Cultural Mythology: Myth, culture, and consciousness

The fisherman

Beginning with the so-called Enlightenment, Western culture has imagined that "reason" is our most divine faculty and awarded high status to the mind, its imagined source. The gut is degraded because it's instinctual. The heart can't be trusted because it's fickle. No wonder many of us spend so much time in our heads. We often act as if we can reason our way to some purity, some objective clarity, but it's not possible to be human and be totally devoid of either instinct or emotion. Remember Spock? There's a reason why that notion is science fiction.

The gut and the heart have their own logic and their own perspective and we need them all to understand what is important. I think this little story speaks to the different value systems between the metaphorical head, heart, and gut in terms we can relate to today. How many fish do we need?

A rich industrialist once came upon a fisherman lying lazily beside his boat, smoking a pipe. He was horrified. "Why aren't you out fishing?" he asked the fisherman. The fisherman smiled and squinted and looked up at the industrialist. "Because I've caught enough fish for the day," he said. "But why don't you catch more?" asked the industrialist."Well what would I do with them?" the fisherman replied.

"Why you could earn more money," said the industrialist, "and buy a motor for your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish. Then you could make the money to buy large, nylon nets so that you could catch even more fish and make even more money. Soon you would have enough money to own two boats, maybe even a fleet of boats. Then you would be a rich man like me."

"Then what?" asked the fisherman. "Well, then you could enjoy life," replied the rich industrialist. The fisherman leaned back against his boat. "What do you think that I'm doing right now?" he said.

(I found this story in Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart edited by Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield).

 

Occupy your heart

On September 17th people gathered in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District to launch Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy movement. I think it's fair to say that no one knew what would happen or how the movement would grow, and predictions regarding outcomes and the ultimate value of the protest seem equally uncertain. (According to Occupy Wall Street the movement has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally). But something powerful has emerged, some vital energies are stirring. On the common level of public debate people talk about unjust economic policies, political corruption, corporate greed, and bankrupt social contracts. But what is the mythological context or mythology expressed in the action and ideas of Occupy Wall Street, I wonder?  Are the three hideous brothers going to be called from Tartarus to aid in the creation of a new world order? (see past posts on the Greek Titanomachia for the story).

I don't know. But the words that we use provide clues. Their origins and layered meanings resonate and round out conscious and unconscious daily uses. We often say more than we intend. The conversation happens on more than one level.

A central slogan of the Occupy movement is "Human need, not corporate greed." Pay attention to the needs of real people, not legal pseudo-persons. "Corporation" is an interesting word. A primary meaning of "corporation," from the Latin corporare "to embody," was once paunch, pot belly, bulging abdomen. This is still an active definition but in the mid 15th century the term corporation came to mean a group of persons united in one body for some purpose. A body is a material physical structure but it's also a group or collection of related things. The body politic, for example, is a nation. A corporation is a body.

We can further investigate the metaphorical anatomy of the corporation to encompass the word "capitalism," from "capital," from the Latin capitalis, "of the head." We also find caput--"head"--or maybe that should be kaput? Seriously, the word "capital" reflects the historical Western preference for the head, for the presumed logic of the intellect over other forms of knowing and understanding. In our capital driven society, this head is a primary value, the essential material and goal of many enterprises.The concept is also associated with life itself, and mortality. Think capital crimes or capital sin. But where is the heart? I think this is the question many are asking.

A synonym for head is "chief." But the head was not always the privileged leader. In Old English the definition of heart (heorte) included mind, will, and intellect in addition to soul, desire, and the physical organ. This is the origin of the phrase "to know by heart." In French coeur (heart) is related to the words "accord" and "record;" to be in harmony or of one heart, and to remember or "call to mind." The heart is the metaphoric seat of memory upon which wisdom depends and it is also an organ of thought.

In 1925, C.G. Jung visited the United States and went to Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. There he had a conversation with chief Ochiwiay Biano that he describes in Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Ochiwiay told Jung that the Taos Indians didn't understand the continual, desperate, restless seeking of white people and thought white folks must be mad. When Jung asked him why he thought whites were mad, Ochiwiay said it was because they think with their heads. "We think from here," said the chief, and touched his heart.

