10/10/19 Modern Mythology
Blog #16
Period 1
Belinda Zhang
Today we combined classes with Ms. Fusaro’s first period mythology students.
Aim: How does the Greek mythological story of creation highlight the troubles between the
family structure, the sexes, the struggles for dominance and control, and the child paying for
the sins of the parents?
Do Now: “First there was Chaos, the vast immeasurable abyss, outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild.”
The class was asked to read this quote and then through observing the diction and mood of Milton’s quote, discuss how it creates perspective on the origins of the universe.
Most of the class immediately jumped to the concept of order and authority, with someone pointing out a notable use of diction in Milton’s quote: capitalizing the C in Chaos. Moreover, the use of words like “dark, wasteful, wild” conveys that the world prior to life and the Gods was disordered and turbulent, similar to the nature of the stormy, mysterious sea— vast and unknown. Until the Gods established order, there were no laws at the beginning of the universe and there was no society or civilization— the monsters of Greek mythology were able to roam free unrestrained. As one of our classmates noted: “Before order, there has to be disorder.”
This Do Now led to a related, thought-provoking discussion about the true definition of “chaos.” As said previously, most of us immediately associated chaos with unrestrained living or a lack of order and balance. However, Ms. Fusaro pointed out that what chaos TRULY is— is nothing. The universe originated from nothing.
A classmate followed by humorously challenging the picture of a stormy sea that Ms. Fusaro used to depict chaos on the slides, questioning how that picture could possibly embody “nothing.” Ms. Fusaro responded by asking the class to try and pinpoint exactly what we would illustrate as “nothing.” Many proposed that it would be a picture of pure black or white. But what’s to keep it from being orange or purple? One of our classmates further challenged us to “close one of our eyes, and describe what color we see in our closed eye.” Just like attempting to envision nothing, it produced nothing but indefinite and arbitrary guesses.
We then read an article about the Big Bang Theory, asking ourselves what it has in common with Greek beliefs about creation. Although the Big Bang Theory is a notion of advanced science and astronomy, it proposes that our world basically erupted from nothing, just like how the Greeks believed the world originated from chaos. And just as these ideas are referred to as “mythology,” the Big Bang is also just a “theory.” This all just goes to show that we’ve always been curious about our origins and emphasizes how much is left unknown about our universe.
Jun shared an alternate creation theory— that it originated from a previous universe. But where did the previous universe come from? Ms. Fusaro explained it well when she noted that we are left with nothing but a “chicken or the egg” situation.
Student Reflection:
Our later discussion about the Big Bang Theory in relation to the Greek creation story particularly resonated with me. And it is exceptionally mystifying to accept that we will most likely never be completely certain about how the world came to be and what happened before this timeframe, if anything did happen. Even in our present day, with our advanced technologies and equipment, we are basically at the same level of understanding as the ancient Greeks when it comes to discussing the origins of our universe. And our attempts to comprehend creation are not much different in that they are the product of human curiosity and our inevitable desire to understand and have a sense of control over the unknown. Moreover, we credit it to a split-second explosion of matter while the Greeks referred to it as chaos, but both theories essentially express the same idea of nothingness— they are just labeled with different names. Much like our attempts to envision nothingness, no matter how much scientific terminology is thrown into it, origin theories are simply arbitrary guesses. This concept of nothingness itself also presents a frustrating paradox. We seek to understand our origins but if we originate from nothing, what is there to understand?
An important application of today’s lesson, especially in the current political environment, is the acceptance and understanding of all religions and ideologies. Throughout history, countless wars have been fought over religious conflicts and differences. However, much like the Big Bang Theory and Greek creation story, all religions seem to share the idea that the world emerged from nothing. In reality, our beliefs are all very similar and it is when we realize this, that we can learn to not only be accepting of other’s beliefs, but also be willing to learn from them.
