How myths are created. Myth about the origin of people. Myths of the peoples of the world Theban version of the appearance of the world

Part I Theory of historical knowledge The main directions in the theory of historical knowledge From a theoretical-cognitive point of view, scientific knowledge is characterized by its systematic unity. Just like our consciousness, characterized by unity, science should be

Since ancient times, people have thought about many things. How does the world around him work? When and from what was the Earth created? Why do mountains and rivers, swamps and forests exist on it? Why does the sun shine, the stars shine, does it rain, and thunder roars? What is man and where did he come from? Why do people die, and what happens to them after death?

Who could answer these questions? Probably the man himself, or rather the myths created by him. So, let's turn to the myths. Let's get acquainted with the Chinese myth "Birth of Pangu".

** « In China, it was believed that when the earth had not yet separated from the sky, the entire Universe was an egg filled with chaos. In this egg Pangu was born and grew by itself. He curled up in a ball and fell asleep for eighteen thousand years because he didn’t know what to do next. While Pangu was sleeping, a chisel and a large ax spontaneously appeared next to him and began to press him in the side. Pangu woke up, but felt nothing but sticky darkness. His heart was filled with longing. He took the ax and hit the chisel with all his might. There was a deafening roar, which happens when mountains crack, and... the egg split! Everything light and pure - yang - immediately rose up and formed the sky, and everything heavy and dirty - yin - sank and became earth. Thus, thanks to the blow of the ax, heaven and earth were separated from each other. And Pangu’s melancholy went away because he did a good job.

But fear immediately took the place of melancholy: what if heaven and earth unite again! Pangu rested his feet on the ground and supported the sky with his head. Every day he grew by one zhang. And zhang is three meters. The sky moved away from the earth by the same distance. Next to Pangu, a tree grew just as quickly, the roots of which were firmly in the ground, and the branches did not want to leave the sky.

Another eighteen thousand years passed. The sky rose very high. The earth has become thick. Pangu's body also grew extraordinary. And the tree became as tall as the giant. This worried Panga very much. After all, he did not want earth and sky to be connected. He began to hit the trunk with a chisel and an ax until he cut the tree down.

“So I’ve finished my work, now I’ll rest,” Pangu thought.

But his strength was completely exhausted. He fell to the ground and died, devoting his whole life to work.

His last breath became wind and clouds, his cry became thunder, his left eye became the sun, and his right eye became the moon. Pangu's torso turned into five sacred mountains, arms and legs - into four cardinal points, blood - into rivers, veins - into roads, skin and hair became forests and grasses, teeth and bones were transformed into precious stones and metals, and the spinal cord became sacred jade stone. And even the sweat that appeared on his body, seemingly completely useless, turned into raindrops and dew.”

This is how the Chinese explained the appearance of mountains, rivers, underground wealth, and heavenly bodies.

Thus, with the help of myths, people unscientifically and naively explained the picture of the world order. Every nation has its own system of myths. The ancient Greek myths about the Olympian gods, the Scandinavian myths about the Ases, the ancient Indian mythology set out in the Vedas, and the myths of other peoples have reached us.

What is mythology? This word, if literally translated from Greek, means “statement of traditions.” From the point of view of scientists, mythology is, first of all, “an expression of a special form of social consciousness, a way of understanding the world around us, inherent in people at different stages of development.” Myths are ancient stories in which people tried to explain various phenomena of life. The first and main reason for the emergence of myth is the belief that all objects in nature are endowed with a soul. Scientists call the animation of nature animism. The sun and stars, trees and rivers, clouds and winds become animated beings that live like people, communicate with each other, perform certain functions, and have their own character. The personification of nature occurs, that is, endowing objects of nature with their own face.

