Four Play: McLuhan's Tetrad and Lévi-Strauss's Canonical Formula

It is, perhaps, an unspoken assumption in Media Ecology that there are no differences in the intellectual capabilities of peoples of different ages or technological achievement. By this I don't mean differences in sensory balances, which may be determined by the particular technologies or media of communication available, but rather that there are no differences in the basic structure and capacity of the human mind.

McLuhan, via his Laws of the Media, asks us to consider what a technology or medium of communication enhances, what it obsolesces, what it retrieves and what it reverses into if pushed to an extreme. McLuhan claimed that exploring an innovation in this fourfold way is the best methodology for describing its impact on a culture. In his discussion of the Tetrad McLuhan wrote:

“A four-part analogy is a figure-ground structure. (In a metaphor there are two figures and two grounds in ratio to one another.) Apropos the four-part structure which relates to all human artifacts (verbal and non-verbal), their existence is certainly not deliberate or intentional. Rather, they are a testimony to the fact that the mind of man is structurally inherent in all human artifacts and hypotheses whatever.” (The Laws of the Media, p. 120)

McLuhan noted that all technologies, as extensions of human capabilities, are essentially metaphoric in structure. He suggested that the nature of these metaphors can be revealed by answering the four questions codified in his Laws of the Media Tetrad. “From a structural ‘point of view’ a metaphor has four terms which are discontinuous, yet in ratio to one another.” (Ibid)

One problem I have had with McLuhan's Tetrad is that the value of the analysis arrived at seems to depend on the creativity of the analyst, rather than the technique itself. Perhaps Claude Lévi-Strauss's approach can be used as a tool to "level the playing field" and make Tetradic analyses available to everyone.

In his studies of kinship systems, totemism and mythology, Lévi-Strauss has demonstrated that there existed a complexity of thought and a subtlety of mind in so-called “primitive” societies that is equal to our own. Levi-Strauss proposed that the structures underlying cultural institutions can be codified as a series of ratios. While presented as a logical formula rather than a series of questions, his Canonical Formula, f_x(a) : f_y(b) :: f_x(b) : f_(a-1)(x), also represents a four-fold approach to analyzing cultural artifacts. Just as the enhancing impact of a new technology in McLuhan’s Tetrad flips into its opposite when pushed to the extreme, Levi-Strauss asserts that within the structure of a myth, an initial condition f_x(a) is pushed to its opposite, or “transforms” into f_(a-1)(x).

In the course of his analysis of the myths of the Tupi Indians, Lévi-Strauss moves spiral-like through multiple mythic variations and multiple opposing pairs and by proceeding A to B and B to C, etc., demonstrates internal consistencies within the mythic system that aren't immediately apparent to an outside observer. In other words, Lévi-Strauss provides a useful tool for analysis regardless of whether you wish to extrapolate the function of the method to the deeper structures of the human mind or not.

I find Lévi-Strauss's methodology completely compatible with McLuhan's Laws of the Media. Where McLuhan asks us to consider what a technology or medium enhances, obsolesces, retrieves and reverses into, Lévi-Strauss will start with a pair of opposites "A" and "B", but in the course of his analysis will present examples of what he calls " A' " (A prime) and " B' " (B prime) as recursive iterations of the original pair.

So, if f_x(a) translates generally as "the enhancing function (x) of a technology on (a)," and f_y(b) is "the obsolescing function (y) of a technology on (b)," and f_x(b) is "the retrieving function (x) of a technology on (b'), the f_(a-1)(x) is the reversal of (a) into (a-1) or (a') in terms of its effect on the previous enhancement (x).

McLuhan's Tetrad attempts to discern the structural metaphor of the enhancements of human capabilities and can itself be viewed itself as a type of mythic narrative. Interpreting the Tetrad's terms, enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval and reversal, as ratios within Lévi-Strauss's Canonical Formula may provide a systematic way to analyze technological change.

The Problem With Myths

The problem that continually arises when trying to properly interpret a culture's mythology is the definition of the word "myth."

As used by Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Marie-Louise von Franz and others, a culture's myths are the stories that are told containing cultural archetypes, heroic figures, epic confrontations and/or magical occurrences. This approach to the study of myth assumes that the various aspects of mythology represent externalizations of internal, psychological processes in humans and by studying myths as archetypal examples we can better understand the stories of our own lives and the assumptions we make about ourselves and our interactions with other people.

