Covid-19 is the first true cataclysm most of us have ever seen. It’s a crisis with multiple layers - a pandemic that could ultimately cause millions of deaths; an economic catastrophe, by far the worst since the Great Depression; and a time of social and cultural upheaval, ranging from the psychological impacts of lockdown (like loneliness, anxiety, boredom and grief) to the current Black Lives Matter protests.
But for all that we may feel our situation to be unprecedented, human beings have faced cataclysms throughout our history. Our ancestors knew about the challenges posed by moments of profound crisis, and they have plenty to tell us about how we might respond. In particular, they knew that during such moments, myths - the shared stories we use to make sense of the world - become especially important.
In This Too Shall Pass, a new report from the Collective Psychology Project co-authored with Casper ter Kuile and Ivor Williams, we look at three kinds of myths that helped our ancestors to make sense of crises that are bubbling up in popular culture once again:
