Over the past few years I've taken note of some modern myths that are generally not understood to be myths. This is the sign of a true living myth, by the way -- people don't understand that it is a myth, and don't believe it when told. Or to put it another way, if you know something is a myth, it probably isn't a living myth. Living myths are things you passionately believe to be true, and aggressively defend against criticism.

I thought it might be useful, for the non-brain-dead of Voat, if I list a few modern living myths. It may help you think about your world in a different way.

• The Holocaust -- this is the "Holocaust" with a capital "H" and we all know that there is only one of those. It's generally defined as the systematic and deliberate extermination of the Jews by the Nazis during World War Two. A few of the more common aspects of the myth are that there were six millions Jews murdered; that most of them were murdered in death camps with poison gas; that Hitler himself advocated this as a "final solution;" that it was an attempt by the Nazis to wipe out all the Jews in the world and bring about a complete genocide of the Jewish race; that Jews were turned into lampshades and bars of soap by sadistic Nazi scientists; that Jews were completely blameless and innocent, and the Nazis undertook this attempted genocide only because they were insane and evil and because Hitler hated the Jews. All these things are untrue, yet all of them are maintained by professional historians and by the media and taught in Christian schools.

• Man-made global warming -- I always insert the qualifier "man-made" into this title because the advocates of this myth like to leave it out lately, even though without the human component all their measures to supposedly control global warming are meaningless. If it is Nature just being Nature, why would we try to intefer with a natural process? There is no shred of truth in the man-made global warming myth -- I must emphasize this, no truth at all -- yet it is the second most common modern living myth after the Holocaust. The Earth is not getting hotter in an unnatural or unprecedented way; mankind is not causing the Earth to get hotter; the weather patterns are no more extreme than they ever were historically; the current temperature is not at an all-time high; the current level of carbon dioxide is not at an all-time high; species of animals are not experiencing an unprecedented extinction event due to warmer temperatures; the current level of carbon dioxide is not a danger to the environment and is not causing any problems (just the opposite is true, it is a blessing and is doing enormous good); the "carbon tax" is not reducing the temperature of the planet; no measures proposed by global warming advocates will reduce the temperature of the planet in any measurable amount. Man-made global warming stands as the foremost modern living myth in the field of science, and it shows in a frightening way how fragile science really is and how vulnerable science is to politics, social views, and emotions.

• Racial differences in IQ -- The modern myth is that all races have the same level of intelligence. This is manifestly untrue, and has been proven untrue by dozens upon dozens of experiments and statistical studies over the span of decades, yet liberals and progressives (as they call themselves) still maintain that it is true. The reality is that there are massive genetic differences in intelligence between races, and more importantly, these differences have enormous consequences to the rise and fall of civilizations and the functioning of modern societies. Racial differences in intelligence may well be the single most significant factor in the long-term progress and evolution of the human species. Yet it is flatly denied by a large percentage of scientists (the same ones who support the false hypothesis of man-made global warming, and the myth of the Holocaust). They literally close their eyes to the obvious evidence that is not only in the scientific literature, but all around them.

• The myth of human enlightenment -- That the human race is moving out of an age of superstition and into a scientific age of enlightenment. Those who advocate this modern living myth place religion in the category of superstition. There is no evidence at all to support this myth. Supersititon is not declining, and neither is religion. On the contrary, it is science that is declining -- more and more, scientific "studies" are dispensing with the scientific method. Scientific findings are increasingly distorted by emotion and peer pressure. If anything, the human race is moving backward into a new intellectual Dark Age.

Well, I could lengthen this list, but I've written enough. I thought this might interest a few of you here at Voat. If not, no harm done. Most of you will tend to reject at least one of these modern living myths, and maintain that it is reality. That's the interesting aspect of myths, when they are alive and present in our lives -- we tend to believe that they are real. It is only after the passage of centuries that we can casually recognize them as myths and dismiss them.