The power of myth

There's no getting around stories. We seem hardwired to tell them, hear them, and make them up (consciously or otherwise). A while back, a friend loaned me a book titled Winning the Story Wars: Why those who tell--and live--the best stories will rule the future by Jonah Sachs.

I think the title makes a good point. A great deal of politics is about controlling the narrative. I enjoyed the book, although I got a bit lost in the weeds. Sachs based a great deal of his ideas on those of Joseph Campbell.

I have to admit that I am not a Campbell fan. I dislike his politics and disagree with his view that somehow all cultures are part of a mono-myth. I don't think the whole human race is watching one movie. Still, I decided to check out his best known book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Official Goat Rope verdict: 35% very cool; 65% not so much.

Still he has some good lines in there. Like this one about myth from page 1:

Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, myths of man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind. It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.

SO HERE'S WHERE I'M OFF TO: North Dakota (!).

AND HERE'S ANOTHER ENDORSEMENT of creating a Future Fund for WV.

NOT THE NEWEST NEWS, but this protest against the Master of the Universe WV Attorney General was interesting.

MORE CLIMATE CHANGE TO DENY here.

NOTE: I'm on the road so posts may be irregular and links may be behind the times.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED