" [45.] Then answered one of the lawyers, and said unto him, Master, thus saying thou reproachest us also. [46.] And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers ... [52.] ... For ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered."
- the Gospel according to Luke, ch.11
The person aspiring to understanding despises neither the myth nor the truth upon which the myth is built, or to which the myth attaches itself. Rather, that person attempts (in so far as their resources allow) to investigate the myth, and the truth correspondent to it, more thoroughly; since both are aspects of a single Reality, which is a Whole; and both are evidence of the exact nature of that Condition.
To seize upon one or other aspect and proclaim that as the sole or almost exclusively significant one is the mistake of a simpleton, however apparently sophisticated; despite which this error can be encountered with extraordinary frequency.
The following are some examples where this observation may be applied, presented in the order Truth / Myth :
1. Jesus in his historical context / Christianity the religion
2. The Aegean Bronze Age / The Illiad and the Odyssey
3. the Frontier in the U.S.A. 1840-1910 / The Wild West
4. 5th Century Britain / Arthurian Romance
5. 13th Century England / Robin Hood
6. The actual history + personality of a given individual / That individual's self-image
7. The actual history + personality of a given Nation / That Nation's collective self-image
8. The actual processes of the Universe / The account given of them in Physics at this time
9. The Second World War as a Clash of Empires / The Second World War in the folk memory of the British people
10. Leading people and main events during the collapse of the Roman Republic / Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar' and 'Antony and Cleopatra'
11. James Bond, the novels / James Bond, the films
12. Beethoven, avant-garde composer and piano virtuoso / Beethoven, the Genius
13. The painting as practical object / The Masterpiece
14. Alexander Selkirk / 'Robinson Crusoe'
15. The American Civil War & its Aftermath / 'Gone With the Wind'
16. The real events which triggered the stories / 'Anna Karenina' & 'Madame Bovary'
17. Austria / a map of Austria
18. Experience / Art
(It is important to note that the 'Truth' side in each of these equations is always presented with the caveat 'in so far as it can ever be established'.)
This observation also applies to both elements of the person who becomes a Hero or Saint - on the one hand, their actual career; on the other, the legend which develops out of it. Illustrative examples include:
Churchill, Gandhi, Orwell, Lennon, Diogenes, Shakespeare, Lenin, Napoleon, van Gogh.
The Wild West furnishes many excellent examples:
Jesse James, Wild Bill Hickock, Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Butch Cassidy; and above all William F. Cody, Buffalo Bill himself, whose true story embodies almost the whole history of the West, from the lead up to the Civil War in Kansas to portraying himself on film in the early days of cinema, and who through his Wild West Exhibition was a key figure in consciously creating the myth of the West as we have it today.
I do not propose the idea of national self-image as a monolith: rather as a spectrum, with dissonant elements; just as in personal self-image.
I am also perfectly aware that each side of each equation is a vast topic in itself. To take one example, it is almost humorous to see a topic of the dimensions of Arthurian Romance reduced to a heading of only two words, the minimum to which it could possible be reduced; whose very ubiquity renders it by a paradox almost invisible; since it is a topic which draws in adherents, practitioners and associated figures as diverse as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chretien de Troyes, Henry II, Francis of Assisi, William Caxton, Henry VIII, Edmund Spenser, Wagner, William Morris, Mark Twain, Aubrey Beardsley, Heinrich Himmler, Walt Disney, John Steinbeck, Lerner & Loewe, JFK, John Boorman, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Jerry Zucker.
The arbitrariness of the selection of Austria as opposed to anywhere else is a joke intended to make a point; which is that the map is the myth based on the reality of the physical terrain, Art is the myth based on the reality of the emotional terrain. Let me try to explain these statements, expand on them, justify them and trace some of their consequences.
A map is an abstract symbolic representation of an actual physical terrain. Its value lies in its accuracy. However, the person reading the map must understand the conventions of the system of representation used in the particular map, and how it relates to the actual terrain. Only then can the accuracy of the map be tested meaningfully. Music, literature, painting are just as much abstract symbolic representations of actual emotional terrain. The analogy with a map is almost perfect; it is equally valid to speak of accuracy and inaccuracy in Art; but the person who does so must understand the conventions of the artform, and those of the genre within that artform, with which they are dealing. Otherwise they are like someone looking at a map of a city centre for directions who can't read that map and, because it's baffling and unhelpful to them, they start to fume and cry 'This map is useless !' Or it's like someone watching a football match who understands neither the rules, nor the traditions, nor the history of the game, and therefore dismisses the event as meaningless, and the players and spectators as fools. The absurdity is obvious in both cases.
(Philosophy is often a victim of this process. People think it is nonsense and are suspicious of it because they do not understand the terms in which it is expressed.)
With football and popular music, people are not conscious of all the conventions that they have learned, or are referring to in order to understand the significance of a particular match, a particular song, because they have 'grown up with it'; that is they were partly taught and partly absorbed those conventions since they were young, because they were interested in them. Philosophy and art are no different, just less widespread as interests, especially the former.
To a certain extent though people's suspicion of philosophy and art, of intellectualism, is justified because general ignorance of these subjects is in fact often a refuge for charlatans among the practitioners of them; who attempt to regard all negative criticism of their work as the carping of Philistines, the product of ignorance about and contempt for Art in general. [Whereas in fact they are the fools they are suspected of being.]
Myths arise because they meet the needs of an individual or a community; and they endure because they continue to meet the needs of other subsequent individuals and other communities. 'Needs' and 'communities' are chosen deliberately as terms with the widest possible application. 'Needs' include:
Coherence
Direction / Mission
Legitimacy
History / Origins
Explanation
Compensation
Entertainment
The term 'community' includes:
A district, a city, region, country, empire;
Any institution within the above;
Any power elite within the above;
Any religion, denomination within that religion, specific local branches which make up that denomination;
Political parties and their followers;
Fans, whether of musicians, writers, artists of all kinds, sports people or teams;
Racial communities e.g. Slavs, Arabs;
Geographic communities e.g. European, Chinese
Myth is as wayward as Thought, as structured as Language.
- the Gospel according to Luke, ch.11
The person aspiring to understanding despises neither the myth nor the truth upon which the myth is built, or to which the myth attaches itself. Rather, that person attempts (in so far as their resources allow) to investigate the myth, and the truth correspondent to it, more thoroughly; since both are aspects of a single Reality, which is a Whole; and both are evidence of the exact nature of that Condition.
To seize upon one or other aspect and proclaim that as the sole or almost exclusively significant one is the mistake of a simpleton, however apparently sophisticated; despite which this error can be encountered with extraordinary frequency.
The following are some examples where this observation may be applied, presented in the order Truth / Myth :
1. Jesus in his historical context / Christianity the religion
2. The Aegean Bronze Age / The Illiad and the Odyssey
3. the Frontier in the U.S.A. 1840-1910 / The Wild West
4. 5th Century Britain / Arthurian Romance
5. 13th Century England / Robin Hood
6. The actual history + personality of a given individual / That individual's self-image
7. The actual history + personality of a given Nation / That Nation's collective self-image
8. The actual processes of the Universe / The account given of them in Physics at this time
9. The Second World War as a Clash of Empires / The Second World War in the folk memory of the British people
10. Leading people and main events during the collapse of the Roman Republic / Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar' and 'Antony and Cleopatra'
11. James Bond, the novels / James Bond, the films
12. Beethoven, avant-garde composer and piano virtuoso / Beethoven, the Genius
13. The painting as practical object / The Masterpiece
14. Alexander Selkirk / 'Robinson Crusoe'
15. The American Civil War & its Aftermath / 'Gone With the Wind'
16. The real events which triggered the stories / 'Anna Karenina' & 'Madame Bovary'
17. Austria / a map of Austria
18. Experience / Art
(It is important to note that the 'Truth' side in each of these equations is always presented with the caveat 'in so far as it can ever be established'.)
