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.