Best of Week: "The Myths" - Sophie's World

My favorite chapter so far in Sophie's World is "The Myths."


Mythology has always intrigued me ever since I was in middle school. I have read countless books on Norse, Greek, Indian, Arabic, and Egyptian mythology because I love reading about the beliefs of civilizations of the past. I had not expected mythology to be a contributor to the "history of philosophy" as told by Jostein Gaarder. I was enthused when I read about Thor's hammer and Odin and Freyja because as I read their names and their little "myths," I kept thinking to myself, "oh yeah, I remember reading about them before!" Because of my past knowledge of mythology, I enjoyed reading how Gaarder used Norse mythology to deliver argument on philosophy. He talked about how myth was essentially created in order to answer the questions that philosophers strive to discover. Much is the same about religion, science, and the arts. I believe mythology is and was a prime factor in the history of philosophy, whether it be from civilizations of the past like the Scandinavians or Greeks, or the mythology of the religions of the world.


In the past, people have agreed or disagreed with proposed "myths" that attempted to explain the unknowns of the world. This is still evident today, as many people disagree and agree with particular aspects of religion, science, etc. Depending on their own "philosophical ideas," people have each developed their own set of myths that appeal to them. These individual myths can be religion, can be science, can be art, can be ancient mythology, can be interpersonal relationships. These myths are the beliefs that help people answer some of the main philosophical questions. Such is the case in my favorite part of the chapter, when Sophie began to "make up a story" in order to explain where the snow went and why the sun rose up in the morning. That is when I realized that ANYONE can create a story. ANYONE can fantasize and ponder on why and how things work and exist. This is the beauty of our world: people all live in the same world, but when asked how that world works, they all come up with completely different explanations.

The Symbolizations of Art

The power of love is the most important feeling a human being can experience in his or her lifetime. Love is the ultimate tool that a person can use in order to express their creativity, feelings, and emotions. Love is the force that binds all humans together. And through this unity, people are inspired to create art. Art is the result of the thought process that a person experiences when he or she experiences love.


When a person creates art using man-made tools, telling a story or an idea or a belief of theirs, they unconsciously produce their masterpieces because of how much they love what they are trying to convey. The type of love that people express is not always "typical love." It is also the conviction that people have towards that which they regard highly in their life. Art is created in order to open a door for the audience into the life of the artist. The artists are trying to show the audience what they care about most; what they hold most dear to them; what they cannot live without; what has encouraged them to keep living; those things that they love.

Because love is one of the few universal ideas that people all over the world believe in, it enables them to create art that is able to be judged by anyone. Art forms are infinite: be it painting, sculpture, photography, or even forms like playing sports, playing an instrument, cooking a meal, directing a movie, producing a song, designing a sleek new gadget, etc. When people produce these pieces of art, they do so according to the particular image they have in their head. That image is a representative idea of what their affinity, their love, to what they want to create is.

Even when art takes many forms, the way in which it is displayed also sparks the power of love within the audience. When a person views and experiences that which is created by someone else's emotions, their own feelings and thoughts are attempted to be provoked into feeling the same way the artist felt when they created it. The love that inspired the artist to create is transposed to the audience using the physical, visual, hands-on piece of art. Once the audience experiences that feeling, they go on to recapture that feeling within their own art creation, even if the creation is completely different from the original creation. Like a network that never ends and never has a beginning point, love and its many derivatives flows across person to person through art, and never ceases to disappear. The reason that there are so many pieces of art in this world is because people are unique in expressing what they love. Individual people trying to express the same emotion usually results in different expressions from one another.

The universal power of love is experienced by mankind in individual creations of art. One belief that people together believe in is expressed in a million different ways.

Definition: 

Art is the physical method in which a person manifests their experience with Love.

A Video Of A Manifestation of Love Through Art