God Save the Queen

Or is it the other way around? Deities and Royalties in the archetypes.

It has been entertaining, and a little moving, to see the recent celebration put on by Britain for its queen. A love fest for a "ruler" who is nearing the end of her service- a job that has been clearly difficult, often thankless, and a bit murky. A job that has evolved interestingly over the last millenium. What used to be a truly powerful rule is now a Disney-fied sop to tradition and the enduring archetypes of social hierarchy.

For we still need social hierarchy, don't we? Communists, socialists, and anarchists have fought for centuries against it, but social hierarchy is difficult to get away from. For one thing, at least half the population has a conservative temperament that demands it. For another, hierarchies are instinctive and pervasive throughout nature as ways to organize societies, keep everyone on their toes, and to bias reproduction to the fittest members. The enlightenment brought us a new vision of human society, one based on some level of equality, with a negotiated and franchise-based meritocracy, rather than one based on nature, tooth, and claw. But we have always been skittish about true democracy. Maximalist democracies like the Occupy movement never get anywhere, because too many people have veto power, and leadership is lacking. Leadership is premised naturally on hierarchy.

Hierarchy is also highly archetypal and instinctive. Maybe these are archetypes we want to fight against, but we have them anyhow. The communists were classic cases of replacing one (presumably corrupt and antiquated) social hierarchy with another which turned out to be even more anxiously vain and vicious, for all its doublespeak about serving the masses. Just looking at higher-ranking individuals is always a pleasant and rewarding experience. That is why movies are made about the high ranking and the glamorous, more than the downtrodden. And why following the royals remains fascinating.

But that is not all! The Queen is also head of the Anglican Church, another institution that has fallen from its glory days of power. It has also suffered defections and loss of faith, amid centuries-long assaults from the enlightenment. The deity itself has gone through a long transition, from classic patriarchial king in the old testament (who killed all humanity once over for its sins), to mystic cypher in the New Testament (who demanded the death of itself in order to save the shockingly persistent sinners of humanity from its own retribution), to deistic non-entity at the height of the enlightenment, to what appears to be the current state of utter oblivion. One of the deity's major functions was to explain the nature of the world in all its wonder and weirdness, which is now quite unnecessary. We must blame ourselves for climate change, not a higher power. 

While social hierarchy remains at the core of humanity, the need for deities is less clear. As a super-king, god has always functioned as the and ultimate pinnacle of the social and political system, sponsoring all the priests, cardinals, kings, pastors, and the like down the line. But if it remains stubbornly hidden from view, has lost its most significant rationales, and only peeps out from tall tales of scripture, that does not make for a functional regent at all. While the British monarchy pursues its somewhat comical, awkward performance of unmerited superintendence of state, church, and social affairs, the artist formerly known as God has vanished into nothing at all.

• Fisheries are killing far more than fish.
• Grooming on youtube.
• Wolves really touch a nerve.

Evolution Under (Even in) Our Noses

The Covid pandemic is a classic and blazingly fast demonstration of evolution.

Evolution has been "controversial" in some precincts. While tradition told the fable of genesis, evolution told a very different story of slow yet endless change and adaptation- a mechanistic story of how humans ultimately arose. The stark contrast between these stories, touching both on the family tree we are heir to, and also on the overall point and motivation behind the process, caused a lot of cognitive dissonance, and is a template of how a fact can be drawn into the left/right, blue/red, traditional/progressive cultural vortex.

This all came to a head a couple of decades ago, when in the process of strategic retreat, anti-evolution forces latched onto some rather potent formulations, like "just a theory", and "intelligent design". These were given a lot of think tank support and right wing money, as ways to keep doubt alive in a field that scientifically had been settled and endlessly ramified for decades. To scientists, it was the height of absurdity, but necessitated wading into the cultural sphere in various ways that didn't always connect effectively with their intended audience. But eventually, the tide turned, courts recognized that religion was behind it all, and kept it out of schools. Evolution has more or less successfully receded from hot-button status.

