Many don’t understand the genre of myth and simply couple myth with falsehood. This is not its meaning. The recent release of the movie The Odyssey invites us into a myth and gives us an opportunity to appreciate it.

One of the most important aspects of understanding myth is the coupling to semiotics. Semiotics is the study of signs, symbols, icons, semiosis and image systems.

When we read or seek to comprehend risk and myth, we cannot bring analysis by logic, rationalisation or science/fact thinking to the process. Myth has to be read and understood differently. Myth has to be understood Poetically.

Like all written genre, it is helpful to understand where everything sits, the following map could be helpful.

The map above is only a guide and, the relationships between these various genres, can be inter-mingled but, such a map helps show distinctions to comprehend difference. For example, is myth History? No, but do aspects of oral history share something in common with myth? Yes. Indeed, myth is strongly connected to drama, performance, oral history and semiosis (the construction of meaning).

It is important in the map to see than myth is at the centre and emerges from a foundational understanding of interpretation, metaphor, dialectic, faith and culture. It is also important to know that myth is neither rational or irrational but rather aRational (non-rational). Myth is coupled to Poetics as drama is coupled to performance.

Myth and semiotic are the flip side of the same coin. Each empower the other.

The story of The Odyssey is situated in a journey narrative and uses many figurative devices to convey meaning about: war, love, memory, power, vice, cunning, temptation, wisdom, divine justice, the hero myth and resilience.

The symbolism in the story is what empowers the myth. For example, the use of the lotus flower (moly) as a drug (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/science/odyssey-lotus-eaters-opium.html) draws out an extensive history of humanity seeking consolation in psychedelics or other substances. In The Odyssey, one can pull out dozens of meanings from multiple myths coupled with other myths all within the journey myth.

At a cultural level myth is one of the strongest indicators of culture. Far from a weak definition of culture (what we do around here), myth tells us so much more about what a culture believes. Myths are anchored to worldviews.

The Odyssey tells us how the ancient Greeks understood the world.

The mystical figures of monsters and magic in The Odyssey, giveg glimpses into the way the Greeks understood science, alchemy, medicine and technology. This was the discourse of the Homeric world. So, are Homer’s myths any weaker than modern myths? No, all myth shares the same characteristics in common. Myths are not scientifically true but are made semiotically true.

One of the most dominant myths of the modern era is the idea that the human brain is a computer.

We see this everywhere when anyone discusses the idea of thinking or Mind, but coupling a picture of a brain to the idea of thinking is a myth. It is made semiotically true but is not true in neuroscience. The brain as computer metaphor is a mechanism of constructing such a myth and what happens in the image of the coupling the semiotic of the brain to the idea of thinking is the construction of a semiosis of meaning.

In reality, the whole human body ‘thinks’. The human brain is nothing like a computer, the human eye is nothing like a camera. Such metaphors are convenient by are not scientifically true. They are made semiotically true. Such myths create what we call the body-mind problem. What is the human body for? Is it just the carrier for the brain? Of course not.

The truth is, all our bodily systems ‘think’ and think independently of each other. Most often the body and its organs and nervous system does things only to inform the brain later what has already been decided.

So, this idea that we can put ideas into a brain and recall them as outputs is myth. The idea that thinking is data recall is myth. No wonder the world is worries about AI, because it has constructed a myth it believes in, that AI thinks. AI does NOT ‘think’. Similarly, AI doesn’t learn.

But just as The Odyssey tells us of the Greek world, so too do our modern myths tell us about our world. Then we tackle those constructed meanings to the way we tackle risk and wonder why they don’t work.