We Are Mythic Animals Trapped in a Synthetic Dream \ stacker news ~ideasfromtheedge

This idea suggests that modern humans are caught in a strange tension between three forces:

– Ancient instinct: our evolutionary body and primal patterns, – Symbolic allusion: the stories, metaphors, and archetypes we live by, – Constructed reality: the technological, mediated world we now inhabit.

At its core, the claim is this: we’re animals wired for myth, living in a maze of simulations simulations that suppress both our biology and our deeper symbolic narratives.

Allusions: Living Through Metaphor

We don’t navigate life through facts alone we navigate through story. From Prometheus to the Matrix, from tribal legends to modern epics, our behaviors are shaped by the metaphors we internalize. But in the modern world, these symbolic structures are fragmented, commodified, or absent altogether.

Without shared myths or guiding archetypes, we drift. What replaces them? Algorithmic loops. Lifestyle aesthetics. Viral scripts pretending to be meaning. The result: spiritual and narrative vacuum.

Reality: Constructed, Curated, Unstable

Reality is no longer raw it’s curated, filtered, designed. We experience the world through layers: screens, feeds, branded moments. Our senses are mediated by unseen algorithms. And yet, the animal part of us still craves touch, tribe, rhythm.

Cognitive dissonance kicks in when what we need doesn’t align with what we consume. We scroll past death, beauty, war, and joy in a few seconds. There's no space to process. Just input, stimulation, abstraction.

Instinct: The Uncoded Core

Underneath the abstraction is the instinctive self. It’s nonverbal, embodied, ancient. It knows through gut, silence, movement. It doesn’t care about likes or latency it cares about safety, presence, and connection.

When this instinct is ignored, it doesn’t disappear it mutates. It becomes anxiety. Numbness. Restlessness. But when it's honored through ritual, nature, intimacy, stillness it becomes guidance. A compass. A rebellion against the hyperreal.

Curious if others feel this too

How do you reconnect with that instinctive self? Are there modern myths that actually work in this context? Are we in the awkward in between half animal, half avatar?