DIS-MYTHED

Image courtesy of wikipedia. Have you hugged a centaur today?

The theme lately at Goat Rope is the nature of myths. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

One approach to understanding mythology is to see it as forming the basis of a given society. For sociology pioneer Emile Durkheim, myths and related rituals and symbols are an expression of social existence that represent the understandings, beliefs and practices of a group. They are in large measure the glue that holds a society together, continually renewing traditional understandings and norms.

In fact, Durkheim worried that such traditional understandings and practices were undermined in modern societies, which resulted in feelings of normlessness or anomie.

The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski expressed similar views of myths based on his fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands. He tended to see them as charters of social practices which promote the continuity of the social order.

Obviously, there is some merit in this approach, but it too has its limits. Even in modern societies such as our own, many people continue to study and appreciate the myths of ancient societies even though they are now divorced from our own rituals and practices.

Karl Marx tended to view myths both as a reflection of a given society and as part of the ideological system that supported existing social relations. Yet he was also aware of the continuing appeal of myths such as those of the Greeks. He gets the last word on the subject today (there will be more on myths here next week):

Is Achilles possible in a time of gunpowder and shot? Or is the Iliad possible in a time of the printing press or printing machine? Do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry, songs and legends and the muse, disappear with the coming of the printing-press handle?

But the difficulty does not lie in understanding how Greek art and epic poetry are linked to certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they will still provide us with aesthetic pleasure and in certain respects serve as a standard and an unattainable ideal.

A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish. But does not the naivete of the child give him enjoyment, and must he not himself strive for a higher level to reproduce the child's truth? Does not the nature of the child in every epoch represent the epoch in its natural truth? Why should not the historical childhood of humanity, where it had unfolded most beautifully in a stage that will never recur again, not exert an eternal charm? There are ill-bred children and precocious children. Many of the ancient peoples belong to this category. The Greeks were normal children. The charm their art has for us is not in conflict with the undeveloped stage of society on which it grew. Its charm is, rather, the result of the fact, with which it is rather inseparably linked, that the immature social conditions, under which it arose, and could only arise, can never recur again.

In other words, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes a myth is just a good Big Story and even if we can't live there the land of mythology is a nice place to visit.

1929? Here's Paul Krugman on the forgotten lessons of the crash.

EATING ONE'S HOUSE. From the Economic Policy Institute, here's a snapshot on how the housing slump may effect consumption and the overall economy.

PREDATORS. Also from EPI, here's a summary of a new report on how growing inequality has contributed to predatory lending practices and here's the full report.

MORE ON THIS WEEK'S UNHAPPY ANNIVERSARY can be found here.

ANTI-WAR EVENTS are occurring all around the nation and WV this week. Here's coverage from one such in Lewisburg.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GILGAMESH, ANYONE?

Gilgamesh, represented here by the rooster Stewpot, was a mighty ruler in Uruk.

If it's midsummer and you need a guiding theme to fill up a week's worth of blogging in an unpredictable world, there's just one clear choice--duh!--The Epic of Gilgamesh, of course. It is, after all, one of the earliest written stories in human history, even though it was only discovered in the 19th century. It could also be considered the first (literary) tragedy.

It has been a fairly long time since El Cabrero went on a weeklong mythological tear, and Sumerian/Mesopotamian mythology would be a Goat Rope first. We proceed...

As far as I can surmise, the basic theme of the epic is that, as Dirty Harry once said, "A man's got to know his limitations." It's a lesson we all have to learn.

Though written much later, it seems to refer to a possibly real ruler of the Mesopotamian kingdom of Uruk in what is now Iraq in the 3rd millennium BC. Gilgamesh was undoubtedly an alpha male, as we can see from the opening lines of the epic:

I will proclaim to the world the deeds of Gilgamesh. This was the man to whom all things were known; this was the king who knew the countries of the world. He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things, he brought us a tale of the days before the flood. He went on a long journey, was weary, worn-out with labour, returning he rested, he engraved on a stone the whole story.

The story goes that he was the son of Queen Ninsun and King Lugulbanda and was 2/3rds god and 1/3 human. The arithmetic is never explained.

Gilgamesh was also kind of a pain to his subjects, rock and rolling all night and partying every day. His subjects began to complain:

Gilgamesh sounds the tocsin for his amusement, his arrogance has no bounds by day or night. No son is left with his father, for Gilgamesh takes them all, even the children; yet the king should be a shepherd to his people. His lust leaves no virgin to his lover, neither the warrior's daughter nor the wife of the noble; yet this is the shepherd of the city, wise, comely, and resolute.

They pray to the gods to think of some way of keeping Gilgamesh occupied and the gods respond by creating a companion for him, the wild and hairy man Enkidu, who lives with beasts in the forest and eats grass. Gilgamesh was destined to "love him like a woman"--not that there's anything wrong with that.

Unlike Gilgamesh, who is a founder of civilization, Enkidu is a child of nature, innocent of both culture and sexuality. A trapper who has seen him in the wild goes to Gilgamesh for advice on how to domesticate him. He prescribes the charms of woman. An unnamed sacred prostitute is sent to the (literal) watering hole where Enkidu hangs out.

Of that funky stuff which was the subject of 1970s song, Enkidu could not get enough. He treads the primrose path of dalliance with her nonstop for six days and seven nights, which would make him something of a prodigy. One hopes they kept themselves hydrated...

After that tryst, Enkidu loses his wilderness mojo. The wild beasts run from him and he can't keep up with them. It really IS always something, isn't it? The woman tells him:

You are wise, Enkidu, and now you have become like a god. Why do you want to run wild with the beasts in the hills? Come with me. I will take you to strong-walled Uruk...there Gilgamesh lives, who is very strong, and like a wild bull he lords it over men.

So they head to the big city for the next phase of the epic, about which more tomorrow.

COGITO ERGO BLOG.Goat Rope was recently nominated a "Thinking Blog" by the masterful blog of all things West Virginian Lincoln Walks at Midnight. Considering the source, I take that as quite a compliment--Thanks!

There's a cool little graphic that comes with it but El Cabrero can't think well enough to make it show up here. As part of the deal, I need to nominate five blogs that make me think, but I need to think about that some more.

LABOR JOINS THE FIGHT FOR GREEN JOBS. According to Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers union,

We need to put an end to the lies, the myths, the hysteria, that say you can have either a clean environment or good jobs. You can have both, or you have neither.

For more on high road approaches to economic growth and sustainable energy, click here.

HIGH ROAD LOW ROAD. On a related theme, here's an op-ed by yours truly on the choices facing WV as we try to build a better future.

THIS IS WHAT I'M SCREAMING. One fairly easy step that can be taken to get WV on the high road is making high speed internet available throughout the state. Here's a step in the right direction in Charleston. And you know what?--they didn't have to eliminate minimum wage or mine safety laws to do it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED