<I am not against a new
belief system, I guess that I would prefer to see it based on fact.>
Well, I am not sure that I am really discussing belief systems in the sense that they are true or false. I am echoing Joseph Campbell and X in the sense that I am arguing that our search for meaning is a vital part of the imagination, and gives us depth and substance as intelligent beings. Everyone needs meaning, everyone needs roots. The traditions that are steeped in mythology give us richness and color; continuity is stabilizing and healthy.
I am not sure this is a good example of what I am really talking about, but since it came to mind I will mention it. I used to go to the graveyard to visit my dead grandmother, to talk to her. I clearly knew that she was not really there--that her decomposing body had nothing left of her in it. I also doubted seriously that her spirit was intact anywhere that she was aware of me, or could hear me (although I am less sure of this). I very definitely knew that the silk hydrangeas with which I decorated her grave had absolutely no meaning for her, even though they were her favorite flower, and mine.
What was important about my visits to her grave was that I found deep meaning in that ritual. When I was there I felt very close to her. Everything about going there and thinking about her, and my childhood with her, and mourning her and talking to her about things that were going on in my life at that moment, were enormously clarifying for me.
Now a scientist would probably find all of that silly--me talking to myself in front of some old bones--but I think it is quite valid to say that even though her participation was almost certainly in my imagination, I found everything about those visits very real and beneficial, even though I was lost in myth when you think about it rationally. |
