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To make a rather clumsy analogy, it isn't terribly useful to judge music on its truth value -- it makes far more sense to judge it on whether or not it's danceable.
Yeah, but song does not make people launch wars on other people who listen to different songs. I think we are talking about different meanings for myth. Songs, stories, poetry, art...this is all great stuff. It entertains and keeps us balanced by providing an escape from the hardships of reality...but again, I never saw an painting cause holy war.
Myth as related to religion, where it can consume the masses in ignorance and cause catastrophic events, is dangerous and un-necessary. It also has the draw back of being manipulated by people with intent to control others. It is when myth arrests reality and reason that I feel it has overstepped it's boundaries and needs to be shown the door.
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is that myth has not always been an attempt to know anything, and that it still functions in its original capacity without routinely being noticed in doing so.
Maybe I am just not understanding, then, what you think myth is. If not an attempt to know or explain, then what?
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then to preceed without understanding myth in general and the specific myths that went into your own making is to view the world through a distortion.
Then again, we can argue that ANY view of the world is a distortion. Please, give me an example of how myth is entwined in my life...if it is so pervasive (it seems everything is based on myth the way you explain it), then it should manifest in some universal way.
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We may, with some confidence, at least assert that myth has been possible as long as specfically human language has existed
Why? Myth seems to me, from reading your explanations, to be a construct of the mind, of perception. So before langauge, there must have been unspoken, personal myths, no? Where does it end? Is there ANYTHING humans do that does not include a mythical foundation? What about plain old observation and inquiry? When I look at the stars, I wonder what is out there...this does not rely on any myth...it is just wonder and curiosity.
Mr. P.
The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.
I came to get down, I came to get down. So get out ya seat and jump around - House of Pain
HEY! Is that a ball in your court? - Mr. P
I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper
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