Seeing both sides

[lady of shallot]

what I find interesting about the myth of Goliath is that now we know that people who suffer from giantism would be a very easy target for someone with a sling shot. Far from being a bully a giant would be a victim. Of course we know that Biblical people do not actually resemble anyone real.

[Harry Marks]

what I find interesting about the myth of Goliath is that now we know that people who suffer from giantism would be a very easy target for someone with a sling shot. Far from being a bully a giant would be a victim. Of course we know that Biblical people do not actually resemble anyone real.

Lady,

Of course it is possible that the Israelites had exaggerated Goliath's prowess, but it is more likely they exaggerated his height. The whole story may be fabricated, but it has a ring of truth for me that George Washington and the cherry tree does not. In any case, my point was to show that Bible stories can be gripping in a way that helps understand how mythos works.

You claim that Biblical people do not resemble anyone real, and I beg to differ. Even some of the most artificial constructions, like Daniel or Job, are magnificently realistic. Both OT and NT are packed with characters that charm with their three-dimensionality and all-too-human foibles. Think of Samson, or Peter, or Paul, or David himself, weeping for Absalom, or confronted by Nathan ("You are the man!") the prophet. Did you know the Biblical Jesus has a sense of humor, and the archetypical zealot, Elijah, as well? I can hardly imagine that a person who had read the Bible would consider any literature from the time, up to and including Homer, to have more realistic characters.

[Harry Marks]

If I were God, writing for the ages, writing for everyone alive, I'd have made some attempt to make my moral message as clear and "uninterpretable" as Euclid's Elements.

(BTW, citing the news as being a model of truth leaves me somewhat baffled. Personally, I find news reportage to be oversimplified distortions of the truth, more often than not.)

Randall, you forget yourself. Anyone who refers to the Bible with a term like mythos is not going to argue it was written by God like an author composes a single work. There are many, many passages in the OT that were not inspired by God, much less written by her, and quite a few in the NT as well.

The news may not be the idea of truth of a scientist or a mathematician, but it clearly takes factuality as its touchstone with truth, much more than emotional power or getting in touch with deep motivations. In fact, the idea that you would be dissatisfied with the concern for truth in the news calls into question your seriousness about anything dealing with human beings. I would be the last to argue that making do with the part of the picture you have, or trying to assemble rather disconnected facts into a coherent narrative, is all about factuality. But it is about as far in that direction as any writing about society should go, and if you still hold up some other model as more faithful to the truth, I wonder if you know any real people.

Mythos, on the other hand, needs very little contact with factuality, (just enough to achieve willing suspension of disbelief) and finds emotional power and contact with deep motivations to be the aspect of truth that matters. I thought since you cited the R. Duvall clip that meant you understood the point, but apparently not.

[lady of shallot]

Harry, I probably should have said I do not believe that the people in the Bible were actual people i.e. Jesus. Not that they do not resemble real people because mostly they do except for the extraordinary things that happen to them like Lots wife becoming a pillar of salt. Oh, and sadly it is true that some fathers have incestuous relations with their daughters but I think it is rarely at the daughter's instigation!

[Randall R. Young]

Mythos, on the other hand, needs very little contact with factuality, (just enough to achieve willing suspension of disbelief) and finds emotional power and contact with deep motivations to be the aspect of truth that matters. I thought since you cited the R. Duvall clip that meant you understood the point, but apparently not.

Well, the important myths of the Bible often manage to fail in both directions at once! There are those of us that don't have our disbelief suspended, and there are those whose disbelief never gets UN-suspended. In addition, a good story with a clear moral doesn't require us to suspend disbelief. (re: Aesop)

I'm pretty sure I understand the crux of Duvall's speech, having seen this movie more than once. (All the way through, I might add... Perhaps that might be advisable for you, before deciding which of us "gets it"?)

Do I really have to agree with something to understand it?

But, in fact, I do agree with the thrust of Duvall's remarks. I consider this type of reasoning to be the basis of an awful lot of what we do in our society. So much of it is based on faith in our conventions. For example, money is such a convention. The reason it has value is because we all believe it does. When we lose faith in it, its value tends to erode rather precipitously, as it did fairly recently.

[Harry Marks]

Randall,

Aesop is not in the least interested in factuality. You cannot read most of it without suspending disbelief. To start with, it is mostly about animals. Give me a break.

I don't want to re-watch the clip, and I am in no hurry to go get the movie, though it does sound interesting. But if I remember right, what Duvall's character says is that religious stories are more true than factual stories are. If your English teacher never said that about Shakespeare, I think you should get your money back for your schooling. It is a poetic way of saying that stories about human choices affect us more deeply than accounts of forces to be analyzed for manipulation. Does this come as news to you?

By the way, money's value doesn't only depend on mutual agreement to believe. There is a real basis for the belief, and it is not just experience.

[Randall R. Young]

I guess we must have different ideas about what suspension of disbelief actually entails.

What happened to all the monetary value of all our homes in the recent crash? Was it there? Or was it a convention?

I don't think we're communicating, Harry. What I'm saying is not that I cannot trade a dollar bill for a material item. Of course I can... Today, anyway. But what I am saying is that this only works as long as the buyer and seller continue to believe that system will work as designed. Only as long as we agree that this is so, by convention. In places where the faith in this system of currency is broken, the bills stop having this value, and one's "experience" will be very different, all of a sudden. The bills remain the same, physically; Our belief system about them does not have this guarantee. Value is not a real thing; it is a perception, and it can change, as the "value" of my house has recently plummeted by 30 or 40%. What, pray tell, is the "actual value" of my house, and how can I establish this without actually selling it?

[Murrill]

I had not seen the movie. But Duvall does that kind of stuff regularly. He "gets it", I guess because he is a recovered alcoholic.

