Living
Myths
“One
of the best ways to discover the living myth of any society is to
examine what everyone accepts uncritically as the way things are. We,
for instance, assume that progress, urbanization, and technological
innovation are inevitable, and that it is the destiny of
underdeveloped nations to evolve into developed nations. The
consensus reality is the myth, but it remains as invisible to the
majority as water is to a fish.”
Sam
Keen (Fire in the Belly)
Sam
Keen published Fire in the Belly in 1991. In the twenty years since
then, almost everything we held to be inevitable has changed. We
thought the trajectory of American life was ever upward, moving
toward affluence for everyone. We believed that with education and
opportunity, anyone could become anything they wanted to be. We
thought if we owned a home, and had a job, nothing could touch us
unless we strayed from the straight and narrow.
We
all bought into that collective myth without question even though
there were signs along the way in the form of the Savings and Loan
debacle, and the dot-com bubble. We treated those as aberrations.
Yesterday,
I heard an interview on NPR with a young man who has a Master's
degree from a good university, who was applying for jobs as an
administrative assistant, at $10.00/hour, and competing with
thousands of other, equally overqualified people. We've seen college
tuition double and quadruple to the point that it is now out of reach
of most Americans. Our young people are coming out of school with
staggering debt because of financial aid loans. We bought into the
myth that college education translates into well-paying job even
though the evidence to the contrary is all around us.
There
is a reason that so many of our films and television shows are about
the dissolution of society, alien invasion, and paranormal
take-overs. It is because our lifestyle is changing in ways that we
did not expect, and it's happening faster than we can accommodate. We
are desperate for super-heroes to swoop in and use their super-powers
to wipe the slate clean and return us to life as we knew it. Instead,
we have a Congress so focused on its own preservation, that it is
impotent and incompetent. And we elected them!
I have confidence in American ingenuity. We will find our footing and
regain our balance, but first, we have to allow the old myth to die.
Our way of life was not sustainable over the long term. We have no
one to blame but ourselves. We can look down our noses at other
countries who are belly-up right now, but we do so at our own peril.
We all need to pull together, or we may end up pulling apart, and
that will serve no one. Each of us can pick up the pieces where we
are, activate our imaginations, put our hands to work, and weave
together a brand new myth to live by.
In
the spirit,
Jane
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