Posted: Mar 24, 2016 9:09 pm
RealityRules wrote:igorfrankensteen wrote:
Well, I'm not sure this particular list of limits of "myth" are all that useful to us. For one thing, this list seems to reject as myth, actual events which have been retold later in such a way as to have achieved mythic status.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'mythical status' or how it is 'achieved'.
I thought the points listed were interesting as a possible explanation of the narratives about some current deities.igorfrankensteen wrote:
It also excludes all myths told about recent times, no matter whether they are mythic or not. And we certainly have plenty of them.
Each myth would need to be assesses separately and on it's merits.
Our seeming differences may be due to the various ways the term "myth" is commonly applied.
When I was just beginning to learn about the past, the word "myth" referred almost exclusively to the very old stories that no one in modern America thought of as remotely true. The word was used to refer to religions that no longer held sway, especially the stories that the Ancient Greeks told each other, and the stories that more modern societies who we were supposed to think politely about, while inwardly laughing at them, such as the Vikings. So there can be some politics involved when the word 'myth' gets used.
More in the historical studies area, there are the versions of our own actual past,which get "mythologized." History gets turned into myth, when we want to attach extra importance to it, or we want to prove some magic force is on our side.
Sometimes real stories are made mythic by individuals purposely crafting the telling of them, in order to promote other agendas, such as politicians trying to get themselves elected, or trying to rev up patriotism for some war or other international concern. Sometimes real history is made mythic by a mass of disorganized people, like rock star fans, who are so excited to feel positive about someone or something, that they spontaneously generate exaggerated versions of their focus' real activities, so as to make everything more "fun."
A Myth, after all, is a story which the people so labeling it, believe to be nonidentical to factual history; but generally don't believe to be a purposeful lie. When someone tells us what we think is an intentional LIE about the past, we call it something else, like propaganda.
Some modern myths, are, just like the myths of the ancient world, believed only by one portion of the general population. Americans, for example, include subsets who believe an entirely Mythic version of the years 1980 to 1988. They believe that heroic Ronald Reagan confidently moved from triumph to triumph, setting right a treacherously distorted America, and putting us all back on a path to wealth and confident leadership of the world. In every way you can think of, their version of the past is mythic.
The only difference between these modern mythologized stories and the ancient ones, is the relative number of people who recognize that they are myths.