Mythological Type of Consciousness
A person controls their own actions, accepts and bears full responsibility for them. The regulator of their behavior is ethics, legal norms, and ideology, expressed in a way that is understandable to all.
This highest type of consciousness for our time was preceded by two lower types.
The mythological type is almost the complete opposite of the rational type, while the traditional type is somewhat in between, possessing characteristics of both, but also having its own specific features.
The mythological type of consciousness is characterized as follows:
1. The reflection of the external world occurs spontaneously, in the process of labor activity. Archaic thinking is concrete, situational, and directly linked to sensations and actions. Therefore, it operates with images rather than concepts. Primitive people give a proper name to everything they see, feel, and hear. Nevertheless, mythological consciousness is capable of generalizations, classifications, and analysis, but not at the level of concepts and categories, rather at the level of sensory contemplation, predominantly expressed through actions, images, symbols, and gestures.
The results of understanding the world, obtained during social practice, crystallize for primitive people in myths, rituals, and ceremonies. The characteristics of mythological consciousness also consist in its insensitivity to logical contradiction, accepting similarity as identity, mixing the real and the ideal, the actual and the fictional, indistinctly distinguishing the subject from the object, the thing from its attributes, the singular from the plural, the static from the dynamic, and spatial from temporal relations.
2. A person lacks a sense of individuality, as they cannot distinctly separate themselves from nature and project their own properties onto nature and its objects, endowing them with life, human passions, etc.
3. Not perceiving themselves as either the subject or the object of actions, the "archaic" person does not feel capable of influencing the surrounding world. Living in constant harmony with their social group and nature is the dominant motive of all primitive myths, rituals, and ceremonies.
4. A person only weakly engages in goal-setting activities, as the mental construction of an action and the foresight of its distant consequences are difficult for them. This explains the absence of interest in the future, change, and novelty among archaic people. With such a mindset, technical and social changes could only occur very slowly.
5. The individual is not yet capable of self-awareness, evaluating their knowledge, moral character, ideals, and motives for behavior; they do not possess control over their own actions or accept full responsibility for them. Therefore, they need control from the community in which their life flows. As a result, a system of strict social control develops in archaic society, which almost completely subordinates a person to certain rules of behavior.
Evolution of Consciousness - Part of the General Process of Historical Development of the Kyrgyz