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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (24452)	8/19/1998 1:17:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

I'm amazed that noone has yet replied to such an excellent thought-provoking post. I'm sure Penni will have something scintillant to say. My $.02 (and a slight semantic adjustment on a previous statement of Penni's) is that society (including intimate societies like family and tribe) use the mythological format to communicate the universal ideas. These ideas are necessary to transmit any ethical/moral teaching. Religion uses mythology as the vehicle for the "how and why" types of answers. But the use of myth is not the exclusive province of religion. Any and all teaching of values uses the language of myth. Imho. So - I think that archetypal stories like Homer's Odyssey serve to instill a sense of the Greek concept of virtue, a moral idea which I rank among the greatest human achievements to date.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (24452)	8/19/1998 7:50:00 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Funny---we had a Tolkien discussion at DAR not long ago--a couple of us admitted we couldn't get through it and what was the big deal (I was one-and have always felt intellectually inferior because of this failure) From all the things you say I assume you have read Joseph Campbell. (Or else you are just really brilliant?) He even uses Star Wars as a possibility of a new mythology to replace the outmoded one. It is certainly filled with the proper themes. Alex and I are entranced by myths. Oh yes yes yes--children need to believe in themselves as heroes! To see the world as a place in which they have a purpose. (A heroic quest) To believe they can actually affect (impact, Alex?) the lives around them! When your children are a little older and utter their first words of cynicism, it's a terrible feeling! Can you have a heroic quest without a moral sense---ooo-I instinctively think not. THe hero must be acting on behalf of something bigger than himself. It's more than self-serving, it has a spiritual dimension to it. Without a moral sense, we are-animals? And thus-totally self-interested. There would be no growth, or maturing, no transformation to something greater. It's funny-you have me thinking about my boys--(now I am uncomfortable again-I usually write this type of thing at DAR) but Ammo is 15 and writes frequently of young men encountering terrible obstacles. He struggles with the moral decisions of life and death. CW, my 17, has already lost that concept and thinks in terms of power and influence. Where Ammo was saddened watching Clinton, CW was shrugging a "What can you expect?" kind of reaction. That to me is Clinton's greatest sin against us.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (24452)	8/20/1998 12:11:00 AM
From: jpmac	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

>>the myth of the heroic quest<< Why, praytell, is "the quest" (be it, one hopes, heroic) considered a myth, as something that never, or seldom, happened and was no more than a story made up to enlighten or entertain? At least from what I've been able to ascertain in encounters with humans, that seems to be the general belief. Life without a quest strikes me as being without purpose, and frankly, without much fun. I don't care for such things as jet-sking and movie going, but give me a good quest and I'm happy. I learned, quickly for a change but I'm breaking my rule here, not to mention this to hardly anybody as most folks looked at me askanse, or laughed, or asked if I'd seen my doctor lately. Etymology: Middle English, search, pursuit, investigation, inquest 2 : an act or instance of seeking: a : PURSUIT, SEARCH b : a chivalrous enterprise in medieval romance usually involving an adventurous journey It may take imagination to turn a journey into an adventurous journey, and a quest, but it beats driving miles and miles to stand on a cliff edge and look down and say "wow, that's deep," then drive home. To me, anyway.