These ideas are based on humanizing the world around us. The first beings that a child can understand are human beings (mom, dad, himself) who have personal will. Therefore, the child endows the objects around him with this will. Thus, the child takes the first step along the path of myth-making, trying to imagine that “something is someone,” all objects come to life and act independently. Remnants of primitive communal consciousness have survived to this day, for example, we can hit an object that caused us pain; or in Ancient Greece, objects (a stone or a tree branch) that caused death to a person were subject to trial if it was proven that a person did not participate in this. Condemned items were thrown outside the city.

The importance of mythology is great. Myths became the cradle from which literature, art, religion, and science grew. Your peers, fifth grade students, have also followed the path of myth-making. Check out some of the myths created by fifth graders. Perhaps you too would like to create a myth. Go for it!

Any myth begins with a half-truth and ends with an absolute untruth - a mistake, a delusion, or an outright lie, sometimes planned. The classic mechanism for the emergence of a pseudo-scientific (read “false” or “pseudo-scientific”) myth is as follows:

The considered scheme, of course, is not the only and only correct one, but it quite clearly explains the further presentation.

How, by whom and why are myths spread?

There is enough information on the Internet about the process of spreading rumors (memes, media viruses), so here let’s take a closer look at who is spreading the rumors.

Rumors are spread primarily by people with uncritical thinking and simply lovers of sensations. Sometimes rumors are spread intentionally by those people who are interested in this - we are talking about making a profit from the sale of goods and services that exploit the rumor or idea being spread.

Such disinformation becomes possible not at all thanks to the virtuosity of the “conspirators,” but because of the banal gullibility of most people, the tendency to accept any beautiful or interesting (science-intensive, promising, optimistic, and sometimes vice versa) sounding words as the truth, without attempts to critically comprehend or verify them facts.

Rumors are so attractive for the following reasons:

* carry a strong emotional charge - the fact is that emotionally unbalanced people (in particular those who suffer from addictions) often seek emotional shocks - such searches lead them to the Internet and TV, where there is an abundance of shocking materials (shock content);
* the rumor contains a promise of “happiness” without a lot of time, effort and money (and more often - for a moderate fee), or a warning about misfortune (for example, the end of the world), which can be avoided thanks to the idea presented by the rumor;
* hearing plays on human feelings, usually on ambition and the thirst for power, control - this is why scammers often promise that thanks to their teaching, tool or device, you will become the master of your life and will be able to control others;

The purpose of spreading any rumor in one way or another is some kind of tactical benefit, be it an emotional shake-up or income from the sale of a “miracle drug.”

Why is this benefit “tactical”? Because in the end, for humanity as a whole or individual communities, it leads to significant damage. An emotionally unstable person, receiving his shake-up, becomes even less stable, and the same fraudster, thanks to his active harmful actions, destroys society - the environment in which he himself lives. One fine day, the seller of the “miracle drug” may fall ill and, having gone to the doctor for help, receive a prescription for his own counterfeit (and ineffective) drug.

How to make money on myths?

Demand gives rise to supply and, conversely, supply gives rise to demand - these are two complementary trends in a market economy. As soon as a need appears, ways to satisfy it begin to arise, and the emergence of each new (simpler or more effective) method generates additional interest in satisfying the need, no matter how low or unhealthy it may be.

There are also many laws (social, psychological, etc.) that make selling the promise of a simple solution more profitable and easier than selling a real solution that involves overcoming difficulties.

In eras of social upheaval, extremely favorable conditions are created for the flourishing of fraud of all types, from witchcraft and the fight against it to pseudo-scientific deceptions, which have significantly undermined the budgets of different countries more than once (Russia is a clear example, but this is not about that).

People who have at least some developed skills of deception and manipulation find in difficult times their “calling” in deceiving other, slightly more naive people. By the way, we kindly ask you not to be afraid of the word “manipulation” - this is one of the very common forms of social interaction, which is very often found in everyday life, for example, in dysfunctional families

Andrey Zorin

Historian and philologist, specialist in the field of history of Russian culture and intellectual history, professor at the Moscow School of Economics and Social Sciences (Shaninka), Oxford University (UK), professor at the Department of Humanities and scientific director of the Liberal Arts program at the Institute of Social Sciences, RANEPA

- When a person reads a history book, he still gets acquainted with someone else’s interpretation of history? All the same, the author has his own position.