One of the many rearguard arguments of anti-evolutionists was that sure, there is short-term evolution, like that of microbes or viruses, but that doesn't imply that larger organisms are they way they are due to evolution and selection. That would be simply beyond the bounds of plausibility, so we should search for explanations elsewhere. At this point they were a little gun-shy and didn't go so far in public as to say that elsewhere might be in book like the Bible. This line of argument was a little ironic, since Darwin himself hardly knew about microbes, let alone viruses, when he wrote his book. The evidence that he adduced (in some profusion) described the easily visible signs of geology, of animals and plants around the world, (including familar domestic animals), which all led to the subtle, yet vast, implications he drew about evolution by selection. 

So it has been notable that the vistas of biology that opened up since that time, in microbiology, paleontology, genetics, molecular biology, et al., have all been guided by these original insights and have in turn supported them without fail. No fossils are found out of order in the strata, no genes or organisms parachute in without antecedents, and no chicken happens without an egg. Evolution makes sense of all of biology, including our current pandemic.

But you wouldn't know it from the news coverage. New variants arise into the headlines, and we are told to "brace" for the next surge, or the next season. Well, what has happened is that the SARS-COV2 virus has adapted to us, as we have to it, and we are getting along pretty well at this point. Our adaptation to it began as a social (or antisocial!) response that was very effective in frustrating transmission. But of late, it has been more a matter of training our immune systems, which have an internal selective principle. Between rampant infections and the amazing vaccines, we have put up significant protective barriers to severe illness, though not, notably, to transmission.

But what about the virus? It has adapted in the most classic of ways, by experiencing a wide variety of mutations that address its own problems of survival. It is important to remember that this virus originated in some other species (like a bat) and was not very well adapted to humans. Bats apparently have countless viruses of this kind that don't do them much harm. Similarly, HIV originated in chimpanzee viruses that didn't do them much harm either. Viruses are not inherently interested in killing us. No, they survive and transmit best if they keep us walking around, happily breathing on other people, with maybe an occasional sneeze. The ultimate goal of every virus is to stay under the radar, not causing its host to either isolate or die. (I can note parenthetically that viruses that do not hew to this paradigm, like smallpox, are typically less able to mutate, thus less adaptable, or have some other rationale for transmission than upper respiratory spread.)

And that is clearly what has happened with SARS-COV2. Local case rates in my area are quite high, and wastewater surveilance indicates even higher prevalence. Isolation and mask mandates are history. Yet hospitalizations remain very low, with no one in the ICU right now. Something wonderful has happened. Part of it is our very high local vaccination rate, (96% of the population), but another part is that the virus has become less virulent as it has adapted to our physiology, immune systems, media environment and social practices, on its way to becoming endemic, and increasingly innocuous. All this in a couple of years of world-wide spread, after billions of infections and transmissions.

The succession (i.e. evolution) of variants detected in my county. 

The trend of local wastewater virus detection, which currently shows quite high levels, despite mild health outcomes.

So what has the virus been doing? While it has many genes and interactions with our physiology, the major focus has been on the spike protein, which is most prominent on the viral surface, is the first protein to dock to specific human proteins (the ACE2 cell surface receptor), and is the target of all the mRNA and other specific subunit vaccines. (As distinct from the killed virus vaccines that are made from whole viruses.) It is the target of 40% of the antibodies we naturally make against the whole virus, if we are infected. It is also, not surprisingly, the most heavily mutated portion of the virus, over the last couple of years of evolution. One paper counts 45 mutations in the spike protein that have risen to the level of "variants of concern" at WHO. 

"We found that most of the SARS-COV-2 genes are undergoing negative purifying selection, while the spike protein gene (S-gene) is undergoing rapid positive selection."

Structure of the spike protein, in its normal virus surface conformation, (B, C), and in its post-triggering extended conformation that reaches down into the target cell's membrane, and later pulls the two together. Top (in B, C) is where it binds to the ACE2 target on respiratory cells, and bottom is its anchor in the viral membrane coat (D shows it upside-down). At top (A) is the overall domain structure of the protein, in its linear form as synthesized, especially the RBD (receptor binding domain) and the two protease cleavage sites that prepare it for eventual triggering.

The spike protein is a machine, not just a blob. As shown in this video, it starts as a pyramidal blob flexibly tethered to the viral surface. Binding the ACE2 proteins in our respiratory tracts triggers a dramatic re-organization whereby this blob turns into a thin rope, which drops into the target cell. Meanwhile, the portion stuck to the virus unfolds as well and turns into threads that wind back around the newly formed rope, thereby pulling the virus and the target cell membrane together and ultimately fusing them. This is, mechanistically, how the virus gets inside our cells.

