The Importance of Myths

    CHRISTMAS is upon us, whether we are Christians, Jews, Moslem’s, Buddhists or non-believers.

  But, starting our story with the fundamental truths espoused by the person against all religions and religious ideas, what have we?

  In Christmas, we explore the name itself:  it is a mass for Christ.  Who was Christ?  To Catholics, he is the embodiment of God who was on earth, and became a trinity when he became the holy ghost through an earth-bound death, thus overcoming death, and offering eternal life at some place called paradise.

  That idea, whether a PHYSICAL truth or not, has embodied hope in billions of people for two thousand years.

Protestants are called protestants because they protested the outrageous tricks of a sick Catholic church way back in the 1500’s.  Otherwise, the basic Christmas belief is the same.

It makes little difference to the EFFECT that the story of Christ and Christmas took place in the way our church tells us or whether it was a myth.  It still has the power to sooth and make life easier.

  We can apply this same philosophy to our political beliefs.  If we take a close scrutiny to each and every one of our Presidents, we always find TWO people.  John Fitzgerald Kennedy, for instance.  Our POSITIVE view of him is that he was a wonderful lovely human being, handsome and brave, who saved us from Russian domination, and who in the prime of his life, was murdered by a moron.  That is the popular notion and is extended to his lovely wife, Jacquline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

  The basic truth is that he was a crass exploiter of women, and his political successes were obtained by having very skillful writers and advisers who steered a mediocre(but attractive) human being through the years of his tenancy.  His wife was the same but ultra-femine representation of  that self-loving philosophy.

    This same myth explosion can be applied to all of the heroes of modern times.  If we explore the real and reject the invention of great lives, we find in each hero or publicly acclaimed figure, a person just like us or worse or better.

The business of PATRIOTISM enters into this discussion.  Americans make a great fetish of the abstract idea of “love for country”.  They also choose a representation of “patriotism”, a flag, and give it the same attention they do to their gods in their churches.