Myth unites people in society

The myth is always real for the person or literally or metaphorically, as, for example, stories about the creation of man by God, or how some General gave his grandfather his cap. The myth tells whenever there is faith in him and everything that was painted or full of faith, when it comes again capable of becoming a myth. This is something that does not require proof, but he lives in views, because in every age. Some myths of the history of mankind ceases to talk, the other continues, and others again and again as if anew. For humans and humanity is the myth that creative force turning the chaos of impressions and disparate events into an ordered picture of the world.

But the myth is not just an ordered system of knowledge, and the structure of significant events and explanations of this world. Ritual, symbolic image of any culture, regardless of the code image (anthropomorphic images, fantastic characters, abstract patterns) always give us an excerpt of the myth, rather open or encrypted layers of the characters which is understandable for people of the era. This can be a divine statue or zoomorphic reliefs of the archaic ages, the allegory of the Enlightenment, the iconic designs of Persian carpets or Soviet propaganda poster of 1920-ies. Any visual "landmark" system culture is a static assertion of the myth.

Myth unites people in society, and because there are myths of family, national, local, public, cultural, human. At the family level, the myth will be a family legend, but it is sacred, a special value (e.g., a story about how people saw during the war a sign in the sky, "hammer and sickle", on the eve of the battle of Stalingrad). This may be a common story, about saving the girl strangers, but the significance of it will be large enough that will become a family myth. Not magic and supernatural experience makes the story a myth, and the significance (emotional "strength") of the plot the narrator and the audience.

Myths, in a General sense, are historical songs, bylinas, spiritual verses, legends, stories about evil spirits, little stories, etc. will also Mythological symbolic structures and rituals of culture and subcultures. If the destruction or lack of mythological significance of the cultural layer there is a myth, the sign and ritual of a narrow community, then it becomes a subculture. Hence the myths, rituals and signs of youth subcultures, religious sects, criminal subcultures and professional communities.

The myth in the broadest sense we will consider the image of the world (and of the individual, in his image) and the history of the world. The first function of myth is to protect man, giving him the limits of the knowable Space (within myth) in the midst of the chaos of the unknown. The second function we will call the development challenge, a test, a requirement that provides a myth of man, that he was able to realize himself not as an animal or natural creature and man.