Sunday, August 1, 2010

Myths of America

Earlier I talked about how various mythical ideas of Africa shape our experience of African and African Diaspora religions. But how do our native myths and images color our vision of magic? What indigenous myths do American practitioners bring to the table? What propagandas and spectacles have shaped our vision of magic and the world? And how do they influence our interactions with non-American practitioners?

Vodou teaches reverence for the ancestors: we cannot understand a branch without knowing the tree.  The most important thing your forebears leave you is their way of looking at the world.  We may treasure it or throw it away, but we must engage with it. And so I thought I'd talk more about my culture's mythology for a change. Fellow Americans are free to chime in and I welcome questions and comments from my readers from abroad too! (And definitely check out John Michael Greer's excellent commentary on the American myth of Progress in his Archdruid Report).

One of the great American demigods is "Equality." According to this view, all men should be held as equally important in our society.  People who have committed comparable crimes should receive comparable sentences, without regard to race, ethnicity, and social or financial status.  People with comparable intelligence, drive and education should make comparable salaries.  We recognize that our reality often falls short of the ideal, but we are moving forward toward it. Indeed, some say we have already reached our goal and that "special interests" are trying to hold us back.

One of our great mythological battles has been our confrontation with the demon of "Race." Since the Civil Rights movement we have come a long way toward addressing some of the darker parts of our history. By recognizing these and making the appropriate public confessions, we hope to seal this demon in the brass jar of history, to be brought out only as a reminder of the Bad Old Days before we received the Truth that Equality should be extended to non-white people as well.

But in all our effort to vanquish Race, we have paid much less attention to another old demon - Class. We are a country of "one person, one vote:" we are a place where anyone can rise to the top with enough persistence and ability. (Don't believe me? Just ask Horatio Alger, Napoleon Hill or Anthony Robbins).  This feeds into one of our Major Gods, the Free Market.  To serve the Free Market, one tries to legislate as little as possible: the goal is that famous "level playing field" we sought for our darker-skinned brethren. As Janny Scott and David Leonhardt said in an excellent New York Times piece on class in America:
Mobility is the promise that lies at the heart of the American dream. It is supposed to take the sting out of the widening gulf between the have-mores and the have-nots. There are poor and rich in the United States, of course, the argument goes; but as long as one can become the other, as long as there is something close to equality of opportunity, the differences between them do not add up to class barriers.
Again, this is not to say that we have achieved those myths. Nobody would say that we have. What is important is that we have internalized them.  We believe the world would be a better place if everyone had the opportunity to actualize themselves without fear of Oppression (from diabolical conspiracies like Communism, Fascism and latterly Islam).  If everyone cherished our ideals of Freedom, Democracy and Equal Opportunity, the world would be a better place. We may protest the current state of things, but it is because they fail to live up to these standards: we fancy ourselves orthodox against their heresies.

4 comments:

Yvonne said...

It could be that American myths are only as important as the ways that they are enacted. They may be internalized, true, but how are they "played out" in the cycle of eternal return where myth inhabits the social/lived realm?

Kenaz Filan said...

@nuttyprofessor: an excellent comment. I'm going to go into more detail about that in my next post. Stay tuned for further details!

Freyadora said...

The equality protected by our Constitution is not that all men are equally important, but that all men (at first only white men, but now including all races and women) have been created equal and deserve equal protection under the law. The importance of an individual is determined by their actions.

This push to treat everyone as the same is killing our country. For instance, kids sports where they don't keep score, academic/athletic/musical events where every kid gets an award or prize just for participating, etc., these things teach our kids that mediocrity is a good thing. Don't bother striving to be your best, as you won't be acknowledged for it. Why bother working harder than any one else, because you won't be recognized for it?

Some people are clearly more important than others. If you were faced with a choice of who to take with you into a bomb shelter, and you could pick from any number of professions, any number of people with specialized skills, I'm pretty sure that certain people would emerge as more important than others.

While all life has value, that doesn't mean it all has the same value. We may have all been created equal, but what have you done since you were created determines how important you are- not the fact that you simply exist!

The only equality that the Constitution protects is that all men are created equal, and that we are free to pursue life, liberty and happiness.
Just because we are created equal at birth does not mean that we are equally important. Just because we have equal legal rights, does not make everyone equally important. That's a whole lot of feel-good psycho-babble to celebrate mediocrity.

If someone wants to be important, then they have to do something important! Otherwise, they are just another Joe or Jane Schmoe who happen to have the same legal rights as those that excel, push themselves, and achieve great things.

Yvonne said...

"If someone wants to be important, then they have to do something important!"

I'm sorry. In the big scheme of karmic consciousness, this statement is an EPIC FAIL.

Who are you, in the Universe, to say that something or someone is important or not important? Or what they have to do (or might not have done YET) is not significant or of value?

Again, I am sorry, but you fail if you cannot see the BIGGER picture, and the bigger lesson, is that all souls have a mission and a purpose. Unless you are ONLY focusing on this small unit of time and place...

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