This is an interesting discussion--once you ditch all the god hocus-pocus and the poofism.
Set, I completely agree with all points. I had the privilege of meeting "Maggie" Mead and her early husband Gregory Bateson, as well as Mead's principal protegee, Theodore Schwartz, who continued her research in Manus and a prominent scholar on the Cargo Cults of New Guinea.
I have never read the work of those persons, JL, so I doubt I can offer useful viewpoints. I have read most mythologies, and I have always thought a lot of knowledge can be gleaned from the spcieties that created them by closely analyzing them.
The writers may indeed have had ulterior motives, and were undoubtedly gifted individuals. But the fact of the matter is, who created the myths?
Were they... 'produced' by the writers, or were they simply the people writing myths so they could be used in plays for example.
And, with that in mind, I dare ask... What was the 'influence' said writers had on their respective societies?
Set,
Trade has existed since the beginning of societies, when people interacting found that it was profitable for two parties to supply a demanded item in exchange for a requested item(barter). That Canadien had guts and a head for business. I'm sure he ran a succesfull business operation.
Fascinating examples from an anthropologist POV...
Naj
Naj, i find the religiosity boring. I think this topic is only interesting from the anthropological point of view.
JLNobody,
I'm glad to see you don't take any allegorical meanings too literally.
It is reminiscent of the college classes in the 70's where Beatles songs were closely scrutinized, examining multi-layers upon multi-layers to come to the real meaning of the lyric. Someone finally thought to ask Paul McCartney how close they had come to extracting the truth. Paul revealed that many of their songs were scratch lyrics--meaningless words written only to aid in learning the tune, and he and John never had the time to revisit the song to write anything substantial.
You can intone pretty much anything.
Perhaps like the painting of an abstract work. One can just put down colors, lines, forms, etc. almost arbitrarily and see what they "suggest"--both in terms of images and aesthetics--for elaboration, modification or erasure. The end result can evoke, like clouds, many meaningful images in various viewers.
This reminds me of English class, which I hated. The teacher gives you a story to read and tells you to write a paper on the theme of the story. Seems like a lot of my classmates came up with a lot of different themes for the same story.
I guess you see in it what you want.
tycoon wrote:JLNobody,
I'm glad to see you don't take any allegorical meanings too literally.
It is reminiscent of the college classes in the 70's where Beatles songs were closely scrutinized, examining multi-layers upon multi-layers to come to the real meaning of the lyric. Someone finally thought to ask Paul McCartney how close they had come to extracting the truth. Paul revealed that many of their songs were scratch lyrics--meaningless words written only to aid in learning the tune, and he and John never had the time to revisit the song to write anything substantial.
You can intone pretty much anything.
There is a fascinating bit of film taken in the early 1970s when John Lennon was living in England, before he moved to New York. Some hippie kid had shown up on his doorstep. The kid was poor to begin with, and broke by then, and had gone to extreme lengths to cross the pond from 'Merica, and hitchhiked all over England, until he stumbled onto Lennon's home. He began to tell Lennon how deep and meaningful Beatles song lyrics are, and he wanted to know the deeper meanings they contained. Lennon was at a loss for a moment, and then tried to explain to him that they were usually just spur of the moment stuff, and i remember in particular that he said: "It might just be that i had taken a particularly satisfying sh!t that morning." Then he told the guy that he looked beat, and invited him in for a nice, hot bowl of soup and a bath.