The triggering of the spike protein is a sensitive and adjustable process. In related viruses, the triggering is more difficult, and waits till the virus is engulfed in a vesicle that taken into the cell, and acidified in the normal process of lysosomal destruction / ingestion of outside materials. The acidification triggers these viral spike proteins to fire and release the virus into the cell. Triggering also requires cleavage of the spike protein with proteases that cut it at two locations. Other related viruses sometime wait for a target host protease to do the honors, but SARS-COV2 spike protein apparently is mostly cleaved during production by its originating host. This raises the stakes, since it can then more readily trigger, by accident, or once it finds proper ACE2 receptors on a target host. One theme of recent SARS-COV2 evolution is that triggering has become slightly easier, allowing the virus to infect higher up in the respiratory system. The original strains set up infections deep in the lung, but recent variants infect higher up, which lessens the systemic risks of infection to the host, promotes transmissibility, and speeds the infection and transmission process. 

The mutations G339D, N440K, L452R, S477N, T478K, and E484K in the spike region that binds to ACE2 (RBD, or receptor binding domain) promotes this interaction, raising transmissibility. (The nomenclature is that the number gives the position of the amino acid in the linear protein sequence, and the letters give the original version of the amino acid in one letter code (start) and in the mutated version (end)). Overall, mutations of the spike protein have increased the net charge on the spike protein significantly in the positive direction, which encourages binding to the negatively charged ACE2 protein. D614G is not in this region, but is nearby and seems to have similar effects, stabilizing the protein. The P681 mutation in one of the cleaved regions promotes proteolysis by the enzyme furin, thus making the virus more trigger-able. 

What are some other constraints on the spike protein? It needs to evade our vaccines and natural immunity, but has seemingly adapted to a here-and-gone infection style, though with periodic re-infection, like other colds. So any change is good for the purpose of camouflage, as long as its essential functions remain intact. The N-terminal, or front, domain of the spike protein, which is not involved directly in ACE2 binding, has experienced a series of mutations of this kind. An additional function it seems to have is to mimic a receptor for the cytokine interleukin 8, which attracts neutrophils and encourages activation of macrophages. Such mimicry may reduce this immune reaction, locally. 

In comparison to all these transmissibility-enhancing mutations, it is not clear yet where the mutations that decrease virulence are located. It is likely that they are more widely distributed, not in the gene encoding the spike protein. SARS-COV2 has a remarkable number of genes with various interactions with our immune systems, so the scope for tuning is prodigious. If all this can be accomplished in a couple of years, image what a million, or a billion, years can do for other organisms that, while they have slower reproduction cycles and more complicated networks of internal and external relations, still obey that great directive to adapt to their circumstances.

• Late link, on receptor binding vs immune evasion tradeoffs.
• Yes, chimpanzees can talk.
• The rich are getting serious about destroying democracy.
• Forced arbitration is, generally, unconscionable and should be illegal.
• We could get by with fewer nuclear weapons.
• Originalism would never allow automatic or semiautomatic weapons.

Love Beauty Truth

Book review of "Finding your Feet after Fundamentalism", By Darrell Lackey. With apologies to the other book.

An old friend has published a book. We had an epistolary relationship, fretting about creationism, intelligent design, and related topics back when those were livelier issues than today (and it directly inspired the birth of this blog). He was on his way out of Christian fundamentalism, and into something more liberal, even post-modern. His new book is a somewhat autobiographical account of the problems of fundamentalism, and of leaving fundamentalism as one's tradition. Naturally, evangelism dies hard, and takes this new form of broadcasting the good news of a more moderate and decent Christianity.

The book hits hardest on the issue of Donald Trump. No scandal has so thoroughly demonstrated the ultimate hypocrisy of fundamentalism than its allegiance to Trump. The transaction has given religious conservatives control of the Supreme Court, (though perhaps that owed more to Mitch McConnell), but in return, they showed their support for the most morally vile and incompetent person ever to hold the job. Lackey relates how he was fully in the FOX news orbit in the 90's, happily imbibing its bile. But then something snapped, and by the time of the Trump election, he had fully left fundamentalism and its communities behind. Living in California might have something to do with it, since liberalism, at least of a lip-service sort, is the dominant way of life here. Something that Republicans have learned the hard way. 

