We live in a somewhat cold, barren world these days. Not that we lack material splendor. Here in the West we are gifted with astonishing splendors. Homes, cars, gadgets and entertainments of all kinds. But we are often deprived of what our ancient ancestors held so dear. Great myths...!
A quick edit here. Great myths need not be simply great lies. Myths, in their fullest sense, are legendary narratives explaining particular beliefs and events. They can thereby take on the reality of truths, visions, and missions that motivate an entire society. Great myths like the Easter Resurrection...America as a land of the free & home of the brave...the Wild West as an endless frontier of new opportunity. Or terrible myths like Medieval witchcraft...Nazi racial supremacy.... today's viler conspiracy theories.
A few days ago, Notre Dame QB great Joe Montana splashed cold water on a warm myth. The 2005 movie story "Ruddy." Ruddy -- like the celebrated Gipper -- was an uplifting plot line about a kid coming out of nowhere and becoming a great moment in Note Dame's honored football mythology. Now to assert -- in keeping with today's scientific fixation on cold hard facts -- that pint-sized Ruddy didn't really make the team, and that the fabled Gipper wasn't actually all that Ronald Reagan's 1941 film portrayal imagined, seems like needlessly slaying giant teddy bears. Teddies, like Santa, who can not only be hugged, but used in the pursuit of great missions!
Oh, this myth-slaying has become quite rampant in these empirical days
Legends of great prophets, great kings, great sea partings, great soldiers of fortune, great pioneers of progress -- suddenly they have all been scooped into the same kind of vacuum cleaner celebrity magazines love to shred their subjects. Now if these tawdry little publications wish to devour the concocted myths about Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Britney Spears, John Edwards, and Mel Gibson -- nothing much lost.
On the other hand, if historians and anthropologists wish to antiseptically pick up apart the towering legends and myths that have helped civilization reach where it has -- much is lost. Perhaps more than a beleaguered society can bear. Or should be asked to bear, when it seriously needs heroes and heroics to cheer it on across the next finish line.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment