Mythos, Comprehension, Action and Modernity

1. 1. How have we gotten to where we are now?


2. 2. Why do we hold certain white European narratives, and hold uncertain non-white European narratives?


3. 3. In what ways do these narratives perpetuate themselves in an increasingly globalized world and multi-polar world order?


4. 4. Where can we identify the shifting of the third population and caste distinguishers?

Throughout the seminar, White Worlds Lost Lands: The Mystical History of the West, two consistent themes appeared when examining white Euro-centric supremacy. These themes being space consumption (land or outer space) and mythological iterations of man (from man 0 to man 2). These conditions alone, provide us with the objective for doing and the means to do it. We see this in the continual fascination and false factualized worlds of Atlantis or Tartaria and the continuation of supremacy through spiritualism in the “practice” of theosophy.

Sylvia Wynter’s 1492: A New World View works to reframe the constructs of man by starting with the beginning of it all: the “discovery” of the western hemisphere by Christopher Columbus. A mass, centuries long historic event resulting in the full continental-scale extraction of foods, wealth and people; thus, setting in motion the gears of globalization and the most disastrous ecological event to ever occur. The story is as old as time itself. In the process of deconstructing the 1492 narrative, to understand how figments become matter become actions, Wynter’s essay highlights three general genres: 1) The pinnacle placement of man 2) The spatial construction and legitimation of human inferiority and 3) The establishment of a constantly working, controlling myth.

To investigate these three genres and relate back to the overall themes present in the seminar, it is necessary to identify a set of cognitive, historical materials Wynter’s brings forth, establishing a socio-spatial timeline which makes the overarching genres possible. These materials consist of: subjective understanding, degodding of nature, western epochal transition, expansion of spatial thinking considerations, solidification of the third population, Sperber’s two types of cognition, the stereotyped image and caste. Introducing these materials brings specificity and provides a layerable construct index.

Seeing is believing and to get to an actionable state of committing, one must have a mentally visual goal. Comprehension is the first tool necessary in this process. The flow of life, or the mechanisms that constitute the sustaining, behavioral factors of an everyday reality, provide a baseline interpretation of conduct; thus, producing a subjective understanding, or in other words, an existing, comparable comprehension. Culture shock is an example of this boundary overlap between differing flows of life and subjective understandings. The one being shocked witnesses the difference between their standard existence and another's standard existence. Wynter highlights this comprehension with scholar Miguel Leon-Portilla’s reconstruction of life in the Aztec empire, in which human sacrifice was the flow of life, this standard interpretive conduct, put into comprehension, and thus action, via the mythos of their statal polytheistic religions.

Judaeo-Christian colonizers saw this divergent reality, comprehended it within their religious subjective understanding, felt internal conflict by it (a culture shock of sorts) due to their catholic mythos and justified the act of stopping it (in conjunction with the ulterior motive of resource extraction), via murder, enslavement and indoctrination. In both conditions, from the Aztec empire to the Spanish empire, we witness the solidification of a controlling, religious comprehension conducting and legitimizing ethico-behavioral actions. One then takes over the other and collectively shifts that singular understanding beyond cultures and landscapes.

In our current era, it is explicit that governing bodies play a part in the maintenance of these ethico-behavioral flows, but it would be remiss to dismiss the narratives that are told in order to perpetuate this internalized pursuance. The meritocracy fantasy, that hard work pays off equally, is a myth that is ensnared in western culture, specifically within the United States. By circumstance or by design, its puritanical origins are often forgotten. Here, we are witnessing a weaponization of this mythos in a way that is not too dissimilar from the Spanish empire’s justification of the western hemisphere’s pillaging in real time, though not to the same historical caliber. Those at the top of the hierarchy, in control of extraction operations, present hard work as the means of their wealth accumulation, when instead this mass of income comes from various forms of extraction. A desecularized religious belief is dressed as an ever endearing, hard working flow of life (like the justification of converting idolaters) in order to mask the exploitation of others who do not exist within the same conditional spheres, whether that be social ranking, tax bracket or lineage.

Of course in order to achieve this “by man for man” mythos, there has to be a complete disregard of other non-man gods; thus the degodding of nature must occur. This narrative of man implements the mentality of consumption. “My God made this Earth for my prosperity”. This way of thinking is always linear as man exists in the beginning and the end. There is no reason to implement any cyclicality as there is no point in sustenance or rehabilitation. This is where creating a perceptive and sensorial other becomes valuable as vertical hierarchy is established and (in)just actions are legitimately executed. Devalued materials (nature, people, cultural technologies) don’t cognitively fit within the man-man mythos and; therefore, can be divested in (through murder, pollution, etc.).

