Posted: Sep 15, 2013 1:46 pm
Thanks all for the many welcomes.
Can I just chip in on 'myth'. I think what makes mythology relevant to today is that the past event(s) of which the myth speaks are applicable to us today. Those past events may well have some basis in factual events, or may be more purely allegorical. While arguing about how much is factually correct or not we may well be missing what can be learned from the myth. There is a risk today of an arrogance that we know so much more than our ancestors (pretty like each generation thinking that it has discovered sex). We may dismiss mythology too lightly these days, I think. In dismissing mythology we may suffer loss of two kinds. The first is that we may miss some important insights our ancestors had which they have communicated in the universal format of a narrative. The second loss is one of heritage; we may lose connections to our past. That seems a sad loss by itself, but it also carries the danger that if we feel unconnected to the past, we may make the same mistakes as them. If we are connected to the past then we 'inherit' the mistakes of the past, even if they are dreadful ones. They become part of our history. While it is always nice to think we can start with a clean slate and create a nice new fresh better world devoid of the 'sins' of the past, the reality is that we'll probably make a better fist of things if we have a social memory of past wrong-doings. The myths and stories of the past (some factual, some 'embellished' for pedagogical purposes) are a valuable inheritance from our ancestors; it would be a great shame if we dismissed them lightly and failed to pass them on to the next generation. I get the impression the Jewish nation understands the power of narratives more than modern Western culture does. Those narratives are part of their social glue and underpin their social order (including the fantastic devotion to one day a week where families come together to share in that narrative of the ages).
Can I just chip in on 'myth'. I think what makes mythology relevant to today is that the past event(s) of which the myth speaks are applicable to us today. Those past events may well have some basis in factual events, or may be more purely allegorical. While arguing about how much is factually correct or not we may well be missing what can be learned from the myth. There is a risk today of an arrogance that we know so much more than our ancestors (pretty like each generation thinking that it has discovered sex). We may dismiss mythology too lightly these days, I think. In dismissing mythology we may suffer loss of two kinds. The first is that we may miss some important insights our ancestors had which they have communicated in the universal format of a narrative. The second loss is one of heritage; we may lose connections to our past. That seems a sad loss by itself, but it also carries the danger that if we feel unconnected to the past, we may make the same mistakes as them. If we are connected to the past then we 'inherit' the mistakes of the past, even if they are dreadful ones. They become part of our history. While it is always nice to think we can start with a clean slate and create a nice new fresh better world devoid of the 'sins' of the past, the reality is that we'll probably make a better fist of things if we have a social memory of past wrong-doings. The myths and stories of the past (some factual, some 'embellished' for pedagogical purposes) are a valuable inheritance from our ancestors; it would be a great shame if we dismissed them lightly and failed to pass them on to the next generation. I get the impression the Jewish nation understands the power of narratives more than modern Western culture does. Those narratives are part of their social glue and underpin their social order (including the fantastic devotion to one day a week where families come together to share in that narrative of the ages).