Me, Me, MeI have been immersed in thinking about myths lately. Not that I have been poring over texts at the library, or browsing much on the Internet, or frankly, doing much more than watching Disney’s Hercules over and over with my children and filling in back story where needed.
What I’ve been doing is more along the lines of ruffling through my own thoughts, memories, preconceptions, belief systems, lessons learned, behavioral tenets, and other manifestations of Mindy’s personal Weltanschauung (read: that which, at the core, explains why I’m such a wing nut).
There’s a lot of crap in there, but there’s also a fair amount of interesting stuff that, as I grow older and hopefully wiser, only reinforces for me how interconnected we are by a collective unconscious and shared mythologies, and how these shape our wishes and hopes and dreams, which in turn shape our actions. At least, when I examine my own personally held myths, I see how they have either helped or hindered my own psychological, social, economic, and interpersonal development.
(Note to readers: if you were hoping for a meme or dirty joke, I’m terribly sorry. I woke up in this mood and can’t shake it. Try back tomorrow; this pendulum usually swings on a 24-hour arc.)
This morning I came across this discussion of how myths have been variously defined, and quite liked it:
“… Indeed, they often reveal the archetypes of the collective unconscious (Jung). They are symbolic and metaphorical (Cassirer). They orient people to the metaphysical dimension, explain the origins and nature of the cosmos, validate social issues, and, on the psychological plane, address themselves to the innermost depths of the psyche (Campbell)…”
This is sort of what I have been examining—the inner side of personal myth. And then, there is the outer side, which I really don’t have the energy to think about just now, but that last line seemed especially important:
“… Some of them are explanatory, being prescientific attempts to interpret the natural world (Frazer). As such, they are usually functional and are the science of primitive peoples (Malinowski). Often, they are enacted in rituals (Hooke). Religious myths are sacred histories (Eliade), and distinguished from the profane (Durkheim). But, being semiotic expressions (Saussure), they are a “disease of language” (Müller). They are both individual and social in scope, but they are first and foremost stories (Kirk)…”
They are first and foremost stories. So wtf are you getting at, Mindy?
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My son was in the same room as me when I was getting dressed one day. I scratched the top of my left breast a little and he said, “Mommy, you are touching your —-!”
I said to him, “I just have an itch,” to which he responded, “That’s *your* excuse!”
Jet, 4
Jax: Mommy, here’s a little piece of toilet paper to wipe the tip.
Mommy: The tip of what?
Jax: Your penis.
Jax, 3
After being told to go outside and pick up the dog poop, he goes outside, whines and complains. Â He comes back in and says, “Mom, I think the dog over-pooped.”
Luke, 8
When I woke up one morning with a sore throat, raspy voice, and fever, my three-year-old, Emilie, asked me what was wrong. I said, “Mama has a cold…” and she felt my cheek for a minute before saying, “No. You has a hot!”
Emilie, 3
Do you know how I memorized 2 x 11? I have this fake pencil in my brain, and it writes down the multiplication!!
Hugo, 6
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04.19.04 at 11:11 AM |
Wow. Lots of big words
Thanks for writing, I enjoyed it.
04.19.04 at 11:15 AM |
Okay guys let’s get that Hyberbaric Chamber up and running.....if she comes up outta there too fast she is gonna need it.
You’ve been into the mushrooms again haven’t you?
Kidding aside, i think this is normal, behavior given current events. Thank God we have been given the ability to reason our fears, our “myths”, and other crapola we have piled on the heap. I call it Spring Cleaning.
04.19.04 at 11:21 AM |
apart from all the stuff about where it comes from, this is a familiar component of dharmic thinking--there’s a lot of reference to ‘storylines,’ and how we’re constantly running them--talking to ourselves very fast to maintain a sense of continuity of ego. Because as painful as that is, and irrespective of how much suffering it causes, mostly, we find it almost impossible to tolerate the sensation of losing our moorings. Dharma has helped me to be able to (sometimes, partially) regard the utterly disastrous feelings of ‘things falling apart’ as good news--spring cleaning.
So--good luck with that! and I mean that in the very nicest way.
04.19.04 at 11:26 AM |
**goes to kitchen. grabs beer. returns. sits down. sratches (place). hopes the opening credits are as good as this title post (or was this a preview?). eyes Sean Connery mask.**
As long as you blog about it, I think I’ll be able to keep up.
*makes mental note to keep dictionary.com open in second window when reading TMB for now on*
04.19.04 at 12:17 PM |
hehehehe… you said weltanschauung!!!
Mindy as a psycho/anthropologist this stuff is bread and butter to you, the exciting elements of the journey, for me, aren’t so much understanding the mythic framework within which we exist but what the effects of our own personal mythologies have on us.
What I mean is, we can all be objective as we read Jung or Campbell or Muller but even these guys had nightmares, screamed in fear at awkward moments, had interesting sexual predilections and layer upon layer of satisfaction. They were aware of and understood the framework but that knowledge didn’t really help when they got to that point at which objectivity dissolves into need.
I, personally, enjoy my instinctual (or learned) reactions, good and bad, for they make me who and what I am AND every day is another door into the labyrinth of personality…
Now, how’s that fer horse pucky?
04.19.04 at 01:24 PM |
Yup. It’s hard for me to reconcile the personal myths with the personal reality at times.
Frinstance, I was taught that women weren’t really worth much UNLESS they were one of my father’s daughters, in which case none of the traditional rules of engagement apply. That’s been a doozy to work with on many levels.
Good luck.