment, but the sensory manipulation done by the observer to produce a potential action within the environment. This is called Action-Specific Perception. Classical unconscious becomes what's actually conscious. This has been demonstrated in the field of Neuroscience, linking and inverting many ideas from classic Freudian psychology, creating the field known as Neuro-Psychoanalysis. There is nothing independent of the observer, signs are thus an aspect of embodied cognition (you have to click that link), or the extent to which the individual can alter their environment. This is where the real freaky shit becomes relevant like the Free Energy Principle (a brain optimization problem likely responsible for the first conclusion) or the Maximum Entropy Principle, the idea that we reason based on what would affect the greatest change (meaning our brains try to get away with minimal effort and maintain homeostasis, think common sense and status-quo type knowledge). These are ideas adapted from thermodynamics/information theory and Probability Theory. We find cognitive science now rubbing elbows with theoretical physics and all the complex things that make the universe tick. It's all the same stuff, and consciousness is really an abstraction within all this.
I believe these are the analogies we should begin with when understanding anything about sociology and psychology and life in general, since it's these fundamentals that eventually shape abstracts from cellular function to culture, and lower level trends ought to have analogues at the highest levels. One good analogy is dopamine deficiency being linked to types of depression. The depression could be caused by upheaval in life, but translates to a physical deficiency and back again to more upheaval. This also shows an interdependence between levels, another important factor when drawing analogies. False conclusions like the first one about objects are equally important to remember, as they significantly shape many people's ways of thinking today in all this chaotic experiential, experimental nonsense we call life. I believe Barthes' model reflects/encompasses neuroscience and physics in this way. This is really important, as it's a way to talk about human expression such as art in a way that reflects modern scientific theories in all fields and can help us engage both the expression and the science more fully. It also gives an appreciation for why art is so effective and so beautiful, since it calls on the individual in exactly the way individuals work. Life imitates art, does that make sense yet?
The first conclusion we can make is that objects are independent of their subjective meanings and that the subjective meaning can somehow points toward the truth about the object, since they can be observed by multiple people and described in a similar way and then related across multiple objects. However, this requires what expands into an infinite self-referential structure to fully define in human terms. This is the Infinite in continental philosophy. Those lower or unspoken meanings are considered Unconscious since they aren't directly referenced, and the direct perception of the object is what's Conscious. I'm using these terms because these conclusions on consciousness shaped Freudian thought, though they go as far back as the Greeks.
The opposite conclusion is that there isn't really an object, and that what's described is really a synthesis of feelings in an ever-turbulent sea of meaning. The context then becomes not tangible-yet-ethereal ideas of objects, history, and environment, but the sensory manipulation done by the observer to produce a potential action within the environment. This is called Action-Specific Perception. Classical unconscious becomes what's actually conscious. This has been demonstrated in the field of Neuroscience, linking and inverting many ideas from classic Freudian psychology, creating the field known as Neuro-Psychoanalysis. There is nothing independent of the observer, signs are thus an aspect of embodied cognition (you have to click that link), or the extent to which the individual can alter their environment. This is where the real freaky shit becomes relevant like the Free Energy Principle (a brain optimization problem likely responsible for the first conclusion) or the Maximum Entropy Principle, the idea that we reason based on what would affect the greatest change (meaning our brains try to get away with minimal effort and maintain homeostasis, think common sense and status-quo type knowledge). These are ideas adapted from thermodynamics/information theory and Probability Theory. We find cognitive science now rubbing elbows with theoretical physics and all the complex things that make the universe tick. It's all the same stuff, and consciousness is really an abstraction within all this.
I believe these are the analogies we should begin with when understanding anything about sociology and psychology and life in general, since it's these fundamentals that eventually shape abstracts from cellular function to culture, and lower level trends ought to have analogues at the highest levels. One good analogy is dopamine deficiency being linked to types of depression. The depression could be caused by upheaval in life, but translates to a physical deficiency and back again to more upheaval. This also shows an interdependence between levels, another important factor when drawing analogies. False conclusions like the first one about objects are equally important to remember, as they significantly shape many people's ways of thinking today in all this chaotic experiential, experimental nonsense we call life. I believe Barthes' model reflects/encompasses neuroscience and physics in this way. This is really important, as it's a way to talk about human expression such as art in a way that reflects modern scientific theories in all fields and can help us engage both the expression and the science more fully. It also gives an appreciation for why art is so effective and so beautiful, since it calls on the individual in exactly the way individuals work. Life imitates art, does that make sense yet?
Myth
A type of speech. It functions like language in that it implies a structure, but this structure is of a "certain order." It maps only a certain experience set and drowns out others. It implies a history or memory, insisting a certain context or way of thinking about the signifiers under its umbrella.
Language is composed of two elements:
1. A sensory component.
Ex: The word "Cat." C-A-T, 3 letters that produce a certain sound-image.
2. A meaningful one.
Ex: "Catness" i.e. laziness, independence, cruelty, fluffiness, warmth, humor, a physical pet cat, a wild cat, etc.
The word "Cat" is historically associated with those meanings connotating it. This is a physical and mental image construct. The form begets a "halo" of meanings (thanks, Ben). We select those meanings depending on what we want to communicate. Of course those meanings in the halo also have halos of meanings, some containing the same words in lower levels and thus becoming self-referential. A myth subverts that halo for only specific meanings á la propaganda. A myth might be thought of in terms of logocentrism. The power of myth pervades every part of life, modern advertising is the golden example.
Watch The Century of the Self and Manufacturing Consent to gain some perspective on the impact of cultural engineering and manufactured myth. We make myths ourselves, too, but they are always potentially limiting and we have to keep a sense of humor about it lest we blind ourselves to the other realities obscured by myth, as they're all important and impactful. Life is in the connections we make, not the constructs we build around them. Those constructs are only there to find holes in our thought and expand our connections. You feel it all around yourself.
Watch The Century of the Self and Manufacturing Consent to gain some perspective on the impact of cultural engineering and manufactured myth. We make myths ourselves, too, but they are always potentially limiting and we have to keep a sense of humor about it lest we blind ourselves to the other realities obscured by myth, as they're all important and impactful. Life is in the connections we make, not the constructs we build around them. Those constructs are only there to find holes in our thought and expand our connections. You feel it all around yourself.
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