In response to Hanna Clapson's letter on the abandonment of ancient Greek myths and their disappearance as viable metaphors.

I am pleased to read your concern for this loss of a vastly rich source for metaphoric imagery in contemporary psychological and literary discussions. I drew this same observation that you present here, and questioned how it came to pass to my children, my wife at the time and my step children. My complaint was met with blank stares and no comment all round. They had no sense of loss. They did not share knowledge of or joy in Greek mythology at all. It was as though the star ship alliens had already got to them and sucked out their brains. All these people are college educated: in psychology and social work (an MA 1993); in Physical Therapy (a Doctorate, in 2009); in Fine Arts (a BA, in 2007); in English (an MA, in 2007); in Pharmacology (a Doctorate, in 2006). I have a puny 1975 BA in English Lit. with a minor in German from a lowly Calif. State College while all the others attended Ivy league Universities and prestigious, East Coast, Private, Post Graduate Universities. I also lamented the loss of biblical metaphors and got the same blank stares. I felt as though I was observing the sun burning out and no one cared a whit.

In 1997 I attended two one week long courses to improve parental self understanding and structured, family communication with troubled adolescent children's anti-social behavior during which anybody (only three of us out of 50 people) who used a psychological concept associated with a Greek legend or myth was pounced on for being elitist, pretentious and using self deceiving-pscyo gibberish by the program leader/speakers (I also noted that they were uncredentialed). Instead of using classical allusions the speakers at these two programs used imageries from Star Wars, popular songs and other popular movies to replace classical archtypes and imagery; apparently ignorant that the creators of Star Wars consulted with Joseph Campbell to better understand and incorporate Jungian archtypes and many world legends (including the classical Greek legends) as a means to universalize the movie and join it to the understanding of the mythic hero's journey. The classical Greek mythologies and legends are far more psychologically richer than popular media imagery and metaphors whose characters are two dimensional and simplistic by comparison. In short, classical education has suddenly been eschewed. It is gone.

I do not know why classical education has been abandoned. 
 
Another example of this abandonment of classical myth and legends: I worked in a hospital for ten years (1978 - 1988) and often had the opportunity to chat in the cafeteria with physicians and surgeons about, literature, politics, history and psychology. These are my interests, not there's. Generally they seemed an intelligent lot.  Even though I do not consider myself as being knowledgable their ignorance of these subjects was deeply disturbing to me. My thought about their ignorance was how can these men be wise men, understanding the psychological nature and condition of the human being and communicate about it instead of just being technicians in their craft? How do these men communicate with each other and their patients? I think the answer is that they don't. There isn't time for it and there isn't the means in either the doctor or the patient anymore.


I am glad you brought the subject up. Until you mentioned it I thought that I was alone in this observation.

James Lambert (62 years old)

A comment on Sisyphus's punishment for ensaring death and keeping him from his job, the reason for his punishment: I recently recognized on my own while thinking about this legend (I have been facinated by the Sisyphian legend for 45 years) that the real torment alluded to in his eternal pushing the stone up the hill is not really in the act of pushing the stone up the hill. Rather it is the Gods giving him the "OBSESSION" to do it. The stone pushing is just a futile act, it could have been stacking marbles on the end of a knife blade. The real torment is that they gave him the "obsession to continue to do something that he knew was impossible" and prohibited by the nature of things. His desire to stop death is a universal human obsession also. So the gods made him "WANT" to push a stone up the hill for eternity unsuccessfully to underscore and illucidate the human being's, futile obsession to stop death. This desire to stop aging and death is rampant right now and observable in cryogenics, health fads, Playboy magazine, People Magazine, newspaper adds etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.

I have a recollection of seeing a print in grays of a crouched, Golum-naked entity in a sort of Hades sitting next to a gigantic, presumably nuclear bomb. There is a chain around the bomb. The other end of this tether is manacled to the human form's wrist. The human form is gnawing off his forearm with his blood drenched teeth to extricate himself from the dilemma of being attached to the bomb. I have not been able to find this print anywhere on the internet. Maybe it has something to do with the loss of metaphors that help us understand our human predicament. 

I have been accused of being "dark". I am not dark. I am alive and wanting life as I scream and feel as abandoned as the Edvard Munch painting persona called "The Scream". Dark is when one has given up. I have not.

These are interesting posts. I think it is possible to read too much into physicists names for things. The Higgs Boson like other items, the so-called God particle, is a whimsical kind of name. The question being addressed is how do things get their mass? We have a standard model, a so-called model that I consider is really a bunch of theories pasted together. Feynman suggested the same. It's not really unified correctly in the sense that a theory should be (as all hanging together coherently), the moniker "standard model" is a bit misleading. Is it correct? Of course not, gravity isn't included and so it must break down. By the same token, gravity as described by General Relativity isn't right either as it doesn't include Quantum theory so that isn't complete either. An adjustment (huge!) is needed. What is really funny or scandalous is that the standard model has all these parameters that need adjusting to make stuff come out right. And as Hanna points out what is just as bad is that there is no explanation for why particles have mass. Hence the efforts at CERN. Working at CERN requires enormous patience. It's like Sisyphus in a way. If they don't find the Higgs, physics is in a bigger mess but that's good because then the sun shines and more can be found. (Thanks be to Paul Valery and the lovely Mia Vialti for that thought!)

James talks about many things, lamentation and Sisyphus among them. He is right in a way about what we have lost, which is depth. But those who work on the latest stuff don't want to be shackled either. For myself, I think people here on THINQon have figured out by now that I don't really give a damn and am sceptical of everything. I don't care what is thought of me. James kinds of breaks the mould of posts on THINQon where he talks about something universal but also personal, he links the two. Some time ago I said something about a dissolution between the public and private life. Why do people care to separate the two so much? Why not consider that embarrassment is not important or has ceased to exist? That is a really courageous thing to do and I salute James for not caring. (But he still does care!)

The point I would like to make on the Sisyphus myth is that the guy keeps pushing it to the top of the hill and then running down the other side and push it back up again; he keeps going. It's absurd. It reminds me of my father who, as a boy, used to make a paper aeroplane in Wales and go throw it from the top of the mountain and watch it float down into the valley. Then he'd run after it to go fetch and then bring it all the way back up to the top again for another throw! I asked him immediately why he didn't make another aeroplane, that would have been far easier. He said "oh I should have thought of that" with a grin. I think he meant he wanted the chase. I can't ask him because he's dead now and I do miss him. And a warning of what will come. This is personal. No one bothered to tell me that he was lying in a hospital and dying, asking for me. Nor that he was ill with cancer for six months before he died and asked for me often. That will never be forgotten and part of the purpose of my reason for coming onto THINQon and suddenly posting all the stuff seen is to define a funny part of myself to family who have no idea who I am. I hope you read this post and realize what you lost, that you don't even understand yourselves nor your entire history and don't ask the big questions and perhaps consider that those who do like myself aren't with it or don't get it. 

We do get it. James gets it. Many others get it. Others don't get us, we're too wide and too deep. Too allusive. Emily Dickenson tells the truth with a slant, I sometimes tell it as if it were a lie. To see how the cards fall. To experiment with people because fundamentally I love them even though they appall me at times.

Re-interpreted in modern times, Sisyphus is an absurd reasoning and I agree with Camus that it means one should revolt. What does this consist in? Well in a sense all I have said on here, and as James has pointed out, shows I have a fine taste for the absurdity of life. So it may be. I didn't plan this post. I'm making it up as I go along! My take on the myth is that I acknowledge the essential absurdity of life and I see it demonstrated again and again in all it's guises, in the misunderstandings, in the mucking arounds, in the anger, not just on here but also in and around my own life. I have little anger. I think it's pretty funny. Almost everything is funny in a way. Seen in the right way, this world is incredibly funny were it not so tragic. Sisyphus is tragic when he marches down the hill and becomes fully conscious of what he is doing. Let's keep on being absurd, acknowledge it, accept it and laugh and celebrate and affirm ourselves. But it's not that personal either! I know people who are too much in their head. I don't really count myself among their number although I do say it to them so they don't feel any more isolated!

Elsewhere on here someone asked "What does an educated person need to know?".  That's related to all this, now. It consists in an infinite adaptability, it's not in any particular body of knowledge but rather in how we can respond to anything thrown at us. There are few polymaths in educational institutions. I met engineers who couldn't solder. Pilots who had more tickets than one could poke a stick at and still couldn't fly worth a damn. Physicists who didn't understand maths (it's amazing how many don't). Classicists who see stuff in the modern world that remind them of stuff they saw in the other. Like why politicians wear red ties. Some of those classicists were the most human people I ever met. But any speciality fails. One has to be a jack of all trades. The girl who can respond to anything is the educated girl and she may not even have an education! How absurd. 

Thank you for letting me poke a stick at you!

Martin

James, what a wonderful force of life! I hope that you will always have such courage, that it always remains strong in you.

I am sorry to hear about your father, Martin. If the myths can help, it is to say that hoping others will regret is often useless or tragic. If it is possible, try to use the energy to bring yourself happiness.

Now to myths:
It is indeed curious to ask why something like Harry Potter is attractive even to adults now when the older myths are more obscure. It is not simply that people do not know the stories. What is keeping people from seeing the relevance? There is a bridge to be built. We could try to understand what is "non classical" in a person's experience, meaning in the way that they feel their lives to be, even if the reality is that these myths are very much with us. Freud, Jung, others at the beginning of the last century drew on such things, but now the myths which capture the imagination are of a very different quality, much more religious I would say, from Narnia to Avatar. -- Why?

Martin: Others don't get us, we're too wide and too deep. Too allusive.

But surely, one should not aim for truth to be too widely cast, too dispersed? A true statement should also present itself completely. James' reading of the Sisyphus myth has the clarity of truth even, I would think, for a person who does not know the original story. So that they immediately call forth something from their own experience, as you did with your story of planes.

If one speaks in a way which is allusive for its own sake there is a danger of what Ellen called modern. A fine line to walk...