Yet the interesting part is how strenuously Lackey hews to Christianity, proclaiming that liberal versions are not gateway drugs to atheism. Quite the contrary- close attention to the actual New Testament provides ample justification for things like supporting marginalized communities, helping the poor, afflicting the rich, and viewing one's enemies as possibly reasonable human beings, if not friends in the making. He mentions how false it is for evangelicals to be so eager to spread the good word, but at the same time so deaf to the words of others that actual relationship is impossible- an evangelism of a closed-off community. 

For what are the fundamental values? Lackey cites love and beauty. Love is clear enough, (and damning enough regarding the FOX- driven culture of conservative Christianity), but the role of beauty needs a little more explaining. Religious thinkers have spared no effort in extolling the beauty of the world, but in the current world, serious artists are rarely Christian, let alone make Christian art. Why is that? Perhaps it is just intellectual fashion, but perhaps there is a deeper problem, that art, at least in our epoch, is adventurous and probing, seeking to interrogate narratives and power structures rather than celebrate them. Perhaps it is a problem of overpopulation, or of democracy, or of living in late imperial times, or of modernism. But whatever the framework, contemporary Christian communities have become the opposite of all this- anti-intellectual, tone-deaf, and art-hostile (not to mention power-mad). It must be exasperating to someone with even the least appreciation for finer things and for art that is "interesting".

Jean-Michel Basquiat- too messy for insensitive temperaments.

Beauty has deep Christian connotations. The world is god-made, good, and thus beautiful, as indeed we all feel it to be. But life is also messy, competitive, and dark. Death and suffering are part of it as well. If we refuse to own those aspects of the world, and of ourselves, we become blinded to the true nature of things, and expose ourselves to unintended and invisible expressions of the dark side, as we see in the deep hypocrisy on the subject of Trump, on sexual morals, and countless other areas within fundamentalism / evangelicalism. Lackey ticks off a lengthy list of subjects where conservative Christians have become blind to the obvious teachings of Jesus while fixated on relatively minor cultural flashpoints and red meat- symptoms of a general moral blindness borne of, arguably, flaccid aesthetic and intellectual habits.

So I would like to offer another value, which is truth. As a scientist, it is a natural place for me to start, but I think it is both illuminating of, and interrelated with, the other virtues above. What modern artists seek is to express truths about the human condition, not just ring out positive affirmations and hallelujas. Truths about suffering as well as truths about beauty. What scientists seek to do is to find how this world we find ourselves in works, from the cosmos down to the gluon. And they do so because they find it beautiful, and, like addicts, would like to unlock more of that beauty. Beauty inspires love, and love ... can only survive on truth, not lies. So I think these values live in a reinforcing cycle.

All that implies that there is another step to take for someone who has left fundamentalism. That is, to re-evaluate Christianity as a whole. While the achievement of decency (and better taste) by the renunciation of FOX and its religious satellite communities is an enormous step, indeed a momentous one for the preservation of our country's sanity, grappling seriously with the value of truth would suggest an extra leg to the trip. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Christianity as a whole is a questionable proposition, philosophically. As a narrative and moral system, it clearly has positive as well as negative potentials. But as a "truth"- with its miracles, resurrections, triune deity, and salvation at the end of the line, (whether for the elect, the saved, the good, or for all)- well, it is impossible to take seriously without heavy doses of tradition and indoctrination.

For his part, Lackey has headed in another direction, into the Eastern Orthodox church, finding a place that richly satisfies the fundamentalist urge to return to one of the most traditional and historically continuous churches in existence, and also one that does not tie itself into intellectual knots about literal truth, living biblically, and the like. Orthodoxy accepts mystery, and cherishes its ancient rites and structures as sufficient theology. It is not modernist, or goaded by the enlightenment to make a rational system of something that so obviously resists reason. 

For there is a fine line between lies, illusions, and truths. As anyone who is married will understand (or a citizen of a country, or part of a corporation, or part of any social structure), truth is not the only or necessarily best virtue. A bit of illusion and constructive understanding can make a world of difference. Narrative, ideology, framing, etc. are essential social glues, and even glues of internal psychology. So, given that illusions are integral, the work to identity them, bring them into consciousness, and make positive choices about them is what matters, especially when it comes to social leadership. Do we choose narratives that are reasonably honest, and look forward with hope and love, or ones that go down the easy road of demonization and projection? And what role should the most traditional narratives in existence- those of the ancient religions- have in guiding us?

• Beautiful? You be the judge.
• Kasparov on freedom and evil.
• Kids should be able to navigate neighborhoods.
• Lies and disinformation are a public health crisis.
• More variants are always coming along.
• We are not doing enough against climate heating.

Toxic Nostalgia

Making Russia great again.

What is it about the past? Even though we are condemned to live in the future, we can't stop fantasizing and fetishizing the past, and wanting to go back. On the gentle side, Proust wrote nothing but loving remembrances of his (sometimes mortifying) past, trying to evoke its moods, textures, smells, and feelings. But why does nostalgia so often curdle into bloodlust and terror? For that is where the Russian autocrat is going with his nostalgia for the Soviet era when Stalin ruled even more autocratically over a well-cowed populace extending from Hungary to the Pacific. Ah, those were the days!

It isn't just our current crisis- far from. The Trumpists want to make America great... again. The Muslim jihadists are bent on reproducing the pre-eminent dominance of Islam of 1300 years ago. The Serbs hearken back to their own grand empire of 700 years ago. Shia muslims fetishize their losses and in a theology of repair and redemption. Jews have both bemoaned their losses of their great kingdoms two millennia ago, and militantly sought their promised land back. And fundamentalists of all stripes yearn to get back to the basic tenets of their faith- the pure origins of incendiary belief and miracles.

It all seems a little over-determined, as though the operative emotion isn't nostalgia exactly, but powerlust, seizing on whatever materials come to hand to say that we as some tribe or culture are better and deserve better than we've got. While the future remains ever shrouded, the past is at least accessible, if also rather protean in the hands of dedicated propagandists. In Russia's case, not only did Stalin help start World War 2 by co-invading Poland, but the prior holocaust/famine in Ukraine, followed by the transplacement of millions of Russians into Ukraine.. well, that all makes this current bout of nostalgia far from sympathetic, however well-twisted it has been for internal consumption. Of course the propaganda and the emotion is mostly instrumental, in a desperate bid to fend off the appearance of happy, secure, and prosperous democracies on Russia's borders, which is the real danger at hand, to Putin and his system.

In remembrance of Russia's great patriotic war, which it helped start.

Yet, such nostalgia is strongly culturally binding, for better or worse. Rising states may have short histories and short memories, resented as the nouveau-rich on the world stage. They are not "as good" in some essential way as those whose greatness has passed into the realm of nostalgia. Worth is thus not in the doing but in some ineffible essentialist (read nationalist/tribal) way that is incredibly resistant to both reason and empathy. It is analogous to "nobility" in the class structure within most societies. In the US, we seem on the cusp (or past it) of our time atop the world stage. Do we then face hundreds of years of regret, comforting ourselves with tales of greatness and seething resentment?

With echos of a deeper past.

• Could the West have been smarter; more generous?
• Apparently, we are all going to die.
• Tires are bad.

Some Theological Aspects of Modern Economics

Economics remains in a difficult intersection between science and humanities, with distinctly political and ideological conflicts.

We seem to be in a passion play about inflation right now. It is skyrocketing, or zooming, etc. It is a huge crisis. But, since it is measured year-over-year, maybe it is just a simple bounce from the depths of the pandemic when demand and prices, especially for gasoline, were negligible, and some businesses shut down. Now demand is back, but some sectors of the economy are having a hard time meeting demand, especially for workers, so prices are going up, by modest amounts. Some stories say that "inflation is never temporary". Others say the structural dislocations will pass and things will get back to normal. One can tell the ideology quite clearly from the story line. Conservatives have double motives to paint it a crisis, to disparage the current president (tax cuts had nothing whatsoever to do with this!), to support the preservation of capital and capitalists, and to generally box in policy makers from spending money on truly momentous objectives, like addressing climate change.

