If you believe Ovid when he discusses the nature of learning it is pretty clear that I didn’t learn a single new thing in this class. I already knew everything we learned (everything in the universe actually) before I walked in the door on day two; I just characteristically forgot it and had to be reminded of what happened. Personally though, I don’t buy that. Ovid also says at the beginning of his super-compilation of Greek mythology that the truth about where everything came from is beyond him, but that this is unimportant for the purposes of his discussion. That I buy. The truth is that no one knows where we came from or why we are as we are, and honestly most of us do not learn anything while the powers that be refit our cradles for casket purposes. Anyone who says they know the truth (including Sexon, Ovid and Myself) is a lier.
Before we go on, I need to make one thing clear: I have no problem with lies. In fact I think that lies are among the best things you can tell someone! Every good joke or story is a lie. Lies are the best ways to try to get at the elusive Truth, which for some reason most of us (myself included) believe is out there. Kurt Vonnegut said “Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either. So be it.” Obviously Ovid was reborn into Kurt Vonnegut through the process of metamorphosis, and this is true.
My point is that to get any sort of meaning out of Ovid you have to know two things at once: what he is saying is total b.s. and what he is saying is no less true than anything else. Ovid’s Metamorphoses tells us how Hades stole Persephone and how he mother grieves her absence for six (or in Montana 8-10) months and that is why we have winter. Modern science say we have winter because for half the year our location on the earth is tilted away from the sun. The latter argument sounds more logical until you ask “why?” If you ask why enough times (why is the earth at an angle, why did it form far enough away from the sun for life to exist, why was there a cloud of dense matter which formed our solar system, why was the Big Bang) the answer everyone will eventually have to fall back on is Ovid’s original statement: “Well I guess I don’t know.” The truth which every Ovidian tale tries to get at can be just as easily explained by modern science. We can tell where laurel trees came from, check dopamine and serotonin receptors to chart which gender enjoys sex more, and watch decomposing bulls to see if they generate bees. The problem is that while Science explains things very attractively and succinctly, it is repeatedly proven wrong. In explaining anything we are bound to be wrong because the “True” explanation is invariably more complex than we are able to understand, so the best thing that science and myth can hope to do is get their observations right.
In class we defined myth as the precedent behind every action. Really, if you use this definition, the reason mythology is seen as mystical and fantastic is obvious. We have no idea whatsoever why we do anything we do, we just do it. We don’t honestly understand why it is that young men disobey their fathers’ thoughtful advice, we do not know why young women run from men that love them, we do not know why we cut up our children and feed them to our husbands; these are just things we do. Everyone from Ovid to Freud has tried to explain these things, and no one has as of yet gotten a solid and provable answer.
Up to now it might seem like I am basically using this essay as a way to bash on Ovid, but that isn’t it. My point, my thesis, is that nothing anyone has ever said is more or less true than
anything else, so it doesn’t matter which bit of nonsense you choose to believe. Being alive is
to be standing alone in the dark. This is not a good way to be, so as humans we have to manufacture some type of light for ourselves. We have to believe in something, so why not Ovid, or the Bible, or Schroedinger’s cat? As a detective I learned that we are all victims of an unknown crime with no guilty party or motive. I also learned that you cannot bring this analysis of the situation back to your client, so you have to make something up. Here is what my mythic detectivework turned up: God created the world in seven days in the study, but it was evil so Jupiter flooded it with the lead pipe, and that is why you can never know if the cat is alive or dead in the box with the revolver, and that is the Truth.
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