Krimel said to dmb: Well take ringing phone. The sound of a ringing phone has a mythos all its own. It signals an incoming message. It is the Greek god Mercury; the herald of good news; the harbinger of doom.
dmb says: Right, Hermes just called with a message from the gods - during dinner -and they want to know if you're happy with your long-distance phone service. Puh-leeze. Yes, myths are alive and well at the movies but other than that I think everything you said is pure drivel. Multitasking is shapeshifting!?! Freudian advertising is mythological? Hardly. It plays on animal instincts, which for Freud was all we can find in the unconscious. Heiddeger, Dewey and I are just whiners? C'mon Krimel, I know you can do better than that. Or maybe insulting my intelligence was your aim. In that case, you couldn't have done better. You know why Darth Vader is the villian in Hollywood's modern mythology? Cause he's more machine than human. You know why there are so many "mad scientists" in the movies? Same reason. UFOs? These are features of a myth that tell us technology is dehumanizing, threatening and alienating. [Krimel] Who's kidding who here, Dave? You fail to engage anything I say other than to blow hot air and then you have the nerve to speak of Lord Vader, "The Mad Scientist," and the symbolic importance of UFOs. You do realize that they all tell tales of something in society gone horribly awry in the language of the modern mythos. How can you then claim that something is wrong with the modern Mythos. Do you think the ancient Mythos was full of "happy talkie, talkie; happy talk"? Are you seriously claiming that the Mythos is ailing using as examples the very kind of thing I assert, prove that it is not? Lucas read Campbell. I believe Campbell was interviewed by Bill Moyers a Skywalker ranch. One of the greatest storytellers of our time gives credit in his work to one of the great mythologist of our time. The Wachowski Brothers' Matrix series is a philosophical mythfest. Many of the leading philosophers of mind in the world today have given them props for making complex ideas and mythical themes come to life for a wide audience. You, Heiddeger, and Dewey looking for a fourth for bridge or what? As I said, it is one thing to whine that modern and ancient myths warn against the excesses of materialism. And something else to assert that nature is the ONLY source of myth. I have given you lots of examples of functioning modern myths and you have supplied some of your own. I would also point out that the modern mythos also speaks loudly about the transcendent quality of love. It offers visions of Utopia, comedy, tragedy, rags to riches. Just like the ancient mythos did for ancient people. Maybe your Freud is a little rusty but Freud placed a heavy emphasis on symbolism. He thought that dreams and their language of symbolic imagery were the "royal road to the unconscious." The unconscious is the Id or our animal nature. So you are quite correct to point this out. But is not a matter of "just" animal instincts. Those instincts are precisely what the Mythos is always aimed at. They speak to the unconscious in the language of the unconscious. Jung speaks of the collective unconscious as a kind of instinctive response to narrative and patterns of narrative. [dmb] Read those symbols properly and you'll get some idea of what the problem is. [Krimel] As I said before, I am deeply suspicious of using the Logos to decrypt the mythos. You seem to think you have the special decoder ring. It looks like it is something out a gum machine to me. [dmb] Its interesting to note that the young people in China, thanks to modern technology and life style, are now experiencing that same sense of meaninglessness and alienation that we've been talking about in the West since Emerson's time. [Krimel] I might be interested in Andre's view on Chinese ennui. If it exists and, I don't doubt that it does, there could be all sorts of factors contributing to it. Living in crowded conditions under a totalitarian government seems kind of alienating in its own right. But it is odd that you rant about alienation in a computer forum. Do I need to explain the irony there? 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/
