What Myths Do You Believe?

Because you most assuredly do believe some.

I have just started reading Subverting Global Myths: Theology and the Public Issues Shaping Our World by blogger Vinoth Ramachandra. I am sure the book will alternatively annoy me, convict me, and educate me. I have recently thought about myths that even the most educated believe because of things I have heard and participated in this week in courses and conferences at the University of South Carolina (more on that later this week). But ultimately, we do believe and propagate certain myths (e.g., the earth is flat, many times in accord with society and its pressures, but other times against those pressures, forming our own countercultural tendencies. Getting out of our myths may be the most difficult undertaking.

This is not a quotation from the book itself (I don't think) but from a summary of the book on the Barnes & Noble website:


It is a myth that only the uninformed masses believe in myths and that power brokers, media moguls, leading scientists, financial tycoons, political luminaries and intellectual elites don't. The myths that the ruling classes believe may be more sophisticated, but they are myths nonetheless.

Comments

  1. Looks like he (or some marketing blurber) is purposefully equivocating slightly in that summary: the myth in "it is a myth" is not same as the myth in "the myths that the ruling classes believe." The former implies that the myth is not true; the latter only implies that they have metanarratives.

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