Synthesis: The Mythic / Religious
The Evolution of Value – Part 2
From the earliest fireside myths to the grand spiritual traditions of civilisations, humanity has tried to grasp a single truth: how to survive, how to thrive, how to find meaning. Beneath allegory, ritual, prophecy, and myth, the hidden signal was always the same: Life is Good.
Synthesis unearths this intuition, makes it explicit, and reveals its structural clarity. What was once veiled in symbol now becomes crystal in reason.
Stream 1: The Abrahamic and Global Prophets
Thinkers: Moses, Jesus, Paul, Muhammad, Buddha, Laozi, Indigenous Elders
Signal: Life preserved through allegory, ethics, ritual, and natural harmony
Limitation: Encoded in metaphor - limited explanatory clarity
Interpretation:
The early prophets were guardians of life’s flame. They wove survival strategies, ethical insights, and cosmic wonder into stories that could survive across generations. Allegory became the vessel: Genesis' careful ordering of the world, the Buddha’s path out of suffering, the Taoist art of effortless harmony, Indigenous dreaming tracks. Ritual reinforced these deep life-structures: Passover’s memory of liberation, the Eucharist's ritualized life and sacrifice, Aboriginal ceremonies rooting humanity in the land.
Key Ideas:
Allegories frame life as sacred and precious (e.g., Genesis, the Noble Truths, Taoist wu-wei).
Rituals sustain life’s memory and reinforce survival patterns (e.g., Passover, Eucharist, Dreamtime ceremonies).
Key Texts:
Torah, New Testament, Quran, Dhammapada, Tao Te Ching, Oral Traditions
Synthesis Link:
Synthesis clarifies what they intuited: that life is the root of value itself. The veiled wisdom - “choose life, that you may live” (Deuteronomy) - becomes explicit. Taoist non-action (wu-wei) is not apathy but trust in life’s natural order.
Synthesis Point 6: Religion and philosophy are life’s evolutionary tools, preserving survival knowledge through culture.
Stream 2: Indian and East Asian Traditions
Thinkers: Vyasa, Mahavira, Guru Nanak, Shinto Sages
Signal: Cyclical order, nonviolence, and spiritual unity
Limitation: Complexity of ritual, or localized cultural focus
Interpretation:
In India and East Asia, life’s pattern was glimpsed in the cycles of the cosmos, the seasons, and moral law. Dharma, nonviolence, communal identity, reverence for nature - all these became ways to align human life with the greater order sustaining existence. Though sometimes clouded by elaborate rituals or regional mythologies, the heartbeat was clear: to honor life’s interconnectedness and preserve it.
Key Ideas:
Dharma (Hinduism) as cosmic order sustaining life.
Ahimsa (Jainism) as radical respect for living beings.
Unity (Sikhism) binding individuals into resilient communities.
Nature reverence (Shinto) honoring life’s presence in every form.
Key Texts:
Bhagavad Gita, Jain Agamas, Guru Granth Sahib, Kojiki
Synthesis Link:
Synthesis recognises that all these systems are diverse expressions of one truth: life constructs order to endure against entropy.
Synthesis Point 2: Life builds. Growth, cooperation, and resilience are not moral ideals floating in abstraction - they are evolution’s structural necessities. Synthesis universalises the Dharmic intuition: what builds, survives.
Stream 3: The Mythopoetic Frameworks
Thinkers: Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade
Signal: Archetypal storytelling reveals life’s patterns and purposes
Limitation: Symbolic abstraction without empirical grounding
Interpretation:
Modern thinkers like Campbell, Jung, and Eliade rediscovered that ancient myths encode survival strategies. The hero’s journey is not just a story, it is the narrative blueprint for life's struggle and triumph. Archetypes are the psychic imprints of life’s evolutionary imperatives, replayed endlessly in dreams, legends, and epics. Yet without Synthesis, these insights often remained floating symbols, fascinating but disconnected from the structural reality beneath.
Key Ideas:
The Hero’s Journey mirrors life’s cycle of growth, death, and renewal.
Archetypes provide psychic templates for navigating life’s dangers and opportunities.
Sacred stories unify communities through shared existential maps.
Key Texts:
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Man and His Symbols, The Sacred and the Profane
Synthesis Link:
Synthesis decodes mythopoesis as a life technology, a means to preserve, adapt, and transmit survival wisdom.
Synthesis Point 6: Culture, story, and symbol are not frivolous: they are critical tools forged by life itself. Myths are life speaking to itself about how to live.
Conclusion:
Across cultures, times, and tongues, humanity groped toward a simple, unspoken reality: Life is Good. Synthesis does not discard the old myths, it reveals the code within them. Allegory becomes architecture. Ritual becomes strategy. Myth becomes manual. What was once glimpsed in firelight is now stated clearly:
Life perceives. Life builds. Life affirms.
(Vita Sentit. Vita Aedificat. Vita Affirmat.)
The mythic fires still burn, now lit with new clarity.