This comes from a book titled "American Myth American Reality" that I picked up for 15 cents at some store 30 years ago. Great thoughts. One of them:
Heroes and heroines are perceived to be set apart from ordinary human beings and at the same time to be models for and explanations of American social life.
[remember, this is written in 1980.]
Americans frequently voice the fear that their world is falling apart. The specter of war threatens either imminent atomic holocaust or continuing Vietnams. There is fear that the wealth and productivity of America may decline or cease to exist. There is great ambivalence among Americans, increasingly conscious and obvious, concerning government of all kinds, the Presidency, the military and defense, and the availability and consumption of American resources.
There are conscious, public discussions of and ambivalence about the fundamental distinctions to be made among human beings and the propriety of such distinctions in American life—distinctions in regard to caste, race, and sex, as well as distinctions between life and death, and human and animal life.
Friday, September 21, 2012
The Great Heroic American Cowboy myth
This comes from a book titled "American Myth American Reality" that I picked up for 15 cents at some store 40 years ago. Great thoughts. One of them:
Henry Kissinger was asked by an Italian interviewer how "he explained the incredible movie star status he enjoyed .
Kissinger replied that it came from "the fact" that he had always "acted alone." "Americans like that immensely," he said.
Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town . .. with his horse and nothing else. Maybe even without a pistol.
... this cowboy doesn't have to be courageous. All he needs is to be alone, to show others that he rides into the town and does everything by himself...
The image of the cowboy riding alone is in American heroic mythology. It comes to their minds easily, in many variations; it grows from thousand of tellings and retellings—in stories, movies, television programs, history books, children's play... The cowboy is a heroic type.
Henry Kissinger was asked by an Italian interviewer how "he explained the incredible movie star status he enjoyed .
Kissinger replied that it came from "the fact" that he had always "acted alone." "Americans like that immensely," he said.
Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town . .. with his horse and nothing else. Maybe even without a pistol.
... this cowboy doesn't have to be courageous. All he needs is to be alone, to show others that he rides into the town and does everything by himself...
The image of the cowboy riding alone is in American heroic mythology. It comes to their minds easily, in many variations; it grows from thousand of tellings and retellings—in stories, movies, television programs, history books, children's play... The cowboy is a heroic type.
American Myths, American truths
This comes from a book titled "American Myth American Reality" that I picked up for 15 cents at some store 40 years ago. Great thoughts. One of them:
As language is changeable and adaptable, so are a society's myths; language is conservative and slow to change, so are myths.
Myths are part of the world we live in.
But when we try consciously and rationally to understand ourselves and our past, we tend to discount myths. We think of them as fictions, "only stories," "made-up" things which have nothing to do with reason and understanding. We contrast myth and reality; the one is mistaken, unreal, false, a lie; the other is objective, understandable, real, the truth.
But the "truth" about a people, the "truth" about America and Americans, resides both in American myths and in American realities.
As language is changeable and adaptable, so are a society's myths; language is conservative and slow to change, so are myths.
Myths are part of the world we live in.
But when we try consciously and rationally to understand ourselves and our past, we tend to discount myths. We think of them as fictions, "only stories," "made-up" things which have nothing to do with reason and understanding. We contrast myth and reality; the one is mistaken, unreal, false, a lie; the other is objective, understandable, real, the truth.
But the "truth" about a people, the "truth" about America and Americans, resides both in American myths and in American realities.
Our real enemy
A very good read or listen. How long can the government keep inventing more money which is no longer rooted on any standard? It was indeed during my younger lifetime that it went from gold and silver CERTIFICATES to being based on... Hot air. How long cand we keep borrowing from arab countries, the chinese, the russians... Before it crashes, our country falls apart, the ones who expect free...
rides have no sourcw? And I want to say that 47 percent might not be rediculous after all. I am most aware personally of some who think its quite ok to milk unemployment for all they can get while they DO NOT make an actual effort at finding any work at all. I know of one who I wont name who encouraged his mother to do the same thing. And is all loudly pro Obama. That there are those who have eligitamate babies or adopt is a personally observed fact. You might get heartsick if you knew how much these cancerous things do happen, what percentage of the time. The government is NOT a money tree growing it like leaves on the mapple in my back yard. It has tocome FROM somewhere. The rich, borrowing, or... Just floating in the air. And my friends, investment in our governmental moneys by our countries communistic enemies and arab countries is far from new. Its been happening a long time. Its like borrowing from the mafia. So quit living in denial, and do whack down the critics of the 47 percent statement. Whether its 47, 40, or 35, we have a problem. Rabi Lapin wrote, Americas Real Enemy. The real enemy is us,
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