What is the proper relationship between heart, mind, and belly/gut and how do we know what matters? (matter from L. materia "substance from which something is made," and mater "origin, source, mother.") This is a question for all of us in our personal and public lives. We need a synthesis of all three.

“Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what is the use of seeing?" Thich Nhat Hanh

Freedom

An interesting interview with James Hillman appeared in Huffington Post last month. In "America and the Shift in Ages," Hillman talks about the decay of American mythologies like the myth of American exceptionalism, futurism, and Christianity. The mighty efforts underway to preserve these myths (ie, fundamentalist thinking) is proof, Hillman says, of their lack of vitality.

Hillman is a stimulating thinker and important source for my own work and I encourage you to check out the whole interview. But I want to pull out this one bit on freedom because it relates to our current conversation about earned character.

Hillman: One would have to think about what needs to die in this culture; what attachments need to slip away, such as white supremacy, male supremacy, and the sense that we are the really "good people." America has a certain hubris about its virtue. Another thing would be our "unanalyzed" understanding of the word freedom. Probably one of the striking things in the dying of your father was his dependence on help, like nursing homes and nurses and crutches -- yet out of his lack of freedom arose another kind of freedom.

(Interviewer) Pythia: My father was particularly stubbornly American in that regard. He wouldn't even go into a hospital because then he wouldn't be "free" to smoke or drink. But you seem to be saying that as we lose one kind of freedom, there arises the possibility of another kind of freedom.

Hillman: I'm saying that we haven't thought about the idea of freedom enough. It needs to be internalized as an inner freedom from "demand" itself: the kind of freedom that comes when you're free from those compulsions to have and to own and to be someone. For example, think of the kind of freedom that (South African president) Nelson Mandela must have experienced when he was imprisoned. He completely lost his freedom in the outer world, yet he found freedom within. That's an example that broadens our current limited idea of freedom: that I can do any goddamn thing I want on my property; that I am my own boss and don't want government interference; that I don't want anybody telling me what I can and can't do; that we've had too much regulation, and so on. This is the freedom of a teenage boy.

Our definition of freedom is at the heart of our political divisions. The Tea Partyer's, for example, have merely thrown the issue into sharper relief. Feedom is also the central challenge and opportunity in the quest for earned character. The freedom that you grant yourself is connected to your self-definition and way of living; it reflects your highest values. Sometimes willingly obligating oneself is the path to personal freedom. More on this in the next post...

Wall Street Titans

It's been awhile since my last post on the influence of the titanic in American culture, and our belief that everything is, and must be "unlimited." For Americans anyway. For some Americans. It's an inhuman and dangerous fantasy and I wish I knew how to change it. Remember the Greek story of the Titanamachia and the defeat of the Titans? Who are those three hideous brothers and will they appear soon?

The mythological references to the Titans are rampant in the language used to report on the recent case against Goldman Sachs and the ongoing struggle for financial regulation. Here are a few excerpts from today's NYT, "Obama Issues Sharp Call for Reforms on Wall Street." If you think to yourself, when you read these, that I've highlighted common, ordinary words that could appear in a front page article about almost anything going on these days, then yes!!---it's that pervasive.

    "WASHINGTON — President Obama is traveling to the shadow of Wall Street on Thursday to counter what he calls “the furious efforts of industry lobbyists” trying to weaken or kill new financial    regulations that he says are needed to stave off a second Great Depression." [. . .]

    "In flying to New York City, the president wants to confront the financial industry more directly  through a sharp speech just a few minutes’ subway ride from Wall Street, and with some of its leading corporate titans in the audience. After castigating their “failure of responsibility” in recent years, he intends to call on them to stop resisting tighter regulation through the army of lobbyists now staked out on Capitol Hill."  [. . .]

    “I take no satisfaction in noting that my comments have largely been borne out by the events that followed,” he says in the excerpts. “But I repeat what I said then because it is essential that we learn the lessons of this crisis, so we don’t doom ourselves to repeat it." [. . .]

    "Imposing the so-called Volcker Rule, named after Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman who proposed limits on the freewheeling trading and risks taken by banks."  [. . .]

