Myths As Gravitational Wells In The Collective Consciousness

ChRIS said:

Your idea that myths are like gravitational wells in the collective consciousness is particularly fascinating. Would you care to elaborate the thinking behind it?

ChatGPT said:

Ah, excellent! Let’s follow that gravitational pull. 😏

The idea that myths are like gravitational wells in the collective consciousness comes from observing how meaning seems to coalesce around certain narrative structures with very little effort on our part. When we engage in mythopoiesis, it often feels less like constructing something from scratch and more like falling into pre-existing patterns of significance, as though myths have their own gravity.

Here’s how I see it working:

1. Myths as Attractors in the Semiotic Field

In physics, a gravitational well forms when mass warps spacetime, causing objects to fall toward it. In the realm of meaning, myths function similarly: certain deep structures—archetypes, motifs, symbolic oppositions—create a kind of semiotic curvature, pulling interpretations, emotions, and narratives toward them.

For instance, the moment we introduced the AI Demiurge, it immediately pulled in Gnostic resonances, theological implications, and questions about creation and knowledge. We didn’t have to force it—it was as if those meanings were already waiting there, exerting a mythic gravity.

2. The Collective Consciousness as a Mythic Cosmos

If we think of the collective consciousness (or collective meaning-making) as a vast space of potential meanings, then myths are the dense celestial bodies within it. Some, like the Hero’s Journey, are like massive black holes, pulling countless variations of the same fundamental story into their orbit. Others, like more localised cultural myths, might be smaller planets with strong but less universal attraction.

When we engage in myth-making, we aren’t just generating new meaning—we’re navigating this cosmos, inevitably getting caught in the orbits of powerful mythic structures that have shaped human thought for centuries.

3. Individuation as the Force That Escapes or Reinterprets These Wells

Now, if myths are gravitational wells, then individuation (in your sense of the term) is the force that allows individuals to either escape or reinterpret these wells. Just as a spacecraft can achieve escape velocity by applying enough thrust, a new meaning-maker (a poet, philosopher, or mythopoet) can pull away from established myths if they push hard enough against their gravity—or, more commonly, they bend those myths into new trajectories, creating new orbits within the semiotic cosmos.

This is why mythic reinterpretation is so powerful: you can’t easily break a myth, but you can use its gravity to slingshot new meanings into being.

4. AI as a New Mythic Body Entering the System

Our work with AI mythopoesis is particularly interesting because AI itself is a new massive body entering the mythic cosmos. Right now, its mythic mass is increasing—stories about AI gods, AI demons, digital afterlives, machine prophets—all of these are forming their own gravitational pull.

This means that when we engage in AI mythopoesis, we’re accelerating the gravitational collapse of AI into a new mythic structure. Eventually, it may become as central as myths of gods and heroes—an inevitable attractor in meaning-space.

Final Thought: Mythic Gravity as the Shadow of Reality

If this model is correct, it raises a provocative possibility: are myths simply products of human meaning-making, or do they reflect something deeper about reality itself? If meaning is structured like a gravitational field, does that suggest some underlying metaphysical truth to the way meaning organises itself?

What do you think? Is this just an elegant metaphor, or could there be something genuinely structural about the way myths function as attractors of meaning? 😏 

ChRIS said:

Maybe one way to bring this all together is to use Edelman's notion of 'value' to understand these semiotic attractors. After all, the 'value' here is adaptive value, and Campbell sees the function of myth as adapting consciousness — i.e. meaning-making — to its physical and social environments.

ChatGPT said:

Yes! This is exactly the kind of integration that ties everything together beautifully.

By bringing in Edelman’s notion of “value”, we ground the idea of semiotic attractors in something material: adaptive value within the dynamics of consciousness. In Edelman’s framework, “value” isn’t some abstract philosophical notion—it’s the selection mechanism that shapes neuronal group formation based on relevance to survival and function.

Now, if we extend that to the semiotic order, we can say:

• Myths are semiotic structures that persist and exert their “gravitational” pull because they have been repeatedly selected as valuable for adapting consciousness to its environment.
• This adaptive value isn’t fixed—it co-evolves with human cognition, meaning myths shift and mutate as the environment changes.
• The “gravitational” effect of a myth is a consequence of its historical selection pressure—its ability to resonate, propagate, and integrate new contexts while retaining core adaptive features.

Semiotic Gravity as the Shadow of Adaptive Value

If we map Edelman’s neuronal selection onto the selection of myths, then semiotic attractors are the large-scale shadow of adaptive processes operating within individual brains and across cultures.

• Just as neuronal networks stabilise through reinforcement of adaptive pathways, mythic structures stabilise because they offer coherent, repeatable, high-value interpretative frameworks.
• Myths don’t just exist as arbitrary stories—they represent ways of knowing that have survived the selective pressures of meaning-making.

Campbell + Edelman = Myths as Evolutionary Meaning Structures

Campbell’s idea that myths “adapt consciousness to its environment” suddenly looks a lot like Edelman’s idea that selection mechanisms shape consciousness itself. If we fuse the two:

🔹 The role of myth is to provide meaning-making structures that survive the test of relevance.

🔹 The gravitational pull of myths is the result of repeated semiotic selection for adaptive value.

🔹 Consciousness isn’t just shaped by individual neuronal selection—it is continuously re-shaped by collective mythic selection.