- In the 19th century, the science of “source criticism” arose, which set itself the task of formulating general principles of approach to a source, allowing one to determine the degree of its reliability. Around the same time, the famous historian of the century, Leopold von Ranke, formulated his thesis, according to which the task of the historian is to find out how everything really happened. In recent decades, another trend in historical science is the idea that every source is, to one degree or another, a construction written in someone’s interests. The well-known formula: lies as an eyewitness. Yuri Nikolaevich Tynyanov, the great Russian philologist, said: documents lie like people.

- Is history an attempt to control the past?

- Yes, this is our struggle with our ancestors. We were born at the time that was given to us, in the circumstances that were given to us, we cannot change anything about it. But we take revenge by telling stories about our ancestors, supplementing them, inventing them - and through our stories, fables and fantasies about what happened, we exercise our control over them.

- Ideology very often uses history as a weapon and tries to justify its actions in the present and in the past. Has it always been this way - or are these signs of recent centuries?

If we are talking about state attempts to monopolize history, they begin from the moment when the state has a need to explain where it came from and why it is like this. A classic example is the story of the Time of Troubles, told from the reign of the Romanov dynasty. The Romanov dynasty appeared in 1613, after 700 years of the previous dynasty. Her rights to the throne were very doubtful; it was necessary to invent a vivid and convincing story that would allow them to legitimize their rights to rule Russia. They succeeded to a large extent. For the next 300 years, until the events of 1917, this dynasty reigned on the Russian throne.

- Why is it necessary to justify the present with the help of the past? And why does this technique work? What difference does it make to me that, say, Ivan the Terrible is descended from some nephew of Emperor Augustus?

- Every person is his story about himself. We come to apply for a job and say: I worked there at such and such a time - our biography explains who we are and what we represent. Any community of people, including the state, is structured in the same way, it has its own history. Before modern times, as everyone well knows, power was justified by divine origin. This means that if your power is from God, then you must tell how the Lord gave you this power. I just talked about the Romanov dynasty. This is a typical story. The Cossacks came to the Zemsky Sobor and said: “Choose Mikhail Romanov.” It's not hard to argue with armed Cossacks. But when Michael reigned, this story had to be forgotten. And a very beautiful legend was invented that all the boyars were ordered to write the name of the future king on a piece of paper, they all wrote it down, and they all had the same name - Mikhail. Of course, such an incredible coincidence could only come from the Lord God; he stood over everyone and suggested it; There can be no other explanation. The fact that this version was clearly borrowed from the story about the seventy interpreters did not bother anyone. Sacred history was an absolute example of not even historical, but transhistorical, ahistorical truth, therefore the recognition of the plot gave it authenticity.

- It turns out that the creation of myths or falsifications begins in the history of Russia from the Time of Troubles, from the beginning of the Romanovs. What is the name of the first myth? Founding myth?

- Yes. This is a very common scientific term. And this is a standard thing. Everyone is celebrating their birthday. This means that you are reliving the act of your birth. A family celebrates a wedding day, the day it originated, we can give many similar examples. The state fits into the same row. The central myth of any state is the question of where it came from, its founding myth. It invents for itself a starting point from which it grew.

- In this case, the 17th century serves the myth of how the Romanovs became rulers. What happens in the 18th century, during the time of Peter?

- The gigantic destruction that Peter I brings about in the Russian consciousness leads to a colossal change in historical mythology, starting with his official title. He was called the First, Peter I. Before him, Russian emperors were not considered. They retroactively assigned the number “fourth” to Grozny, but Grozny never called himself fourth, he was simply “Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich.” Peter I calls himself the First, and this is not just a fixation of the fact that there was never a Petrov on the throne of Russia before him, but it is generally an indication that everything comes from him. They brought it from non-existence into existence, Chancellor Golovkin said about Russia, and there are a great many similar quotes.