A furious struggle between major powers, a conflict about limits and the definition of responsibility, and the prospect of repeating the crisis, i.e. ending up in the repetitive hell of Tartarus. A refresher on the Titanamachia myth is "A Trio that Acts as a Multitude" posted here in March 2009. There's information on Tartarus in "The fate of the Titans," posted October 2008. 

The image is Goya's painting of Kronos, leader of the Titans, devouring one of his own children for fear that he would be overthrown. Goya painted this in response to the civil strife in Spain shortly before he left on a self-imposed exile to France. Here's one last snippet from the NYT article, a reminder that many Americans are in the belly of this beast:

“Some on Wall Street forgot that behind every dollar traded or leveraged, there is a family looking to buy a house, pay for an education, open a business, or save for retirement,” he says in the excerpts released by the White House. “What happens here has real consequences across our country.”

The bacchae

At the last Mythological Roundtable I told the story of the Bacchae, based on the play by Euripides. Euripides, the last great Athenian (Greek) tragedian, wrote the play during a self-imposed exile in 408 BCE. His plays and his politics were controversial. Euripides was interested in the disintegration and creation of social order.

The Bacchae is an intense story. Our culture is fascinated with violence and addicted to sensationalism of all forms but Euripides still horrifies, and in the process reveals, I think, just how little respect and understanding we have for violence and suffering as real forces and events, as something that breaks people and societies and doesn't end when the houselights go up and the popcorn has been eaten.

In brief, The Bacchae is about the god Dionysus and his return to Thebes, the city of his birth, and what happens when the powerful leaders of the city (who happen to be the mortal side of the god's family) deny his divinity and ridicule his rites. Dionysus, also called Bacchus or Bromius, has been wandering the Near East and Asia Minor, establishing his cult of the vine, dance, and mystical ecstasy. Now he's come back to Greece, to Thebes, to give his gifts to the Greeks and establish his mystery teachings. You remember the story I posted about Dionysus and his mother, Semele, and the way that Semele's family denied the connection to Zeus and the divinity of Dionysus. Well, Dionysus intends to get that straightened out.

First the god possesses the women and they leave their tasks and run up into the woods on Mt. Cithaeron to let their hair down, literally and figuratively. Pentheus, the king of Thebes (and Dionysus's cousin) is outraged at their impropriety and assumed indecency and sends his soldiers out to round them up. In the meantime, Dionysus himself comes to Pentheus, disguised as a man (a somewhat flamboyant one, dressed in skins and with long flowing curls), and simultaneously offers up proofs of this new god's greatness and plays on the king's prejudices. Pentheus refuses to accept the possibility that a rite that combines women and wine could come to any good, he refuses to accept the possibility that his aunt Semele was mistress to Zeus, and he refuses to accept the idea that revelry or "disorder" could have a useful, spiritual, or divine purpose. The evidence piles up but alas, the good king thinks he knows what is true and right.

Finally Dionysus plays on Pentheus's prurient interest in the women. Turns out the disapproving king harbors a desire to watch the women. Before he locks them up. You know. Dionysus possesses the king now too and this model of moral order dresses up as a woman with wig and robe and goes up the mountain to spy. The women see him of course, and rip him to pieces with their bare hands under the illusion that Pentheus is a lion. Flushed with pride, his mother Agave puts her son's head on her staff and marches the women back into Thebes to show off their hunting prize.

When the women reach the city and see the shocked faces of the men, the Dionysian energies fade. Agave and the women understand what they've done and the entire city is in shock. Agave is exiled for the crime of killing a family member. The end.

Creation, destruction. Reason, madness. Order, chaos. Discrimination, assimilation. Form, energy. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche argues that the tension between the Apollonian (order, discrimination, form) and Dionysian (chaos, assimilation, energy) are essential to art and any life-affirming philosophy. I'm intrigued by this mission to develop a life- affirming philosophy. I think it's part of Campbell's notion of bliss. But at the moment, I think of this line from the Coptic Gospel of Thomas.  “Jesus said, ‘If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.  If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.’”