Once an internal comprehensive mythos is solidified, the act of subjugation becomes streamlined. The next task comes down to convincing society that pillaging and enslaved populations are, in fact, a beneficial norm. If the “by man for man” narrative evokes material consumption, what is the solution to validate extracted land, wealth and peoples? The construction of the third population. As the divestment has already been occurring, extending the narrative to combine genetic attributes with medieval Judaeo-Christian color symbolism rationalizes the action. White becomes synonymous with "light", "angelic", "heavenly" and black becomes synonymous with "darkness", "demons" and "hell". This is the deployment of a religiously mythologized behavior-orienting ethic. This is biologized heresy. Extending into now, we see these same ethico-behavioral heuristics being employed, whether that be through navigating bureaucratic systems or simply changing one’s behavior based on a space's predominant ethnicity. This is the mythos conditioning at work. The Judaeo-Christianity symbolic representational system transfers, is desecularized (yet still inherently religious) and maintained as the ultimate reference point across all global hegemonic forms.

Sperber’s types of cognition introduces two general ways in which humans sensorially interpret the world. Type 1 being “knowledge of the world as it is” and type 2 being “knowledge as categories”. These two distinctions allow the “by man for man” mythos to become spatial. Place this in conjunction with the stereotype image, a “primary function [used to] induce the specific mode of perception needed by a culture-specific order” in order to “orient prescribed behaviors”, and there is a complete formation of creed and execution. Caste further biologizes the spatiality of cognition and the behavioral prescription of the stereotyped image into a generational factor that maneuvers through blood. All of these combined is both the oil for the system and the system itself. LIke a well-lubricated machine, the subjugated become a form of their own subjugators and the top of the hierarchy points back at them saying “and the facts speak for themselves.” In the words of one of my peers, “the spirituality of ethnocide is the ethos of humanism.”

As capitalism has provided means of economic liberation for the third population, whether intentional or not, and the world and environment has been forever changed by its melded condition, the justifications that once enabled slavery and extraction hold a different type of water. To further this, newfound independence introduces combative terminology; such as, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, etc. In a world where those deemed inferior by the default of white, European man have to continually articulate their reasons for existing, utilizing this calling out vernacular is a requirement for equitability. It's undeniable that identity politics play crucial roles for those in power; however, the process of validating these thresholds for tolerating intolerants is increasingly running thin. As these once effective barriers are verbalized, new means to define others must be made. If race, gender, and religion lack the same othering punch within the western world as they once had, inequitable homo-economic materials must find a new masked vessel. I purpose this next layer is presentation through means of design and aesthetics.

In his manifesto, Ornament and Crime, architect Adolf Loos breaks down the reasons why decorum must be abandoned and modernity be fully employed. Throughout the essay, the reader witnesses Loos argue two ways in which decorative practices can be understood. This being: 1) as an indicator of criminal tendencies backed by scientific observation, (“The modern man who tattoos himself is criminal or degenerate. There are prisons where eighty percent of the inmates bear tattoos”) and 2) as an indicator of cultural time regression due to its inefficient conception (“the rate of cultural development is held back by those that cannot cope with the present”). Loos utilizes Papuan tattoos as a grounding ideological example, underscoring their tattooing practices as an identifier of their primal tendencies; thus an attribution to their child-like amorality. The only reason the Papaun is not criminal is because he is not a modern man. What can be misinterpreted as a recognition of cultural distinction, is in reality the infantilization of a non-western population.

There’s a similarity in this religious perverted tonality Loos utilizes between the erotic primality of art, and the Spanish empire’s justification of the third population's sinful ways. The saying "cleanliness is close to godliness” clings to his ethos just as much as it does in the 1492 narrative. Though what Loos wrote was racist justification disguised behind design theory, a point simply looked over by many architectural scholars, we are able to see him play into the same chrono-identity politics that was formally perpetuated by Judaeo-christian colonizers and currently maintained by right wing white supremacists. Cultural decoration, often performed as a part of tradition, is wielded by the third population and signifies the inherit-ness of their hedonistic idolater biology and cyclically regressive existence. White Euro-centric modernity is the linear, efficient, beginning and end. The form will always follow the function.

Now, modernity has become the new defining mythos. Its fluidity as a time definer, aesthetic, philosophy and object word, gives it an unavoidable stickiness. Like all supremacist constructs, it melts into every facet of being under the guise of human evolution and enrichment. In a world where the way one looks has constituted their treatment for centuries, it only makes sense that all aspects of the built environment would be distinguished under this exact same means. As we grapple with the ramifications of modernity’s linearity and the destruction of our planet, we must ask ourselves: what does the end of the line look like? White supremacy’s attachment to technological innovation and fictitious stories of interplanetary colonization may seem plausible, but currently they are still just aspirational myths. To end this flow of linearity, this modernity, it is necessary to produce a new design mythos that flows through a new humanistic mythos; one that employs decorum and thus circularity. This material isn’t going to come “naturally”, but rather through an intentioned and all encompassing narrative disruption.

Wynters, Sylvia. 1492: A New World View. Smithsonian Institution, 1998.

Loos, Adolf. Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays. Ariadne Press, 1998.