Adam Blatner

Wacko (i.e., without a h) is useful. Whacko seems to imply violence, while wacko is charmingly fey. Anyway, seeing myths everywhere?  Indeed, there are some new books about the God myth. I believe in a God of mystics, but it is quite undefinable.

After all, myth is only a word, an abstraction, a story. "There" are no myths, but rather we collectively construct them and individually relate more to one than another. I like that line, now that you’ve got me thinking: In the olden, olden, olden days when we lived in tribes, we all shared pretty much the same myths. Nowadays there are innumerable ideas, celebrities, mini- and maxi-mythic themes. Football is a major myth right now. People can talk about what happened, what should have happened, what might have happened if only.. and on and on. All this says that Plato’s parable of the cave applies.

But that’s just one of innumerable takes. I have friends who see mythic themes "everywhere." It may only mean that these friends are hermeneutically talented. I just made that virtue up, but I do it too, not with myths, but with a mental game of making up plausible explanations when I don’t know what I’m talking about. I generally cop to not knowing, when I know I’m making stuff up, which is most of the time, but maybe sometimes I slip, as perhaps do we all. But what does it mean, to see myths everywhere? Maybe you can help me appreciate the wonders of mind-life!