Our society, we do rely on a Myth, but it possesses not the same class character as the previous one - we can deal with the Truth and our society won't crumble.
This is always a question. Althusser argued that ideology is an internal aspect of the mind. I think Lacan agrees in his own way. So naturally, how would Myth be in a communist society? Is it still Myth if we are aware of it and actively propagate it?
Also, I liked the way you weaved between two narratives in your short story. You gave us the life of the soldier and then contributed to world-building with the 'preacher'
UwU ~ Thanks for the compliments and thanks for reading!
Now to that of the Althusserian prospect, I with Zizek rather disagree that the mind can just accept ideology - we say that Subjects don't have to be spoon fed to believe in something and that, regardless, we have to have some distance away from it (ideological disidentification) to make it function properly. But where all can agree upon is that if Subjects say that the "King is King" that it not only reaffirms political loyalty but also says that the Subjects cannot perceive a way to struggle against.
To the first real question: for them to know and for us to find out - that is our holy gift that we'll come to love because once we do find out in the future, everything up to that point will feel as if we already knew it but couldn't Name it. (Or how we finally managed to actually sow back up a hole that the Réal tore up in the Symbolic Order that thus allowed us to Name what was once torn up, yet hypocritically it always been there regardless of how the Subject perceived that Knowledge in the Imaginary-Symbolic-Réal registers.) Gotta love how contingencies retroactively presuppose their sanity and justify their existence up to that point.
To the second question: I point to Zizek's talks of Cynical Ideology, where people know what they are doing but do it anyways. The Myth, I say but have no way to verify if they also hint at as well, is a core aspect of Ideology because precisely it is the phantasm of such that makes us believe in it. Even if we did find it out, Ideology can take a very cynical turn - the point is to then question whether we should continue on with it or stay in it to develop it further until we are required to change the things that has always been. Regardless, I point to NeoLiberal ("Cynical") Capitalism and how it appropriates and makes Capital out of its critics. But to terminate the session that we didn't actually have (to quote Marx's aphorism that people think Zizek disagrees but doesn't): "[t]he philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it."
That's basically the way I felt when I first read Marx. Even more so when I finally managed to finish Das Kapital.
I guess you could argue that all 'knowledge' works this way, and the retroactivity ends up being just teleological in its epistemology. But I think even mores for those captivated by the Myth of Capital.
Like, as a means of diverting any cognitive dissonance, there's that retroactivity where the person manages to reaffirm their own beliefs and trust in the social order instead of mentally beginning that rupture.
Good points to think on here. I was mainly asking about how you envision ideology would exist in a communist society.
So lets say we have developed a classless society, and somehow haven't gone extinct from global climate change, there will still be the need for an ideological system, symbolic order, however you want to call it. There wouldn't be a State, so we wouldn't require that political overseer for 'the Myth'. But we'd still need a Myth, right? Even if the Myth is truth and scientific. Like, we'd need to intentionally envelop ourselves within a symbolic order, just as we can only exist in an atmosphere of oxygen.
I would be careful to call knowledge a contingency. Belief (Meiconnaisance) properly belongs in that area, and it’s nice that it is in that area as it gives way to show how the imaginary mostly completes the sense of wholeness.
And in the most brutal universal form of the Myth is the literal translation of the Myth (how society sees itself in the mirror as it tells itself about itself) and retains importance not because it is an intentional part of ideology but an accident (a contingency) in every appearence. Just like how the mode of production came after the production (Steam Power coming after Capitalist production) and solidifies the production’s existence, the Myth comes about after the creation of a new society to solidify its existence. Yet liken to the Myth, the mode of production is a mere accident that came about, yet nevertheless helped maintain and build upon the existing production.
Even to go to the O2 example, our beings managed to contingently benefit from O2 after we accidently evolved to accept and principally use O2. Then we found out that O2 was why we managed to even function (albeit other gasses do play their role pretty heavily). Yet when we, say, go to Mars and until we create an O2 aura, we really can’t explode to the depths we like to really build society there. Yet until then, we’ll rely on O2 tanks and fastly secured safe areas.
Getting back on track, the Myth doesn’t merely stabilize a new society and is liken to a collective consciousness of how it thinks itself. But is also the one that builds AND maintains society forward, a fantasy surrounding our beliefs about society as to rejuvenate our Subject’s Symbolic Order in and nevertheless a way into seeing how a collective/group consciousness works.