The term "myth" for Claude Levi-Strauss has a different meaning. Myths are stories because, in an oral culture, storytelling is the means by which cultural information is transmitted from one person to another and across generations. The mythic heroes and monsters, magical activities and impossible events are memorable because they need to be to preserve the information being transmitted. With our modern sensibilities, we look at the absurdities and inconsistencies of fairy tales and myths and assume we have discovered evidence that "primitive" thought processes are illogical and immature when compared to modern thought.

In his series "Mythologiques", Levi-Strauss has suggested that myths are not important because they present archetypal images; myths are important because they demonstrate an externalization of human thought processes. Levi-Strauss assumes that since we are all members of the same species, that the thought processes of less technologically advanced peoples are the same as our own, just applied to different objects. By interpreting the logic of myths, we can understand how the mind works.

It is also assumed that individual myths that have been passed down to us may be incomplete. In order to understand the "message" we must contrast and compare multiple variants of the same tale. The true message of a myth is revealed when one is familiar with its place in the total cultural context that generated it. That's why saying that the Superman myth, for example, is the basis for all of our culture's archetypes is misleading. Superman(1948) is not Superman(1960) or even Superman(2007). If you doubt this, I direct your attention to the site http://www.superdickery.com/ for an alternative interpretation of the Superman myth.

The reason I focus in on advertising is because of the vast body of examples advertising supplies. Advertisements are constantly changing, constantly reflecting current cultural conditions, and self-validating through sales trends.

It may be possible to arrive at valid conclusions concerning our culture using just the five Harry Potter movies or the Superman series. However, the possibility for individual influence on the "message" is far greater with artistic control centralized in one person or a small group than in a much broader body of work.

Advertisements work over space the way myths work over time. Mythic stories survive over time because they resonate with the population. An individual advertisement may have a much shorter shelf life, but because it has to be distributed throughout a large population, it must also resonate to be effective.

Culture vs. Nature: Women and Advertising in the New Media

As the new media liberate traditional advertising, women may want to reevaluate their roles.

It may seem that economic factors and competition from new media are forcing advertisers to reevaluate how to get their messages across; to engage in product placement and other tricks to penetrate the clutter. In fact this is just the tail wagging the dog. It has always been inevitable that the "content" what we call "ads" would move from the confines of the 15 or 30 seconds spaces between the old content presented by traditional electronic media or the column inches of traditional print media to become involved in every aspect of our lives. Advertising in general wrestles with the same types of concerns that structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss discerned in the mythology of "primitive" South American Indians. That is, in a context relevant to our modern sensibilities, ads are really dealing with an opposition between nature and culture. In doing so, they provide structure to our lives, disseminate guidelines for how to look and feel, and mandate what rituals to perform to be fully human.

Think about how the average person in Homeric Greece related to The Iliad or The Odyssey. These performance/poems weren't just the "literature" of Greek culture, separate from the general experience. As Eric Havelock, Marshall McLuhan and others have pointed out, The Iliad and The Odyssey constituted cultural how-to manuals, presenting the proper ways for Greek men and women to conduct ceremonies, the proper relationship of Greeks toward their gods and the proper things to believe about just about everything in their world. Claude Lévi-Strauss added that such cultural encyclopedias reconcile or deny the inevitable contradictions within a culture. By doing so, they promote well-being and peace of mind of the members of the culture.

We still can't see that modern advertising, in all its manifestations, performs the same functions in our modern culture that The Iliad and The Odyssey performed in ancient Greece, or that the tales about frogs and honey bees and jaguars performed for native South Americans. In doing so, advertising explains and reconciles the contradictions that must inevitably exist in the lexicon of a complex culture, or deny that those contradictions exist. To help better grasp this concept, I’d like to ask the following question: Why do women in our culture wear makeup?

One response is that our culture still distinguishes men from women along a culture/nature opposition. The religious and scientific stories of our culture tell us that as human beings we are outside or above the constraints of the natural world. At the same time we come into this world through childbirth, we get sick, we age and die, we suffer from various bodily afflictions. How do we reconcile this contradiction?