- If Peter is the New Testament, then was the old one remembered, was the Time of Troubles remembered, was Mikhail Romanov remembered?

- Peter so fixes the historical Russian consciousness on himself that pointing to other significant pages in the recent past has become uninteresting. All Russian tsars build their personal succession in relation to Peter. Elizabeth, who was known to be an illegitimate daughter, says that she is Petrovna and the daughter of Peter; Peter III says that before him there were no one knows who, and he is Peter’s grandson; Catherine puts up the Bronze Horseman and writes on it: “Peter I Catherine II.” Although there was no relationship between them, she was generally a usurper of the throne, but in this way she again writes herself into Peter’s mythology. And after her death, Paul pulls out the old monument to Rastrelli and writes on it: “Great-grandfather, great-grandson” - contrasting his own relationship with the great emperor and the numerology of his own mother (first and second) and again elevating his legitimacy to Peter.

- It turns out that throughout the 18th century there was a plot of a return to Peter, that is, a return to that order.

- Yes. The fact is that the 18th century is an endless era of crises, coups, disputes about succession to the throne, and regicides. Peter introduced permission for the emperor to appoint an heir for himself, and for 75 years the Russian monarchy was shaken until Paul I, who, however, was also killed later, introduced a decree on unified inheritance. Emperors were made by the guard; after the coup of 1762, Catherine proclaimed that she ascended the throne by the will of all classes, and especially the guards: all are equal, but some are more equal. And until, strictly speaking, the guard was shot by cannon on December 14, 1825 on Senate Square, the source of the monarch’s legitimacy was the position of the guard and continuity in relation to the creator of the guard and modern Russia - Emperor Peter.

- What specific stories around Peter I were more based on? What things did you invent, what, on the contrary, did you prefer to forget?

- First of all, this is the victory in the Northern War, new territories, access to the sea, the construction of St. Petersburg and the famous dressing up of the nobility. Peter created a completely Europeanized elite in a completely non-European country. People who, over the course of 100 years, have learned to look, think and talk like European aristocracy. When the Russian army took Paris in 1814, the Parisian public had the feeling that some indescribable barbarians would come; Parisian newspapers depicted Russians with smoke coming out of their nostrils, and everyone was, of course, amazed at the pure French language of Russian officers.

It turns out that Peter I and the rulers who followed him felt like Europeans. Catherine II appears, there are endless wars with the Turks, the annexation of Crimea. And under Catherine, it turns out that we are no longer quite Europeans, but descendants of the Greeks.

The logic is clear. European culture inherits from the Roman Empire, Rome took its culture from Greece, which means that the Greek heritage came to them indirectly. And we took both faith and classical culture directly from the Greeks. That is, we are the center of European culture, because we are connected with its cradle and main hearth. We can outdo Europe in Europeanness.

For Catherine, the mythology of Vladimir the Saint is highlighted anew: hence her famous trip to Crimea in 1787, the annexation of Crimea, and all the Potemkin projects for the future of the empire. And Potemkin writes to Catherine that if Peter achieved such success in the St. Petersburg swamps, then what will you, Empress, achieve in such beautiful, God-given, fertile places that we have now annexed.

- At first the ideology is based on the fact that Europe is great, and then it turns out that in fact we are even better than Europe, but during the Napoleonic Wars the most important plot again becomes the Time of Troubles. Why is that?

- Back in the 1760s, Catherine wrote that Peter achieved such success because he applied European morals to the European state. That is, we were already Europeans who were temporarily led astray by the Tatars, but Peter brought us back to our historical path. But who did Catherine mean? It was exclusively about a few percent of the elite. By the beginning of the 19th century, from Europe, again, the idea of ​​nationality came and took root, that there is a single people, they have a single spirit, a single common history, and that the top of Russian society, the nobility, should also to some extent nationalize themselves, imbue folk spirit. And here the history of the Time of Troubles, the militia of Minin and Pozharsky, turns out to be unusually convenient.