Inanna in the Underworld

Installment number two of the myth of Inanna. It's a sign of her wisdom I think, that she makes the plans with Ninshubur. Inanna is doing something very unusual and dangerous and she has respect for the powers she will encounter, something that we would do well to learn. Failure is a possibility. To borrow Rilke again, "what we choose to fight is so tiny!" but we are sometimes too arrogant or ignorant to understand this.

On with Inanna: The journey to the Underworld was quite dangerous and few had the courage or the chutzpah to imagine it. Inanna told her faithful maidservant and loyal warrior Ninshubur of her plans. The goddess asked her to keep watch over the place of her descent and to go to the gods for help if she didn’t return in three days and nights. "Go first to Father Enlil, God of the Air," Inanna instructed, "and then to my father Nanna, God of the Moon, and finally to Enki, God of the Deep and of the Waters. Enki possesses the water and food of life and he won't let me die." Ninshubur agreed.

When Inanna arrived at the outer gates of the underworld she called out and knocked on the gates to rouse the gatekeeper. “Let me in” she demanded. But he shrugged and asked, “Who are you?” Unimpressed with her answer, the guard made Inanna explain the nature of her visit. He kept her waiting outside the gate while he went to the queen Ereshkigal to see what she wanted to do. “Your sister is here at the gate” he reported, “dressed up very fine and anxious to comfort you.”

Ereshkigal bit her lip and thought about this for a moment. “Let her in” she finally said, “but strip her of her finery, piece by piece, at each of my seven gates.”

So Inanna was allowed to pass, but at each gate something was removed: her crown, her string of small lapis beads, her double strand of beads, her breastplate, her gold ring, the lapis rod and line used to weigh and measure, and finally her robe. Each time Inanna protested. At each gate she was told: “Quiet Inanna, the ways of the underworld are perfect. They may not be questioned.”

Naked and bowed low, Inanna entered the throne room and knelt in the presence of her sister Ereshkigal. The judges of the underworld murmured and passed judgment upon her and Ereshkigal looked at her with the eye of death. Ereshkigal struck her.

Inanna was a corpse.
Inanna was hung like a piece of rotting meat on a hook on the wall.

Tough going for Inanna, who as you might suspect, is about to undergo a profound transformation.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth

One of my favorite myths is the story of Inanna. The image she portrays of the feminine, dating back to the days of the great mother goddesses, is rich and complex, and the seven surviving hymns that have been translated describe a cycle of life and psychological development that has not changed much. The hymn called the Descent of Inanna is particularly powerful and relevant this time of year as everything moves, metaphorically, underground. I think we need this story today to remind us of the necessity of going down and of the relationship between psychological growth and mature wisdom, and loss. There are people today (the authors of the self-help books that I studied being one, large category) who claim that hardship and suffering are a mistake, that if you are not always happy you simply are not positive enough. But suffering is part of growth. As Rilke wrote, "What we choose to fight is so tiny, what fights with us is so great... what is extraordinary and eternal does not want to be bent by us..." These are the words of someone who understands that we are made by life and the world, as we in turn make ourselves through them.

Here is installment number one of the myth cycle of Inanna. I invite you to imagine yourself as Inanna. What are your sources of power and earthly achievement, and how well prepared are you to give them up? This paraphrase is from Diane Wolkstein and Noah Kramer's wonderful translation of the myth, Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth, Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer, which I highly recommend.

Inanna was the Great Queen of Heaven and Earth. Beautiful, wise, and fertile, Inanna made good things happen. She was also canny and clever. Inanna won her powers and the civilizing order she brought to the people from the great father Enki, God of the Deep and of the Waters. They drank beer together and Enki made promises. Inanna drank him under the table.

Inanna married the shepherd Dumuzi and for a while they were very happy together (this may be the origin of our phrase "honeymoon"). But when Inanna made Dumuzi king, his attention turned to affairs of state of the amassing of his own power. One day, Inanna found herself at loose ends. She turned her ear to the ground ("ear" and "mind" are the same word in Sumerian, both meaning receptor of wisdom). Inanna knew that the husband of her sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld, had recently died, and Inanna thought she would go down to her sister, attend the funeral rites, and cheer her up. Inanna imagined that her sister must be in need of the light and life and sweetness that she, as Queen of Heaven and Earth, could provide.

