To selectively quote Hamlet:
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
To rephrase Webster:
"A story or tale of known age which embodies a belief regarding some fact or phenomenon of experience, and in which often the forces of nature and of the soul are personified; a legend of a god, a hero, a saint, the origin of a society, etc.; a wonder story of historic origin; a popular fable, parable, urban legend, or conspiracy theory which is, or has been, received as historical or at least sensical."
Society needs stories, and blessed be the storytellers for they deliver the answers to the hard questions. Why is this? How is that? Who is responsible? What is the meaning of life? Such questions need answers by rigorous study through objective or subjective observation. And when science fails (or fails to be understandable), then the mythmakers and storytellers take the podium to explain. Science is good for explaining what isn't. To find out what is, the teller of tales takes the secularization of the absolute, the absolutization not only of the acquisition of power but also of those who bear it, the correlation of magic and technology, and the reuse and utilization of the mythology of the past and of traditional religious teachings, amongst other things, in order to produce a…neomyth.
As Shakespeare alluded to above, the key here is belief. The originator need not believe, oh no, they only need to be believable. With faith, all things are possible. Thus, true belief is only necessary for the listeners, and those who choose to retell the tale, making the neomyth real instead of fake news, propaganda, or just another meme.
Neomytholgy · Neuromythology
LieQuest 2024: A Lie Quest of Mythologically Discordian Proportions