I said that I'd send along more comments on the paper that you and Mike
Hollinshead put together for the commissioin investigating the residential
school system. You say:
Economic progress (embodying linear time) and the scientific method are the
modern European's mythology. They tell him everything which is important to
know about the cosmos and his place within it. That is a mythology.
Unfortunately, modern Europeans do not believe they have myths and a mythology.
Those are things the ancient Greeks and Aboriginals have They are utterly
convinced they do not have one. That creates a huge problem for the future. How
do you get people to change something they do not believe exists?
Personally, I don't like the idea of the scientific method being thought of as
part of European mythology. I'd argue that it belongs to everybody, that
everybody can contribute to it, and that it deals with reality and is not
therefore myth. On myth, I'd argue that there are various levels of myth
(belief systems), all the way from grand myth down to mini-myth. Religious
belief at its highest can be thought of as grand myth. The belief that
boatloads of Asians are coming to Canada to blow us up or some such thing is an
example of mini-myth.
I don't think we "Europeans" are quite as simple as you make us out to be. I
occasionally pick up a book by Joseph Campbell, "Occidental Mythology" for
example, and what it tells me is that our grand myths are a product of many
different strains of belief that go very far back in time. Our Christian
churches tell us that the single most important event in the history of the
world was the vergin birth of Jesus Christ. Campbell tells us that virgin
births and Christ-like personas go a long way back, perhaps as long as there
were people like us walking the earth. Perhaps what is most important is that
we do not allow ourselves to get stuck in a particular myth, that we see it for
what we know it is. That doesn't mean that we can't follow its precepts. The
following, for example, is from II Esdras of the Apocrypha, which is usually no
longer included in the Bible: "Do right to the widow, judge for the fatherless,
give to the poor, defend the orphan, clothe the naked. Heal the broken and the
weak, laugh not a lame man to scorn, defend the maimed, and let the blind man
come into the sight of my clearness." I'm sure that most people would buy that
even if they didn't always practice it.
Ed
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