I define a myth as something that most people tend to believe on the surface, as it were, but they have an inkling that it isn’t true in reality.
Remember the Sub-Chapter on Openness, Boundedness and Patterns, and the importance of thinking systemically in supporting families in the Focus Group?
In the context of healing the hurt in children and families, a myth is very often based on shallow, non-systemic type thinking. It might be the truth and nothing but the truth, but is often not the whole truth!
I will give a few examples of myths that do very little good, in fact might do harm, in a post below. When truth and myth collide, challenging and then processing the inevitable conflict involves change, and the challenging uses up energy, which is why I include this Sub-Chapter in the Chapter on Energy.
But I believe that when we actually do it, the payoff is that we give ourselves a bit of an energy boost. I do anyway!
I’m not sure of the origins of myth in the helping professions and in particular support work with families in the Focus Group, but I often think of four:
~ People are desperate for a solution to a problem so they invent a myth to solve it.
~ People cannot find a solution to a mystery, so they invent a myth to explain it. This can sometimes arise from a lack of appreciation of paradox in our lives.
Adherence to myth is so pervasive in our world that we just go along with something even though we know in our heart or hearts it’s wrong. [1]
And perhaps, from our point of view – a very important one
~ People want to maintain power, so they invent myths to convince ordinary people that whatever they say is true.
You will probably have identified myths in the Sub-Chapter on Power and Control in Society.
To perpetuate corporate closed-ness, myths are constantly being invented, and then huge energy is expended trying to get ordinary people to believe them. I believe that most people spot these myths; but they don’t really challenge them as they feel a kind of comfort in believing them. Perhaps this is why there is so much cynicism and lack of trust in our institutions.
There’s an old saying which states that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.
In the world in which we live, however, the prevalence of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is so great that, perhaps, the old saying is telling us, in code, that the whole world is insane.
The reality is that it is more likely that if we do something different or non-mainstream we run the risk of being thought to be a little insane or at least eccentric. Perhaps the saying does not factor in the fear of change that seems to be part and parcel of being human. It is not lack of intelligence, or a lack of awareness of the past that stops us from doing something different.
It could simply be fear of the unknown, or fear of challenging vested interests, or the embarrassment (or even shame) that we feel when we are proved wrong again by the powerful quick-thinkers, or lack of confidence in our own ability.
The myth part of this is that we come to believe that we are doing something different even when we are doing the same thing!
[1]. When I think of this I always think of the thought-provoking and awareness-raising exercises that teachers do with pupils in schools (or leaders might do with young people in youth clubs) that serve to alert children and young people to injustice and unfairness in our world, and/or projects on green, recycling, or conservation issues. I believe that such exercises, though of high value, are seen by children as just exercises, which are okay for the classroom but are not really applicable in the world of grown-ups outside the classroom or club.