The Founding Myth
Every Political Order Requires A Founding Mythology, Without It There Is No Legitimacy Or Power
Every country, political order, ideology, and institution has a founding story. This founding story functions as a curious mechanism. The mechanism has many different applications, aspects, and parts, but there are only a few worth thinking about.
The first aspect, as the name implies, creates a story, a linear history for the order. The second aspect can be easily understood but not so easily acknowledged. The story creates room for mythology. It allows the best and brightest parts of the founding to be highlighted and treated as virtues and sacred causes. It simultaneously ignores the flaws of the order, as well as perhaps the real reasons for the elite backing of the founding.
The third and final aspect it serves is legitimacy. If the founding myth, with only the parts that paint the order in a favorable light or as a virtuous savior, prevails and gets repeated constantly until it feels wrong to question the foundations, it creates legitimacy. This is the most underrated and misunderstood factor of every political order, cause, or revolution.
If the legitimacy of an order is called into question, if its core fundamental assumptions are challenged, it is treated as an existential threat. If those assumptions can be challenged credibly and effectively, such that the cause and its legitimacy are questioned by those within it for an extended period of time, it will inevitably fall.
History shows us this time and again. Every order that has ever ruled has required a mythology. The ones that last are the ones with the institutional power to defend it.