Why is this such a drama? Why isn't economics more of a science? In real sciences, you do not see competing schools of thought, such as the Chicago and the Keynesian schools of economics, the New Keynsians and the Modern Monetary Theorists, which last for decades and never seem to resolve their warfare. Maybe that is because real sciences don't study anything important. But more likely, real sciences have methods to efficiently describe and resolve their differences- with reference to reality- that economists do not seem to have. For in the macroeconomics realm, there is not a lot of experimentation that one can do. It is a field more like history, from which scholars and observers tend to draw the lessons they want to draw, not the ones that would serve them best. Or theology, whose subject is wholly illusory, such that its practitioners are not really in the business of studying anything observable at all, (or even discernible!), but in social management- how to build ideologies and propagandize with effective rhetoric, how to build churches, how to sermonize, whom to target in their weaker moments, what and whom to value, which social hierarchy to support, and how to do so.

Economics is far from illusory, and plenty of economists do the truly scientific work of describing the economy as it is, giving us the grist of statistics from which the theorists can spin their opinions. It is at the policy and macro level where things get theological, where moral and ideological commitments outweigh technocratic sense. For economics at the policy level is fundamentally Darwinian- how one wants to split the pie depends on who you think is worthy- morally and operationally. Economics is not intrisically democratic- far from. There are some who are worth more to the system, depending on one's standpoint. The Ricardians (with the Chicago school carrying on its supply-side banner) deemed production and producers the only important parts of the mechanism. Demand would take care of itself as long as producers were given maximum latitude to conduct business and trade as they wished. As the ideological cycle turned, entrepreneurs were once again the vanguard and watchword in the eighties and nineties. 

When it comes to inflation, similarly vast ideological forces are at work. The progressive Kenyesian policy environment of the 1960's was eroded, then eviscerated by Milton Friedman's and the Chicago school's general neo-Ricardian attacks during the 1970's, in our period of stagflation. It was genuinely destructive to experience inflation at relatively high levels, and the solution ended up being deep recessions ultimately authored by Jimmy Carter via his appointment of Paul Volker. The power of workers to bid for higher pay and inflation-protected pay was destroyed by de-unionization, outsourcing and off-shoring. Those forces largely remain today, suggesting that the current inflation blip will be transitory. 

Inflation is measured in consumer prices, so it largely reflects low-end wages that are spent most readily, rather than the stock market or other places where the rich invest. As long as wages are kept down, then inflation will be kept down as well. The big question is how the economy splits the pie- between wages at the low and middle levels, versus returns on capital / wealth and executive pay. This balance has been heavily out of kilter over the last few decades. This may have been great for keeping inflation down, but has obviously had highly corrosive effects on much else, from the opioid epidemic, to our great dependence on China for goods and supply chains, and our political breakdowns. So economics is not just about the economy, but about a great deal more- who we value and what vision we have for the future.

Keynes in his magnum opus had some wry comments on this phenomenon, in 1936:

"The completeness of the Ricardian victory is something of a curiosity and a mystery. It must have been due to a complex of suitabilities in the doctrine to the environment into which it was projected. That it reached conclusions quite different from what the ordinary uninstructed person would expect, added, I suppose, to its intellectual prestige. That its teaching, translated into practice, was austere and often unpalatable, lent it virtue. That it was adapted to carry a vast and consistent logical superstructure, gave it beauty. That it could explain much social injustice and apparent cruelty as an inevitable incident to the scheme of progress, and the attempt to change such things as likely on the whole to do more harm than good, commanded it to authority. That it afforded a measure of justification to the free activities of the individual capitalist attracted to it the support of the dominant social force behind authority."- John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

• Resisting the lies is harder than you think.
• Sustainability is the big issue, and our politics are too small to address it.
• Democracy is hanging by a thread.
• And each side seems to think it is saving democracy, apparently. Though only one side does so undemocratically.
• Of course.. Republicans dedicated to state destruction will support crypto.

Myth and Science

Stories we tell about how things work.

I am reading an ancient book about ancient myths, covering some of what was known of the ancient world's stories circa the mid-20th century (that is, the "developed" ancient world of Egypt, the Near East, China, India, etc.). The authors occasionally seem exasperated that their colleagues- the ancient authors of these stories and myths- do not always take their stories as seriously as scholars themselves do, after having so painstakingly learned the relevant languages, unearthed the precious tablets, papyri, inscriptions, and other sources, compared different versions, and interpreted them in light of the historical setting. No, ancient myths can be playful affairs, evolving in dramatic complexity, freely mutating to serve the needs of the moment in their mutable oral traditions. This is especially true the farther back you go into ethnographic history, such as into the stories of the Inuit and other First Peoples of North America. It is evident that ancient societies varied widely in their theological and mythological sophistication, and particularly how closely entwined these were with the centers of power.