Lévi-Strauss cites an instance where an anthropological field investigator asks his native informant why his people apply so many tattoos to their bodies. "Because we are not animals" is the reply. They complete the transition from nature to culture, they make themselves cultural beings rather than natural ones, via tattoos and the fact that they are not within nature makes them want to do so. The implication is that they distinguish themselves from the natural order by decorating their skin.

What I am suggesting is that when women apply makeup they are doing the same thing. They are making themselves into cultural beings. By applying a corporate (meaning collective) mask, women tap into a source of collective power. Men don't need to wear makeup because they are, by definition, already cultural. Of course, much advertising operates along this borderline, and because both men and women buy their products, advertisers pitch to both sexes. Ads say “If you have a problem with a bodily function (i.e. nature) we have a cultural product that can help.”

This also applies to sexual attraction. In order to attract a mate both men and women have to look sharp by applying proper grooming aids, and smell sharp by applying proper perfumes, but women must go much further. They must color and condition their hair. They must paint their eyes, their lips and their faces. They must remove hair from inappropriate places on their bodies. Ads never discuss (beyond the obvious sexual claims) why they must do this, only how.

What is an advertisement in a new media web site? Is it presenting a narrative, like television advertising, or is it evoking a response through a still image, like print advertising? The answer is probably both and neither. Banner ads on a web site try to be TV commercials or they try to be print ads and yet they aren’t really either. This is a prime illustration of Marshall McLuhan's assertion that we are numb to the true impact of our media. By shifting the communication paradigm, the new media allow advertising myths to burst out of the confines of the traditional media. While the new media sorts itself out, the advertising of the old media breaks out and becomes the content of our everyday lives. As the mythic avatars of our culture, advertising icons want to insinuate themselves into every aspect of our lives, and we subconsciously want them to do so.

Our collective body of advertising defines what is cultural and what is natural, and offers concise advice on how we can best exist in culture rather than nature. This collective resource, acting as a sort of cultural encyclopedia, performs the same function in our age that the Homeric epics performed in classical Greece. The new media are taking our existing cultural encyclopedia and transforming it into a wikipedia. How this transformation affects our social institutions, our belief structures and our notions concerning gender remains to be seen.

Cylon Monotheism: Religion in Battlestar Galactica

There have been a number of recent posts concerning this season of SciFi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica." Over at his blog PaulLevinson.net, Paul writes:

"The opening sequence of episodes in the Fall were among the best of anything I've ever seen on television. Picking up perfectly from the stunning events at the end of the second season, the first shows this past Fall put BSG easily in the company of the best of Star Trek.

The last few minutes of the season finale on Sunday were similarly superb. We'll be talking all summer about how those four people - four! - on Galactica could really be Cylons, and who the fifth still unidentified Cylon really is.”

And in his blog Lance Strate's Blog Time Passing Lance notes that:

“A wonderful touch is that the Cylons are religious--they talk about God, truly believe in God, and their aggressive and violent actions are rooted in their religious convictions.”

I concur that Battlestar Galactica is wonderful, both as Sci-Fi and as television drama of any kind. However, I find the Cyclon's religious affectations confusing and troubling within the total context of the show.

BG humans are portrayed as generally secular and polytheistic. Neither Greek nor Hebrew, but rather both and more, the human characters sport names or appellations like "Adama," "Apollo," "D'Anna" and for the coffee worshippers amongst us "Starbuck." Their twelve colonial worlds correspond to the twelve signs of the zodiac. They say things like "Thank the Gods" and "Gods help us."

The robotic Cylons are monotheistic, fanatical and proselytizing. Despite their claim that their one god is “love,” or perhaps because of it, they bring about the destruction of the twelve human colonies, killing billions of people and then zealously pursue the few survivors. There is one chilling scene from the first season where the Cylon attack is imminent and Number 6 bends over a carriage to kill an infant. It is unclear whether this is an act of mercy or a preemptive strike.

The odd thing is that the Cylons, being robots, have already achieved eternal life. They literally cannot be killed. Or rather, we see them continually dying and then being reborn. Their reincarnation factory vessels are even called “resurrection ships.” A reborn Cylon is not a type or a clone. It is a recreation of the dead individual Cylon, downloaded from the original with memories and emotions intact. In other words, one of the core motivators of many of Earth’s religions is already an integral part of Cylon existence. The only exception to the rule is if a Cylon dies out of range of a resurrection complex. Then they truly die.

If, in spite of being created in the image of their creators, Cylons reject polytheism, how did they stumble across monotheism?