There were three mythological heroes of the anti-Polish movement - Patriarch Hermogenes, Minin and Pozharsky. That is, the patriarch, representing the church, the common man Minin, from the merchants, and Prince Pozharsky, representing the noble elite - they all united, and as a result of this popular unity, a new dynasty emerged. That is, the return from Peter’s mythology to the mythology of the Time of Troubles is an attempt to, to some extent, expand the social base of state ideology. During the Napoleonic Wars, the authorities had to appeal to the masses of the people; it was necessary to mobilize much wider layers than those to whom the monarchy had addressed before.

- That is, in the myth of the Time of Troubles, the interventionists who capture us play a rather important role?

- Yes. Let's remember the last part of the Time of Troubles: Vladislav, the liberation of Moscow, the captivity of Minin and Pozharsky. Russia then found itself on the verge of destruction because it was captured by the Poles - and during the Napoleonic Wars there was the same infection, an enemy from the West, that is, the French.

- We can say that this is the first time in history when the ideology is that there are enemies around, we are surrounded, and besides, there are traitors inside the country.

- War is the most important way of historical self-affirmation. In Peter's mythology, the victory over the Swedes played a huge role. The myth of war, enemies and victory is ancient - Vladimir also fought, went on a campaign to Crimea. But what's new now is the mythology of betrayal. The importance of the concept of betrayal, internal treason, is very closely connected with the completely new, completely Western idea of ​​​​the people as a single body. The people are a single body, an organism with all the metaphors: it has a head - this is usually the sovereign, it has a heart - this is usually the church. And the body, accordingly, dies from what? He dies from an infection that someone brings from outside. And the topic of betrayal arises precisely at this time.

- The Rurikovichs ruled Russia for 700 years. Is this the only time a dynasty lasted so long?

- No. The Capetians held out for a very long time, and there is nothing to say about the Chinese emperors. But 700 years is still an awfully long time, and the sudden end of a dynasty is, of course, a shock. There have been several attempts to overcome this. It turned out badly with Boris Godunov. Then there was False Dmitry - again some kind of nonsense. Then Vasily Shuisky, one of the oldest Russian princes, was installed - again, not very well. Why didn’t it work out with Godunov and Shuisky? According to the general opinion, because they were not of the royal family. We didn’t have our own other royal family, but the Poles did. The Polish king Sigismund was presented with several conditions that his son Vladislav should convert to Orthodoxy and come to Moscow. And Sigismund began to experience what Stalin later called dizziness from success. And he, instead of fulfilling the agreement concluded with him, decided that he would not send Vladislav to Moscow, that he would not allow him to convert to Orthodoxy, but that he himself, as a king, would rule the Muscovite kingdom as his province. But he did not have the political resources to implement this, and this caused an explosion.

- Did you negotiate with the boyars?

- With the boyars, yes. There was an embassy, ​​and boyar Filaret Romanov, the father of the future Tsar Mikhail Romanov, entered into an agreement with them. But the agreement was not fulfilled by Poland, and this caused a protest that ended with the second militia of Minin and Pozharsky. But they didn’t want to designate the boyars as enemies, so they came up with the idea of ​​blaming the Cossack Ivan Zarutsky and several other people - including Prince Trubetskoy, who had a Cossack army. Basically, traitors were appointed among the Cossacks, and they were carriers of the Polish infection. Plus, of course, the story of Marina Mnishek and her amazing fate also made a strong impression on everyone who wrote this legend. It turned out that the Polish woman had completely seduced our Russian people. “Taras Bulba” was later written on the same topic, and so on. The image of a beautiful and scary Polish woman who seduces a simple, unpretentious Russian man is very significant in Russian culture.

-Who was appointed to the role of traitor in 1812?

