Миф является наиболее ранним типом и формой consciousness and display in it of the surrounding world. The peculiarities of the mythological world view are that the myth itself is the earliest historical form of awareness of the surrounding reality by the individual. In the myth, the initial knowledge of man, the norms of the regulation of individual and social thinking and behavior, as well as the artistic and aesthetic criteria, the emotional formulations and the criteria for evaluating human activity are intertwined and bizarrely intertwined.
Mythology, according to a number of scientists, appears beforemodern man, not just as a kind of oral creativity, the source of which is the human imagination. Mythology also has a motive not only for the simple satisfaction of human curiosity and for finding answers to the burning questions of life. Mythological worldview acts as a holistic mechanism of social regulation of society, and an objective mechanism, because at some stage of its development, society begins to feel a strong need for such a regulator. In this capacity, the mythological worldview manifests itself as a way of preserving the natural and human harmony and psychological unity of people.
The specificity of the mythological worldview in thissense, consists in the fact that it is generated and recreated in new generations not by rational logic and historical experience of previous generations, but by fragmentary pictures of the world, which are of an exclusively individual and imaginative character. Within the framework of such a picture, nature and social phenomena are reflected and motivated to such reflection only to the extent that there is a need for people themselves in this reflection.
Mythological worldview at this stagethe formation of society is characterized mainly by ignoring the causal methods of describing reality, with the result that the picture of the world appears only in its spatial and temporal design (for example, in unrealistic lifetimes of people, their rebirth and resurrection in another quality, etc.)
The main thing in the mythological consciousness isan image, which, in fact, differs mythology from philosophy, where rational thinking prevails. Nevertheless, the myth presents the world to a person not only in the form of a fairy tale, but one in which there is some certain supreme authority. This factor later becomes the basis for the formation of "pure" religions that distinguish themselves from mythology.
The mythological worldview has anotherfeature - in the myth there is always the presence of an undifferentiated representation between the natural substance and the man himself. The social significance of this unity is embodied in the principles of collectivism, which assert that everything in this world is subject to, if the problem is solved collectively.
Based on these features, you canto assert that the main function of the mythological consciousness and worldview does not lie in the plane of cognitive activity, it is purely practical, and its main goal is to strengthen the monolithic nature of society or its part. The myth, in contrast to philosophy, does not raise questions and problems and does not require an intelligent, conscious attitude to the environment from the individual.
But with the accumulation of practical knowledge,an objective need arises for their systematization at the level of rational activity, and, consequently, at the theoretical level. Therefore, the mythological consciousness at first “dissolves” in the religious, and then gives priority to philosophical, remaining, nevertheless, in the consciousness of each person in the form of mental representations of the ordinary level.
