ABSTRACT
An Australian aboriginal tale illustrates how comprehension modes can resolve bitter disputes. The ancient tale is extraordinarily relevant to today’s polarized ideologies and politics. Long ago, the birds, land animals, and water creatures separated into three different Clans, each claiming to be the best, favored by the Creator. However, the Platypus told everyone that he could not join any single Clan, because he had features of each, but did not completely fit any single one, and the Creator must have made him that way, to remind everyone of their shared origin. All the animals were moved by his wisdom and ended their dispute.
The crucial step in resolving the dispute was the Platypus reawakening a mythic experience for everyone, personifying and embodying the Creator and Creation. In modern secular culture, such mythic experience is dismissed and thus tends to return in distorted ways, e.g., religious and ideological fervor. Including mythic comprehension as one among many modes prevents such fanaticism.