Why does Duvall "get it"? And what does his recovery from alcoholism have to do with it? I ask because I also am a recovered alcoholic (22 years). Not offended, just curious.

I am a product of a 12-step program, one that suggests finding a Higher Power is the only thing that will save you. For me that eventually translated into growing into a relationship with the universe, one in which I was "right sized," i. e. neither omnipotent nor insignificant. It was a struggle for me, especially since I had to disrobe those religious trappings of my youth. A few meltdowns & tantrums later I listened when someone said, "Do something--even if it's wrong." So I believed that other people--those with years of sobriety who lived healthy, happy, productive lives--believed. In something. I made a decision, a committment, and that was what gave it power. I am reminded of someone--a Christian, I think--egads!--who said of prayer, "It doesn't change God; it changes me." Making the decision, committing to what spoke to me...that is what has mattered. Whether Tao or Zen or ACIM....it is not the path that matters but that we chose to walk a path.
So when Duvall says you have to believe in something, even if it isn't true, perhaps I understand. Maybe it sustains us long enough for us to find our personal Truth. And is that point of departure a filter that discredits my revelations?

[Harry Marks]

I guess we must have different ideas about what suspension of disbelief actually entails.

What happened to all the monetary value of all our homes in the recent crash? Was it there? Or was it a convention?

I don't think we're communicating, Harry. What I'm saying is not that I cannot trade a dollar bill for a material item. Of course I can... Today, anyway. But what I am saying is that this only works as long as the buyer and seller continue to believe that system will work as designed. Only as long as we agree that this is so, by convention. In places where the faith in this system of currency is broken, the bills stop having this value, and one's "experience" will be very different, all of a sudden. The bills remain the same, physically; Our belief system about them does not have this guarantee. Value is not a real thing; it is a perception, and it can change, as the "value" of my house has recently plummeted by 30 or 40%. What, pray tell, is the "actual value" of my house, and how can I establish this without actually selling it?

Randall -

I do not disagree with your statements, only with what I take to be your implied meaning. Money is not only valued by convention or by experience - it is also valued because a rather sophisticated understanding goes into managing its quantity and "market value" and because legal tender laws help to hold off the lunatic fringe who might claim it has no value.

Surely you would agree that housed did not change their intrinsic properties in the crash. But their value is a property also of the locations of many things around them, including vacant housing. In a bubble, the relevant factor that has come to dominate is people's expectations of the price change. When they wake up to the fact that they have been ignoring long term issues or these have changed significantly (as they did in Ireland) then the expectations bubble pops. Most countries would not let their currency value depend mainly on expectations, but Thailand and Mexico both did in the 90s, with drastic results.

[Harry Marks]

I had not seen the movie. But Duvall does that kind of stuff regularly. He "gets it", I guess because he is a recovered alcoholic.

Why does Duvall "get it"? And what does his recovery from alcoholism have to do with it? I ask because I also am a recovered alcoholic (22 years). Not offended, just curious.

I am a product of a 12-step program, one that suggests finding a Higher Power is the only thing that will save you. For me that eventually translated into growing into a relationship with the universe, one in which I was "right sized," i. e. neither omnipotent nor insignificant. It was a struggle for me, especially since I had to disrobe those religious trappings of my youth. A few meltdowns & tantrums later I listened when someone said, "Do something--even if it's wrong." So I believed that other people--those with years of sobriety who lived healthy, happy, productive lives--believed. In something. I made a decision, a committment, and that was what gave it power. I am reminded of someone--a Christian, I think--egads!--who said of prayer, "It doesn't change God; it changes me." Making the decision, committing to what spoke to me...that is what has mattered. Whether Tao or Zen or ACIM....it is not the path that matters but that we chose to walk a path.
So when Duvall says you have to believe in something, even if it isn't true, perhaps I understand. Maybe it sustains us long enough for us to find our personal Truth. And is that point of departure a filter that discredits my revelations?

Murrill -

Interesting material. I have been working through the implications of the notion that "truth" has two dimensions. One is "factuality", and we have been trained to think that is the total content of the notion of truth. But the other dimension, "value" is also part of truth. Significance - the idea that a "fact" matters, is part of that dimension, as is the whole set of connections between the "fact" and all of our emotions and values. The thing is, a concept like God can be true entirely for its value dimension, even though it was once thought to have factuality content that is no longer credible. It is as though a marvelous sculpture of crystals grew up around a wooden pole that then rotted away. The result is still "True" in important ways.

AA and other 12 step programs work with that truth by using terms such as "Higher Power" that are still able to directly access the meaning without requiring the intellectual baggage of "unbelievable" supernatural stories. People can experience the help, operating in them and on them through the people that support them and through their own inner struggle (and struggle to "let go"). They don't have to agree to any religious beliefs to label it or buy into any theology that may create trouble without them even realizing it (any significant anxiety is likely to be a problem for an addict - I am sure you would agree. I have some similar issues with some activities, such as posting on-line, that give me a small taste of substance addiction).

I certainly agree that it is valuable to walk a path even though it may be one of many and none of them (not even mine) is particularly superior to the others. But that is because they are engaged seriously with values, and have some circuitbreakers against the anxiety problem (satori, forgiveness, etc.)

I really like the idea of a "right size" relative to the universe. I fear science wants us to be data points - completely insignificant. While some overwrought religion wants us to believe we have to be perfect and in any case the creator of the universe is following us around keeping score on every thought that crosses our mind, so we are the center of something cosmically important, anyway. It is enough to scare the be-Jesus out of a person. Relationship is not easy, but it is much more real, and in my mind, it corresponds to the actual content of the New Testament. Jesus famously hung out with drunkards and prostitutes!