Myth in the Dark

Sorry, I've been focused on my work and not posting on moodle, which I don't care for.

I've spent the last eight weeks digging through various academic text only to come away with the conclusion that a large part of the problem with the loss of myth in our modernized industrial society is that few if any “so called” credible authorities consider the lack of myth to be a contributing factor in the apparent break down of modern social structure. I could go so far as to say, that I could find very few individuals that really understood the term “myth”. This is where the conspiracy theorist jumps up on his soap box and expounds the notion that the ills of our social structure are being cultivated by interested parties that smell the opportunity to make a profit. Whether that is actually true or not will be a source of conjecture for as long as there are at least two people drawing breath. It remains to be, that the presumed definition of a myth is that of a lie or complete fabrication, which is wholly inaccurate.

I haven't changed focus really, I did decide to leave off of the academic works, which are much more concerned with the study of ancient mythology and ignores for the most part, the need for any form of mythos today. Instead I chose to narrow my focus by observing the actions of the people of industrialized countries where the issues of cultural decay appear to be the greatest. I had considerable difficulty finding material on modern mythos outside of the US, since it is almost universally dismissed out of hand as old fashioned and superfluous. I further narrowed my focus, to the myths and legends that are contemporary to modern America. By doing so, I ran a foul of the modern myth that is prevalent in this country; the myth that states that the hard core right wing conservatives have the right to rule the world as they see fit.

I have been examining what seems to be missing or broken in this modern myth, at least from my point of view and contrasting that to the ideas of the few writers I could find that did not at some point dismiss the results of their own findings in favor of the modern notion that making money on the current social breakdown was better than trying to even attempt to fix it. Contemporary story telling usually takes place these days as a form of mass media rather than small circles around a fire. So, I followed the crowds and watched the kinds of movies that relate to message forms popular in todays culture. I think a good descriptive word for what I found is YUGH. While several of these films had no appeal to me, they still held many of the same story points that were present in stories I liked.

I have no intention of critiquing the movies I watched, and since any cultural group is affected by the environment that that group exists in, I decided to narrow my focus even further to a group that is prevalent in America to day, an athletic, hunter-gatherer mind set, displaced in a modern world. After several refinements in my process, I began as many story tellers do to collaborate on a story with a close friend of mine. I decided to write a myth of my own based on the elements found in classic tales, set like so many tales are, in a mythological land, peopled by creatures of myth and magic. I intend by the use of this tale, to explain the presence of something we now take for granted, something we can not visualize our world without.