However, the Gilgamesh myth is not simply about the flood. It also reflects specific values of understanding the impermanence of society and the capricious nature of the gods. As Gilgamesh learns to become a better man and a better leader, specific community values are expressed that may have been the concerns of Mesopotamian society, not simply the human consciousness, such as the need for a strong king and the capricious nature of a world where natural disasters and foreign invasions were common. The continued resonance of the Gilgamesh myth could suggest that the myth has a common, human resonance that transcends its specific and original concerns. But rather than demonstrating the evidence of the collective mythmaking unconscious, it might simply demonstrate the historical need for leadership at times of crisis, and frustrations with common natural disasters. This myth than became reinterpreted in other communities.
There are many stories of floods that punish the wickedness of humankind in a variety of Near Eastern cultures, and their commonness of location suggests that these early myths were disseminated by storytelling, or perhaps of a shared memory of a real, natural event. This idea that the flood myth was spread to a variety of neighboring cultures through storytelling and travel, not because of some shared collective unconscious must not be discounted. What may seem to be the collective unconscious may be simple 'learning' like the spread of a common language or set of skills. But what may be a genuine, shared human impulse like a collective unconsciousness is the impulse to explain, to tell stories, and to use the mythology of others. Although myths may have their roots in specific historical events, concerns, and communal contexts, the durability of such myths and their ability to affect the...
But the variety of interpretations of this event provides a kind of template of the different community concerns, and the fact that so many communities made creative use of this myth, even past Near Eastern communities that affected our own culture today, means that the idea of a punishing natural event still has resonance within the unconscious story-making persons of the contemporary world -- not that a flood is part of a collective unconsciousness.
The collective unconscious may simply be a shared collective of personal unconsciousness, all with similar cognitive structures, hearing the same stories, and seeing the same events. Also, the collective unconscious does not exist in a vacuum. Another reason why a flood narrative might seem uniquely expressive of humanity's vulnerability may have to do with recent, natural events in America, for example, that show how powerless even the powerful are in the face of the natural forces of the world, whether these forces are personified as the work of angry gods or of nature itself. Thus, reality (and the continued presence of natural disasters throughout human history) and the ways persons perceive reality through the shared cognitive structures of the brain and the shared basic human needs shared by all persons, interact with particular myths that have been generated by or simply heard by members of the community. All of these factors will affect what particular myths seem most resonant to the collective at a fixed point in time.
Works Cited
Hooker, Richard. "Summary: The Epic of Gilgamesh." 1996. Updated 1999. [10 Jul 2006]
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/GILG.HTM
