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The Origin Story, a la Shmoop. <<Movie trailer voice>>

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In a world…

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…where the ambassadors of good struggle to overcome the forces of evil…

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…there is one individual who has sworn to protect the citizens of Earth at all costs…

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…you. <<End movie trailer voice>>

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Sure. Why not? We’re using our imaginations anyway, right?

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So begins… just about any superhero backstory.

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And you’ll find similar set-ups in tales describing how powerful gods got their start…

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...or how the planets or universe were formed…

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…or how Bill Gates built his empire. It is human nature to question how the great

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and powerful came to be.

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Whether we’re dealing with fiction or otherwise. We call these tales “Origin stories,”

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or “creation myths.”

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These stories help explain where we came from…

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…and maybe even where we’re going.

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As individuals… or as a society. It’s a universal human trait to wonder abou[1][2]t

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our origin…

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…which is why we wish you good luck finding a culture anywhere in the world that hasn’t

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taken a stab at it. Of course, people often have a tough time

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taking the stories of other cultures seriously.

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“Really? A god who shoots lightning bolts out of his hands? Whatever. I’ll just be

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over here, believing the world was created on the back of a turtle, like any normal person.”

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There are some pretty wild stories out there, it’s true…

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…but some cultures treat them as metaphorical or symbolic representations of real-world

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stuff.[3]

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There may not literally be some guy who flies around in a diaper shooting arrows into the

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buttocks of would-be lovers…

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…but there seems to be some magic inherent in the idea of two people falling in love

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with each other.

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A character like Cupid is an attempt to explain that magic.

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The creation story you’re probably most familiar with is the one detailed in Genesis…

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…that points to a worldview in which human beings have a special relationship to one

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God…

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…and are given dominion over the world.

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Although, if he was going to leave us in charge, it sure would have been nice if he had shown

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us how to adjust the thermostat first. Then there’s the Greek creation myth…

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…where the world is born out of chaos. That’s right… it used to be a big, fat Greek nothing.

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But once the world was formed[4] and chaos was defeated, order and structure became really

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important.

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Which might explain why each Greek god has special dominion over a particular aspect

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of life on Earth.

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These guys were big on organization. You should have seen their sock drawers.

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Some Native Americans [5]have their own origin story…

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…about a guy diving into the ocean and finding the material he could use to build land.

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Apparently, he didn’t trust his contractor.

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Their story not only explains why land is surrounded by water…

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…but suggests that Native American saw themselves as a culture constructed amidst a wide wilderness.

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They’re like “this” with Mother Nature. And, as we mentioned, superheroes get their

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own origin stories.

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Would Bruce Wayne have been so committed to helping people if he hadn’t had such a tough

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childhood?

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You know… as tough as it can be when you live in a mansion and have your own butler?

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There are many different ways to interpret these myths…

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…but all of them are attempting to say something profound about the organization of the world…

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…and the relationship between the world and the people who inhabit it.

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Whether or not they like to put on masks in the evening hours and kick some bad guy butt.

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[1]his is confusing because we could understand "our origin is universal" as the entire object

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of "know," as in "the desire to know that our origin is universal" which is not what

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you mean [2]

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[3]I'm not sure that cultures treat their own myths as metaphorical, but rather that

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we must think of them as such (and that there are actually symbolic kernels in all of them)

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[4]Maybe add "And chaos was defeated" or something like that

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Fun fact: Chaos was an actual guy, apparently [5]Some Native American groups (they're all

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so different)

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