Gav said: a mythopoetic interpretation is a *creative interpretation*. the interpretation creates a new way of experiencing truth.
dmb says: Right. I just finished two classes, one on Art and one on Religion. Both began with Plato's attack on the poets and the prophets, which were not two different things at the time. Nietzsche, for one, thought that was a horrible, horrible move. He called Plato's demand for intelligibility "aesthetic socratism" and characterized this move as an evacuation of art's vital function. Both classes ended with the beginnings of a repair job, where poets and prophets are the same thing again. Dewey, Heidegger and Pirsig each emphasize the importance of imaginative creativity in refreshing the culture. Dewey's says, "art is more moral than moralities". I take that to be a pithy summary of Pirsig's code of art and I think it goes quite nicely with what you're saying about Joe Campbell... Gav said: ..we have lost touch with our myths and this is the root cause of alienation. but it is also a catalyst for a new phase in myth creation. ..the mythopoetic interpretation *of our own lives* is this new phase and this is what joseph campbell talks about in his final 'masks of god' volume - 'creative mythology'. ..alienation leaves us alone, lost, confused. we are unanchored. the rules we are given to live by ring hollow. they do not originate from the mythos; rather they are the product of a steroidally inflated and consequently paranoid logos. dmb says: Right, to the extent that we have a living, functioning mythology at all, it is the church of reason, scientific materialism and SOM. In a sense, the problem is not that we are alienated because we have no myths to live by so much as the myths we live by are inherently alienating. Its a worldview in which there is no meaning and reality itself is indifferent to human purposes and values, if not hostile. And yet the old myths are not an option and are oppressive, even totalitarian by today's standards. On the flip-side, there was also a nice cozy feeling back in the day, I suppose. And this new freedom is scary to a lot of people. The quest to rescue some kind of anchor has given us fundamentalism and fascism and other crazy reactions. In "The American Scholar" Emerson tells us that the sages, poets, prophets of past ages are well worth reading but we ought not be enslaved to any of it. Ancient wisdom should be seen as a tool for the present, not a prescription. "Man should not be subdued by his instruments", he says. Instead he called for genuine originality. I think we can add his name to the keep-it-fresh club. Nice to hear from you, dmb _________________________________________________________________ Make every e-mail and IM count. Join the i’m Initiative from Microsoft. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Join/Default.aspx?source=EML_WL_ MakeCount Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