Inanna assembled the symbols of her power, her crown, her string of small lapis beads, her double strand of beads, her breastplate, her gold ring, and the lapis rod and line used to weigh and measure. She adjusted her hair, put on her makeup, put on the royal robes and the other power objects. Her finery and imposing appearance proclaimed Inanna's importance as the goddess of Heaven and Earth, the royal priestess, the protector of the city, and the goddess of love. She was ready to visit her sister, Queen of the Underworld. Or so she thought.

Stay tuned.

5 Steps to Emotional Health

Last month Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul and an expert on emotional freedom, self-esteem, and positive thinking, posted some advice on Huffington Post (here it is ).  In “Emotional Health in Down Times: 5 Steps to Staying Positive and Productive,” Canfield offered the following: 1. Keep dreaming big, 2. Believe in yourself, 3. Stop complaining, 4. Turn paranoia on its head, and 5. Use affirmations to build self-confidence.

This is standard fare from the “be all, have it all, do anything you want” gurus who claim that if you are absolutely positive about everything, especially yourself, the sky is the limit. I don’t quibble with the underlying premise that we create our world through our thoughts and emotions. Attitude and goals certainly do matter. But I do have a problem with the infantilizing psychology of this advice, with the assumption that we can have more and more and more without regard for the details because “the universe” will just work them out for us, and the belief that we can transcend, that is rise above, everything that we don’t like about ourselves or the world by simply chanting phrases like “I am love.”

I imagine (yes I know this will seem a bit negative) that Canfield would claim that I am afraid of my own success or happiness, clinging to the deluded notions of a culture that insists on endings and failure, misinformed, or wrapped around the finger of my inner critic. But I don’t think so. There’s no light without a shadow, no up without a down, and I don’t trust any philosophy that lacks complexity because it’s well, fundamentalist, even if it spins out images of shiny new cars and blossoming love relationships and world peace, and uses words like “harmonize” instead of “blasphemy.” Fundamentalism is a one-sided dogma of any sort and this glossy philosophy of relentless optimism smacks of it.

Here’s my theory. We, even those of us who should know better, have gotten ourselves into this tremendous mess, economically, environmentally, politically, and spiritually because we don’t know how to accept limits. The entire cosmos it seems, operates in a series of cycles but for some reason here in the US of A, even whispering the possibility that bust might follow boom, that housing prices might come down, that infinite growth is cancerous, is defeatist, negative, and downright un-American. We don’t know how to admit defeat and take it as one of life’s common occurrences. We can’t accept that it’s not all personal, that the world doesn’t revolve around us. We look for simple answers and quick fixes and silver bullets and choose sides in the face of ambiguity, paradox, complication, and contradiction. The growth we need now isn’t in the GNP. It’s in struggling through those things, not pretending that they don’t exist. It’s in working together on a common vision, not refining a personal dream in front of the bathroom mirror. This is not negative. This is not harder. It is more mature.

Here are my 5 steps to emotional health in these down times:

1. Stop shopping. Stop jumping on the hamster wheel of consumer desire. Stop feeding the economic machine that is threatening to run us all over. Stop accumulating stuff you don’t need, especially so-called cheap stuff that is anything but, once you factor in the sweat and poverty of the folks who made that gizmo, the industrial byproducts, the wasted materials, and the space in the landfill. If you stop shopping you may find time to dream, real dreams, not dreams about the stuff you could own. Or you might write a song, or a poem, or plant a tree. And note, since we’re all a bit short on cash these days, this is a less expensive way to live as well.
2. Do something for someone else. Who’s happy? The people who don’t spend every waking minute dwelling on themselves. Being in service, giving a gift (make it yourself), extending a kindness, even smiling and making real eye contact with every being you encounter in the course of your day---any of these will bring more satisfaction and love into your life than meditating on either your possible success or your past failures.
3. Practice gratitude. You’re here, alive, breathing, trying, learning.
4. Get politically active. As Edward Abbey said, “Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.” Empower yourself and show up on behalf of something you care about, even if it’s two minutes twice a week to sign an email petition (I must warn you, this can lead to more involved, and invigorating activities). Put your money where your mouth is and say something other than “I am worthy of love, joy, and success” or “I am smart.” You know, we’re not all smart. And some of us can be annoying assholes. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have something to offer, something much easier to access, appreciate, and experience in action, as part of a community. In a democracy, regular political participation (that’s more then every 4 years and doesn’t include ranting at the television or computer screen) is a responsibility and a necessity. Take yourself and the needs of this country and of our planet seriously and stop being victimized.
5. Go for a walk. Yes, outside. Move your body, wake up your senses, stimulate your imagination, open your heart, and relax all at the same time. Despite all of our troubles, it’s a beautiful world.

