#Folklore

An unpaid guardian that continues operating as a family’s posthumous surveillance system. An unpaid dealer trading blessings or curses in exchange for formal offerings and rituals. A push notification of tradition sent over the spiritual network from the grave. A silent evaluator who critiques the family head’s decisions without uttering a word. A zero-salary household advisor working intensively during Obon and higan. An intangible energy source fueled by descendants’ guilt. A spiritual creditor who refuses absence for fear of decapitation by oblivion. A persistent data bank preserving memories centered around the household. A stubborn archaic belief system surviving the tides of modern rationality. A stalker that publicly discloses family lineage without any regard for privacy.

Folk religion is a collective hypnosis woven from imagined benevolence that everyone secretly craves. Offering vegetables on the shrine and burning incense are nothing more than convenient rituals to dispel anxiety. By endlessly repeating so-called traditions and silencing doubt, it simultaneously venerates communal comfort and an absent deity with remarkable efficiency. The more it justifies superstition, the more skeptics are branded heretics.

Myth is an accumulation of stories speaking of an idealized past, a luxurious wrapping for escaping reality. They are nothing more than devices born to suppress doubt and impose vague moral lessons. At times, they are tailored into grand causes convenient for nations or communities, privileging emotion over truth. Thus we entrust ourselves to a fiction called comfort while multiplying enigmas that remain unraveled. Eventually, the narrated memories outweigh bare facts in a paradoxical reversal of importance.

Mythology is the discipline of collecting ancient daydreams born of fear and imagination, then conveniently interpreting them to fit modern anxieties. Scholars pretend to uncover distant legends while arming themselves with theories to justify their own insecurities. It is considered fashionable to be enthralled not by the deeds of gods and heroes, but by the subtle power structures and social norms lurking beneath. At conferences, one wields a fragile arsenal of interpretive tools, and dissenters are branded as ‘people who just don’t get the times.’ Ultimately, mythology is a pulpit that parades ancient lies to prop up contemporary vanity.