An interesting point. Cultural Meme's and my search for an American Myth.
I will begin by stating the premises, the assumptions, which I will work with in this monologue. We as a culture are dominated not by images that work to define our identities as individuals or as a society, but by images that seek to hijack whatever sense of identity we have and use it to drive consumerism.
In our society, the bulk of information exchanged is of a commercial nature, with the implicit or explicit purpose of selling goods. We are a decadent, cynical soceity. These are my assumptions. I have described this as a monologue because I do not have a formula or outline for this; there is no plan, no quotes, no proofs. There are no maps to this road, to paraphrase Marshal McCluhan.
What I am hoping for here is a recording of the thoughts I have on the subjects of society, art, culture, commercialism, myth, mysticism, sexuality, and anything else that happens to cross my mind. Given these assumptions, I have a question to ask myself: why America? Why is it this country that seems to be the source of this commercial influence in daily life? What is it that we have (or maybe don't have?) that has caused us to, in my opinion, sink so low? We are a young country, and the term most often used is a "melting pot society." This seems to me to be very unique, but what does it entail?
Probably the most important thing that it means is that we have no common myth. Myth is at the crossroads of psychology, art, law, philosophy and reason. It is what happens when Freud, Baudelaire, Marshall, Aristotle, and Lock are locked in a room together and not allowed back out until they have each written their say - Breakfast Club for Intellectuals.
It is what Homer is. How do we lack it? We have yearned to turn the story of our country's origin into myth, but the history and facts are too near to create any true heroes. We know that Jefferson kept slaves and slept with some of them, and that Abe Lincoln was not, never, an abolitionist. We know that we were not founded by a group of ideological farmers devoted to personal freedom, but by an upper-class bent on paying lower taxes and having more control over their own substantial properties. We have no origin lost in the mists of time. We go back further and uncover Columbus as a hero. Again history intercedes, and makes blazingly clear that this hero was responsible for genocide, disease, and exploitation on a scale that the americas had rarely seen.
So our own origins provide no myths. Maybe we co-opt other nations' myths for our own purposes. This meets with failure. Children who are read the Illiad see Achilles as whiny, rather than representing a greek ideal. Beowulf's characteristics are more poetically appreciated than seen as model behavior. Indian and most other eastern myths have become the territory of alternative medicine fruity types and artsy zen buddhists selling sexual healing and casanova candles to the sound of Kitaro and smell of jasmine incense, than as any sort of definition of cultural identity.
Perhaps the closest thing to a cultural myth comes from a little book published in the nineteenth century, that being The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I am not sure. It is getting late and I have work tomorrow, so more pragmatic needs tug me to finish writing my software requirements document, more along this vein later.
But one last thought. All of this will be lost on July Fourth, when I venture out with my picnic basket, my organic goat cheese and crackers and roasted red peppers and california wine to the Esplande on the Charles River, wearing red and white and khaki made by J.Crew and sing along with the Boston Pops, and in my heart yearn that maybe this is our shared culture. Yankee Doodle is our Achilles, and we are all reborn on the fourth of July.
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Comments: 5
I would love to be a fly on that wall! I think we still look at our heroes with blinders at least where our native population is concerned. We know their faults but we still teach the mythology.
Instead of modernizing it,
Multiculturalism which is a sneaky rotten style of racism/elitism.
Killed it.
What we had was a Grand Narrative proposed by Will Durant from British Hellas to Victoria antecedents and wielded together forcefully in the postwar years into a triumphalist Western lberal democratic paradigm in the great postwar years, principally in the Great Books programs first conceived at Columbia and brought to fruition at the University of Chicago, only to be undone by a repudiating backlash from the multicultural decentrists. I'm going to dialogue with you extensively about theses themes as you weave this piece together here at Gather, because your ideas really pique my interest on these grand themes.
And you are really onto something floating on that raft down the Mississipi.
Go back to Harriet Beecher Stowe, make the contrast, think about the John Henry legend as well as a transitional 'domesticated' metaphor in strange deathlock with Samuel Collins' harrowing truths, so brilliantly buried in trickster fasion in the story of Huck and Jim.