- A suitable candidate was already here, it turned out to be Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky, the closest adviser to Emperor Alexander I. He was appointed as an agent of Napoleon, a man who wants to bribe and destroy Russia and get the Polish crown. Before this, one of Alexander’s advisors was Prince Adam Czartoryski, he was really a Pole, at least the logic is clear. Speransky was the son of an Orthodox priest. He was hated as an upstart. He was a popovich and became the chief minister and right hand of the emperor.

-Who chose this victim?

- Public opinion, a large number of nobles who hated him from the very beginning. I was very irritated by his low origins and his reform plans. And plus, he appeared in the emperor’s inner circle after the Peace of Tilsit, which was perceived as a national humiliation. For simplicity, it must be said that the conservative-noble camp, probably led by Admiral Shishkov, practically appointed him a traitor. And Alexander, who, of course, did not believe a penny in Speransky’s version of betrayal, said: “I had to make this sacrifice.” However, with such accusations, exile to Nizhny Novgorod and Penza was still a rather mild measure.

- The War of 1812 begins soon, and art begins to draw out this story about the Time of Troubles. Is art inventing this myth or reacting to it?

- Such strong historical myths are always a collective creation. Perhaps art does not invent it, but in art it acquires that clarity, expressiveness and power to capture minds. A monument to Minin and Pozharsky is erected in the Kremlin, theatrical productions are created. For the 25th anniversary of the war - Glinka’s opera “A Life for the Tsar”, which in Soviet times was called “Ivan Susanin”, and so on. That is, this entire series of events creates a mythological image.

- When, before the War of 1812, Russianness came into fashion, dislike for the French, interest in the Time of Troubles, can we say that this was in some way even opposition? After all, Russia was officially friends with France at that moment.

- Yes, initially it was an opposition ideology, of course. Moreover, right up to the Battle of Tarutino and the departure of the French from Moscow, starting in 1807, there were always rumors that Alexander was about to be overthrown from the throne. Russia was no stranger to coups d'etat, and public opinion already had a candidate for his place - it was Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna.

- I’ll ask you for a short educational program. What preceded the War of 1812?

- The War of 1812 was preceded by several wars, the first of which ended in a terrible defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz, described in the novel “War and Peace.” After the truce there was another war, less catastrophic, which ended with the Peace of Tilsit, which was terribly unprofitable for Russia. As a result, Russia had to join the continental blockade of England and accept Napoleon's terms. Alexander knew perfectly well that this was temporary and that a new war could not be avoided. The rise of Speransky with the huge number of unpopular measures that were taken was also associated with preparations for war. But this could not be announced out loud. Both Alexander and Speransky, who was perceived as a foreign agent, were opposed by the Grand Duchess, who had an excellent credit history, that Napoleon wooed her, and in a panic she was married off to the Prince of Oldenburg. They wiped Napoleon's nose, he did not get our wonderful princess, and she was perceived as the main center of the patriotic party. The Grand Duchess did not speak a single word of Russian.

- We are completely buried in this plot of the Time of Troubles. The next founding myth is the October Revolution?

- Yes, sure. Everything changes again in the 20th century after the revolution. And in this sense, it is very similar to Peter’s revolution. A new era, a new state has been created. Until the end of the Soviet Union, the 1917 revolution plays the role of a founding myth to one degree or another.

- In a rather funny way, the holiday of November 7 turned into November 4.

- Yes, again a reference to the Time of Troubles, the Day of National Unity.

- Did they remember the Troubles in the Soviet Union? Because it fits perfectly into the plot of the Patriotic War.

- The Great War begins with a terrible defeat, when the enemy is at the capital or is approaching it. In 1612 it was the Poles, in 1812 it was the French who burned Moscow, in 1941 it was the Germans who came as close to Moscow as possible. And every time the country finds itself on the verge of absolute destruction and total catastrophe, from which, magically, by God and the miraculous will of the leader, the king, the head of the militia, the leader, the generalissimo and who knows who, it re-emerges like a phoenix and rises to the greatest victory in its history. Here the pairing arises in terminology - “Patriotic War” and “Great Patriotic War”. That is, this parallel - it arises.