This observation also applies to both elements of the person who becomes a Hero or Saint - on the one hand, their actual career; on the other, the legend which develops out of it. Illustrative examples include:
Churchill, Gandhi, Orwell, Lennon, Diogenes, Shakespeare, Lenin, Napoleon, van Gogh.
The Wild West furnishes many excellent examples:
Jesse James, Wild Bill Hickock, Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Butch Cassidy; and above all William F. Cody, Buffalo Bill himself, whose true story embodies almost the whole history of the West, from the lead up to the Civil War in Kansas to portraying himself on film in the early days of cinema, and who through his Wild West Exhibition was a key figure in consciously creating the myth of the West as we have it today.
I do not propose the idea of national self-image as a monolith: rather as a spectrum, with dissonant elements; just as in personal self-image.
I am also perfectly aware that each side of each equation is a vast topic in itself. To take one example, it is almost humorous to see a topic of the dimensions of Arthurian Romance reduced to a heading of only two words, the minimum to which it could possible be reduced; whose very ubiquity renders it by a paradox almost invisible; since it is a topic which draws in adherents, practitioners and associated figures as diverse as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chretien de Troyes, Henry II, Francis of Assisi, William Caxton, Henry VIII, Edmund Spenser, Wagner, William Morris, Mark Twain, Aubrey Beardsley, Heinrich Himmler, Walt Disney, John Steinbeck, Lerner & Loewe, JFK, John Boorman, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Jerry Zucker.
The arbitrariness of the selection of Austria as opposed to anywhere else is a joke intended to make a point; which is that the map is the myth based on the reality of the physical terrain, Art is the myth based on the reality of the emotional terrain. Let me try to explain these statements, expand on them, justify them and trace some of their consequences.
A map is an abstract symbolic representation of an actual physical terrain. Its value lies in its accuracy. However, the person reading the map must understand the conventions of the system of representation used in the particular map, and how it relates to the actual terrain. Only then can the accuracy of the map be tested meaningfully. Music, literature, painting are just as much abstract symbolic representations of actual emotional terrain. The analogy with a map is almost perfect; it is equally valid to speak of accuracy and inaccuracy in Art; but the person who does so must understand the conventions of the artform, and those of the genre within that artform, with which they are dealing. Otherwise they are like someone looking at a map of a city centre for directions who can't read that map and, because it's baffling and unhelpful to them, they start to fume and cry 'This map is useless !' Or it's like someone watching a football match who understands neither the rules, nor the traditions, nor the history of the game, and therefore dismisses the event as meaningless, and the players and spectators as fools. The absurdity is obvious in both cases.
(Philosophy is often a victim of this process. People think it is nonsense and are suspicious of it because they do not understand the terms in which it is expressed.)
With football and popular music, people are not conscious of all the conventions that they have learned, or are referring to in order to understand the significance of a particular match, a particular song, because they have 'grown up with it'; that is they were partly taught and partly absorbed those conventions since they were young, because they were interested in them. Philosophy and art are no different, just less widespread as interests, especially the former.
To a certain extent though people's suspicion of philosophy and art, of intellectualism, is justified because general ignorance of these subjects is in fact often a refuge for charlatans among the practitioners of them; who attempt to regard all negative criticism of their work as the carping of Philistines, the product of ignorance about and contempt for Art in general. [Whereas in fact they are the fools they are suspected of being.]
Myths arise because they meet the needs of an individual or a community; and they endure because they continue to meet the needs of other subsequent individuals and other communities. 'Needs' and 'communities' are chosen deliberately as terms with the widest possible application. 'Needs' include:
Coherence
Direction / Mission
Legitimacy
History / Origins
Explanation
Compensation
Entertainment
The term 'community' includes:
A district, a city, region, country, empire;
Any institution within the above;
Any power elite within the above;
Any religion, denomination within that religion, specific local branches which make up that denomination;
Political parties and their followers;
Fans, whether of musicians, writers, artists of all kinds, sports people or teams;
Racial communities e.g. Slavs, Arabs;
Geographic communities e.g. European, Chinese
Myth is as wayward as Thought, as structured as Language.