statement of purpose

Myths are created with just enough possibility in them to have been real, borne of powerful oration and heightened through the exchange of words. There are myths surrounding the earth’s creation, messiahs and their return, political regimes, dynastic families, even Internet celebrities. It is not so much a question of whether something happened; instead, the common thematic among all is the sphere of influence by which these myths continue to live today.

My academic interests stem from living in a society that has relied almost exclusively on myths to as its main form of cultural preservation. While academia and research document and develop studies regularly for Western countries, Southeast Asia’s rich heritage is often left to oral tradition. In my home country of the Philippines, our written culture is limited, with public records inaccessible and inaccurate. Most of our material culture remains undocumented in their status, in how they age, and in how they are preserved. Even history books are inaccurate, forever changed my generations of dictators.

How do we know something to be true? Because someone said so—and this has proved dangerous with fake news, artificial intelligence, and the instantaneous nature of a digital culture. I began taking anthropology courses at Harvard Extension School during the covid-19 pandemic as it was a global event in that humans from different cultures simultaneously experienced more or less similar parameters of existence. I found that there was a lot of insight found in that collective experience, an indicator of global culture instead of a single community and how necessary it was to document, remember, and learn from that marked time. These anthropology courses began out of pure need to find patterns of connection, but they continue now to an academic interest in conservation and finding ways to preserve our material culture to avoid losing our history.

This interest in conservation was affirmed by my recent conclusion of a paper conservation workshop at the Ionian University’s Zakynthos, Greece lab, under the supervision of Dr. Nikolas Sarris. Before teaching actual paper conservation techniques, Dr. Sarris highlighted the approach of treating paper as archaeological objects instead of simply preserving their text. This present-day conservation wisdom is established as minimally invasive, prioritising reversibility and conservation over restoration. There was also an emphasis on learning from the past—that while we remain open to innovations for the future, relying also on techniques that have aged decades and centuries as proof of their behaviour.

Conservation gives anthropology and archaeology a sense of purpose. While perhaps there are those who would argue the reverse, I believe my statement to be true in this golden age of democratised myth-building. Free-to-use access to artificial intelligence, owned media platforms, and digital manipulation tools have made the intangible untrustworthy and the tangible invaluable. The act of documentation has never been easier; the path to remember has never been clearer.
How are myths created? Myths are stories with a more profound purpose in culture, often revealing something about human truth from a certain time.