Inuit mythologies and their custodian, the shaman.

The scholarly apparatus around myth studies has a very earnest and modernist cast, which derives from two sources. First is Christianity, which as an extreme political and social elaboration of ancient religions has progressively reified and codified its myths. Inheriting a grab-bag of disparate ancient myths and stories, Christianity shored up its social position and theological bona fides by insisting that it was all true. The more sclerotic and far-reaching its bureaucratic structure, the more tightly it held to the absolute truth of its dogmas. A second aspect was the enlightenment and the rise of scientific modernity. That world view was not interested in playful myths of psychodrama, but in hard truths of how the world really works, stripped of the colorful trappings. Competition with this world view helped to further push religious dogmas in an absolutist direction, to that point where today, both Christian Evangelicals and fundamentalist Islamists insist that their scriptures are literally true, handed down from an all-powerful god who really exists and is not fictive construct meant as a playful expression of our scientific ignorance on one hand, and our love of social drama on the other. Anthropologists took their cues from all this, assuming that the precious myths they were studying had to be expressions of a society's absolute truths, organizing principles, and deepest motivations. But perhaps they were originally ways to pass the time and enchant a few youngsters.

Science is telling stories, too. Are they really so different? On the one hand, our need to orient ourselves in the world remains unchanged from ancient times, so the core purpose of explaining reality and society through complicated tales of causes and effects remains. And to a lay person, the explanations of quantum mechanics or cosmic inflation are no less impenetrable than myths about gods and dragons. Thus the scientists who are the custodians of these stories find themselves in the ironic position of a new priesthood, cultivating the cultural narrative around origins, natural phenomena, biology, and the like, while extending these stories in systematic ways that the priests (and alchemists, and shamans, and druids) of yore could only dream about, if they could even conceive of such reliable beliefs untethered from social drama and social control. But today's scientists can't and won't inject ancillary drama into these stories, so they will remain split off from their traditional roles and uses.

So the telling of dramatic stories and the consequent management of society through the narratives of origins, myths, and meaning- if ancient myths really did fulfill these functions, which is perhaps an anachronistic construction on our part, or at least varied widely with the nature of ancient societies- are skills having nothing, really, to do with the scientific enterprise of today, and thus nothing to do with this new priesthood. Who takes these roles?

Theology would seem the natural place for the living and socially relevant myth. But theology has split definitively from science, from history, and indeed from reality, nurturing narratives that are absurd while claiming they are true, and which in their antiquity and provincialism are impossibly remote from our current concerns, morals, and social ability to relate even allegorically. Theology has thus become lost in a sterile wilderness, doomed to be cut off from its mythical and social power. Even the more liberal and elastic precincts, if they do not insist on absolute literal truth, adhere to the crusty old stories of the Bible, which while occasionally artistic, are mostly a maddening hodgpodge and, frankly, boring. What was riveting in antiquity about lengthy ancestor lists, angry gods, virgin births, and ascending into the clouds is ridiculous today. 

The story-telling mantle has obviously been taken over by Hollywood- by the Marvel series, Star Treks, Star Wars, Potter series, and similar epics of modern fantasy. They bend reality in classically mythical ways, make up their own theology as they go along, (and throw it away as casually with the next installment), and communicate constantly updated social mores. The graphics are otherworldly, the stories and morals are updated, but the fundamental sophistication of these stories can't really be said to have advanced much. They are speaking to human nature, after all- a conversation between our inborn archetypes and the social and technological conditions we find ourselves in.

The key point is that Hollywood myths are taken as intended- as fertile and mind-expanding fantasies with social and moral lessons that are (hopefully) beneficial and relevant for our times. They are not trying to claim their myths as true- that would be absurd. Thus they do not collide with either scientific or theological claims, and use myth as it was originally and truly intended- as the dreamlike realm of symbolic human drama, full of lessons, yes, but not scientific ones, or even pseudoscientific ones.

• An outstanding dissection of just how bad US policy and behavior was in Afghanistan.
• Facebook / Fecebook is a cesspool, by design.
• Dead ender racism.
• A mutagenic drug to save us all.
• How about those great vaccines?
• Some nice piano.