In a 1977 Issue of ETC: The Journal of General Semantics, in an article titled "Alphabet, Mother of Invention," Marshall McLuhan and Robert K. Logan speculate on the possible origin of monotheism:

"Western thought patterns are highly abstract, compared with Eastern. There developed in the West, and only in the West, a group of innovations that constitute the basis of Western thought. These include (in addition to the alphabet) codified law, monotheism, abstract science, formal logic, and individualism. All of these innovations, including the alphabet, arose within the very narrow geographic zone between the Tigris-Euphrates river system and the Aegean Sea, and within the very narrow time frame between 2000 B.C. and 500 B.C. We do not consider this to be an accident. While not suggesting a direct causal connection between the alphabet and the other innovations, we would claim, however, that the phonetic alphabet played a particularly dynamic role within this constellation of events and provided the ground or framework for the mutual development of these innovations."

Perhaps Cylons, while surely literate, as robots are not subject to McLuhan's and Logan's media assertions. One could argue that Battlestar Galactica is not media ecological at all, and therefore need not adhere to the tenants of ME. The humans of BG can develop an advanced civilization without the benefit of alphabetic literacy, or, if their alphabet is phonetic, they can retain their polytheism in spite of it.

Religious robots, while intriging, remain a problem, especially self-ordained monotheistic robots. I believe that the depiction of Cylons as monotheistic in the absence of human mortality or alphabetic literacy can only be seen as a true leap of faith on the part of Battlestar Galactica's creators.

Fundamental Religion as a Return to Orality

(Updated below)

Fundamentalists are an example, under secondary orality, of an instance when a literate tradition succumbs to an electronic influence. As an organized religion, fundamentalists present a paradox. They wish to interpret "literally" the recorded residue of oral culture storytelling. But in doing so, they betray the influence of a pre-literate and/or secondary orality world view. Lévi-Strauss noted that a difference in world views between pre-literate and literate cultures is a difference between a synchronic or a diachronic view of existence.

For a pre-literate culture, there is no real history. There is the "before" time and the "now." Time is not a line, it is a circle, with the current people in its center. When ask to explain the existence of a ritual, an animal species or a belief, pre-literate peoples will describe a before time when an ancestor brought about a change to the way things have been ever since. That is a synchronic world view.

Writing and printing allow for concise record keeping, create archives, provide artifacts from times other than our own and therefore encourage the view that time is linear, with a past, present and future. There is a history, a logical sequence of events, and a realization that certain documented causes have led to certain discernable effects. Things that exist now have evolved over time, perhaps a very long time, and have been subject to historical and natural influences. This is a diachronic world view.

In our electronic culture the speed of transmission encourages a return to a synchronic world view. When fundamentalists tell us the world is only as old as the Bible says, approximately 6000 years, they are attempting to bend history to a synchronic viewpoint. Archeological evidence is not important. The scientific demonstration of the mechanism of evolution over millions of years is only a "theory." By denying historical evidence, fundamentalists are attempting to redefine time as circular, with themselves at its center.

That is why fundamentalists appear to be more tolerant of other religions. The distinction they draw is between a synchronic and a diachronic world view, and not between the any particular religious doctrines

Update

The following critique was posted concerning the above discussion:

I think you are entirely wrong on this point. The conflict is between two diachronic viewpoints, one that dates creation 6000 years, and one that pushes it back into the billions. It is the very existence of a diachronic worldview that makes this disagreement possible. That one side is based on scientific fact as it appears in print media, and the other on religious fact as it appears in the book of Genesis, is besides the point. both groups have a historical view. From a synchronic perspective, the moment of creation exists outside of historical time, it's a sacred time that all times connect to rather than a profane time (as per Eliade), and therefore the profane counting of years just would not matter. That's why fundamentalism is a literate phenomenon. Oral cultures are homeostatic and flexible, not rigidly adhering to a fixed text.

Point taken. I think a good case could be made that fundamentalists have abandoned a diachronic, historical perspective in favor of a faith-based synchronic one. There is an old "Beyond the Fringe" skit where a group of unlikely characters gather on a mountaintop to witness the end of the world. They chant "Now is the End. Perish the World!" and nothing happens. As they're leaving one of them says, "Same time tomorrow? One's of these days we'll get it right."

Even though the stories of the Bible can be placed in historical time, adherence to the Bible as a historical chronology effectively removes fundamentalists from historical time and places them in sacred time. The Bible discusses a creation and delineates the descent of mankind from Adam and Eve. Some fundamentalists would claim that within the Bible is the prediction of the "Rapture" and the end of times. This is not history as I understand it, and therefore does not represent a diachronic viewpoint.

Lévi-Strauss states:

"I have suggested elsewhere that the clumsy distinction between 'peoples without history' and others could with advantage be replace by a distinction between what for convenience I called 'cold' and 'hot' societies: the former seeking, by the institutions they give themselves, to annul the possible effects of historical factors on their equilibrium and continuity in a quasi-automatic fashion; the latter resolutely internalizing the historical process and making it the moving power of their development.

....

It is tedious as well as useless, in this connection, to amass arguments to prove that all societies are in history and change: that this is so is patent. But in getting embroiled in a superfluous demonstration, there is a risk of overlooking the fact that human societies react to this common condition in very different fashions. Some accept it, with good or ill grace, and its consequences (to themselves and other societies) assume immense proportions through their attention to it. Others (which we call primitive for this reason) want to deny it and try, with a dexterity which we underestimate, to make the states of their development which they consider 'prior' as permanent as possible." (The Savage Mind, 1966, pp. 233-234)

What I find fascinating in all this is whether we, being ourselves in a transition period between literacy and secondary orality, can draw parallels between pre-literate societies (where there was no possibility of literate influences) and post-literate societies (where literate influences can be assumed). Can the definitions and characterizations Claude Lévi-Strauss assigned to the "savage" mind (what we would call "oral" or "pre-literate") provide guidance to the nature of this transition? Is the "secondary orality" mind "savage" or not?

On My Dissertation Title: "Myth as Advertising"

I chose my dissertation title, Myth as Advertising, quite carefully after considering many alternatives, including Advertising as Myth. I understood Myth as Advertising to mean that we should considering modern advertising as the form within which the traditional functions of myth could be expressed. The title "Advertising as Myth" implied that modern advertising is composed of pleasantries at best or untruths at worst, and that to consider advertising as myth would allow us to somehow unmask its falsehood by comparing it to all those pleasant but obviously fantastic fairy tales of cultures more primitive than our own.

It is not fruitful to compare the content of modern advertising to classic or primitive myths. The meaning of a image or symbol might be the same, or we might be mislead by labeling. The Keebler elf is not an elf in the classic fairy tale sense of the term, nor is the Jolly Green Giant a fairy tale giant. Just calling them those names doesn't make them so. We can be mislead by being too literal. If we are, we commit the same error as early linguists who thought that meaning could be discovered in the sound of a word, "liquid" vowels having to do with water, etc.

Myth in primary orality cultures served a purpose other than to put children to bed. Without writing, these cultures used stories as ways to think about things. A frog that was master of water to the South American Tupi Indians was more than just a frog. (see Claude Levi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked). It was also an intellectual peg on which to hang a memorable thought. Sometimes this led to incorrect correlations, forced upon the culture by the overall structure of their stories. But the end result was to allow the consideration of all the elements of that culture's reality as one seamless, uncontradicted whole, to identify the individual's place and purpose in that reality and to justify the mode of existence required by the particular physical environment.

We have trouble understanding the workings of our own culture because we are immersed in it. Take any television commercial and break it down into its underlying structure. Many commercials are merely declamatory and they assume we have internalized our culture's doctrines. Others are didactic, and demonstrate how a product will help us solve a problem. That we weren't aware that we had the problem is irrelevant. My research has shown that more often than not, that problem has to do with the forces of nature or disorder impinging upon a cultural event or ordered activity.

The 60 second commercials from the 1960's and 1970's were more obvious, as I documented in my dissertation. A couple is preparing for a dinner party. The husband discovers that he has "ring around the collar" which threatens the evening's activity. Using Wisk the wife banishes the ring around the collar and the social event proceeds as planned. There are countless other examples.

A convenient dichotomy of nature vs. culture, disorder vs. order, "raw" vs. "cooked" is used in advertising to reinforce cultural assumptions and expectations through the apparently mundane operations of a laundry detergent, a medicine, a perfume or cosmetic, a properly prepared food. Again, intellectual pegs in a secondary orality culture upon which to hang memorable thoughts.

This is what I mean by Myth as Advertising. Advertising is a means by which our culture manipulates and massages its many images and symbols. Ads come and go quickly and are far more efficient for this purpose than longer books or movies. Just as bacteria go through many generations per day in their continuous adaptation to a changing environment, advertisements mutate quickly to encompass the continuous change of our media environment.

Claude Lévi-Strauss's Contribution to Media Ecology

Here is my quick take on Lévi-Strauss's contribution to Media Ecology:

His approach to the interpretation of so-called "primitive" cultures revealed the complex patterns of thought that went into the development of systems of myth and kinship. His notion that "primitive" intellectual activities were equal to our "modern" systems of knowledge, just applied to differing objects, put the entire body of anthropological writings, going back to James Fraser's Golden Bough into a new perspective. Lévi-Strauss's work, building on the linguistic structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure and the evolutionary approach to cultural studies of Franz Boas, revealed the biases in the use of terms such as "primitive" and "modern" (even though Lévi-Strauss himself used these terms), and paved the way for Walter Ong's distinction between orality, literacy and secondary-orality as more appropriate explanations for differing cultures.

Lévi-Strauss discovered and demonstrated connections between seemingly disparate mythic stories, and offered explanations for seemingly random elements of those stories. His methodology can be used as model for ways to interpret the products of contemporary culture, which, while seeming to be unrelated, actually constitute a system (or systems) of symbolic meanings.

I find the tools Lévi-Strauss provides useful in a number of ways. I also think that his notion of "things that are good to think with" as powerful as Postman's question regarding a new technology: "What problem does it provide a solution to?"

I like Lévi-Strauss's idea that a myth is not a "false" story or idle tale, but rather a dynamic technique which members of a culture use to address cultural discrepancies. To me, this is a compelling explanation for why myths persist in a culture. It may also explain how, if we know where to look, we can identify the mythic systems of our own culture that provide us with a coherent world view in the face of constant change and turmoil.

Myths cannot be considered singly. One must absorb the entire canon of a culture to understand all the connections and interactions. That may be why we can't analyze Greek mythology properly. Too little of it has come down to us, and the versions we read have undergone so many revisions that they may not truly represent the originals.

I know that structuralism has been somewhat in eclipse in academic circles lately; that Lévi-Strauss has been accused of a binary focus that, being Hegelian in origin, cannot apply to current thinking about media. I think that to write off Lévi-Strauss's methodology as a thesis/antithesis/synthesis intellectual game misses the subtlety of his analysis. A closer reading of all 2200+ pages of his Mythologiques shows that, while he may begin an analysis by identifying polar opposites, this is only a starting point. The analysis of a mythic system must account for far more that just a pair of opposites. In the course of his analysis of the myths of the Tupi Indians, Lévi-Strauss moves spiral-like through multiple mythic variations and multiple opposing pairs and by proceeding A to B and B to C, etc., demonstrates internal consistencies within the mythic system that aren't immediately apparent to an outside observer. In other words, Lévi-Strauss provides a useful tool for analysis regardless of whether you wish to extrapolate the function of the method to the deeper structures of the human mind or not.

I also find Lévi-Strauss's methodology completely compatible with McLuhan's Laws of the Media. Where McLuhan, via the Tetrad asks us to consider what a technology or medium enhances, obsolesces, retrieves and reverses into, Lévi-Strauss will start with a pair of opposites "A" and "B", but in the course of his analysis will present examples of what he calls " A' " (A prime) and " B' " (B prime) as recursive iterations of the original pair. Perhaps someone will someday conduct a Lévi-Straussian analysis of McLuhan's system of myths.

Lévi-Strauss is also compatible with Ong's notions of primary orality. Ong discusses how different human thought processes must be without text. Lévi-Strauss gives example after example of exactly how these thought processes work. I don't recall Lévi-Strauss discussing the poetry of the Tupi Indians as a means of perpetuating the culture, but he does demonstrate how interconnected myths can act as intellectual place holders for a non-literate population to help them consider complex systems of thought.

Our current system of myths is not only presented verbally, but also via images, in print, and even in interplay of biases amongst all of our competing media. Since we may be relearning this manner of thinking as we move deeper into secondary orality, Lévi-Strauss provides us with a map of where we may be headed.