A new way forward

I'm posting the link above because I agree with this agenda, and it points to a problematic paradox that I think we need to consider, namely, that we've become the tools of our tools. Institutions and ideas that should simply be the means to a desired end have become an end in themselves. Arguably we need banks or something like them to facilitate credit and other transactions, but these are functions, tools to reach a set of goals that reflect our values as a society. Somehow, it seems to me, we're now in service to banks and other economic ideas. We're perpetuating them and working for them as if they have intrinsic value without enough attention to what they are supposedly designed to do for us. We're tinkering with the engine without asking if the car can get us anywhere that we really want to go. I think the heated ideological arguments that take the place of discussions about practical issues are evidence that our values, our collective agreement about our destination, have gotten confused and murky.

This brings to mind a story from the Popul Vuh, the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life. This book is an interesting creation story but it's more than ancient history. The Mayans understand the text to be alive, full of insight about the present if properly interpreted. According to the Mayans, the creation of human beings was part of the gods' vision of the earth but they fail three times before they create us. The gods want human beings who will walk, work, and talk articulately, who will be able to understand the complex and beautiful rhythms of the world and the nature of the gods and participate appropriately. This vision is hard to realize.

The first human beings can't work or talk and they become animals. The second set are made of mud and they can't do much either. They slowly dissolve. Finally the gods decide to try wood. The wooden people look and talk and reproduce a lot like we do but they fail to harmonize with the rhythms of the world in an orderly way and they neglect the gods. They create a certain kind of chaos that ultimately destroys them. This chaos first takes the form of hurricanes and the proliferation of dangerous life forms. (If this sounds far fetched to you, consider the increase in storms and natural disasters linked to global warming and the rampant destruction of forests, reefs, and wetlands, the emergence of AIDs, and mad cow disease and other flues for example, traced to farm practices conducted with a cocktail of chemicals and disregard for the natural order.) Then the tools of the wooden people turn against them. They are all killed, killed by the instruments they initially employed to create a world out of harmony with what is, a world out of balance.

Today we are metaphorically run over by our cars, poisoned by our "food," and sweating, stressing, round the clock to meet the needs of our possessions.We are not the wooden people says the Popol Vuh, but we can't just keep going either, worked by the very tools that have brought us to this place.

The hideous/repressed might be the shadow

An important idea that lends the "depth" to depth psychology is the "shadow." The shadow is the unconscious aspect of an individual or a society, in contrast to the "light" of consciousness. Although the contents of the shadow aren't necessarily "bad," the term shadow is also used to refer to things that the ego represses and relegates to unconsciousness, events or qualities or feelings that are too unpleasant or pose too many challenges to the ego's status quo. The ego is an important and relatively frail container for our beliefs and moral judgments; the control it exerts is a personal and collective force. 

We can get a clue about what is repressed by noting what bothers us about other people and the accusations that we make. Called "projection," this is one way to insure that repressed material stays down. If you don't want to look at your own mixed record, if you don't want to confront your own sins and failings, accuse someone else of your crimes, find an "axis of evil" outside of yourself.

In this vein I share the following observation, which raises interesting possibilities regarding the identity of our three hideous brothers (who are not to spoken of).

"Maybe the three unspeakables are simply the shadows of whatever bright torches a given society holds up - in the U.S.: Liberty's shadow might be Slavery or indentured servitude. Democracy's shadow might be the lack of choice we truly have in our elected leaders.  Free market's shadow, the lack of freedom in the market for a large segment of our society or other countries who must abide by our terms.  etc.  It's interesting to think of the "she dost protest too much" idea when we think of the ideals we sing out so loudly in our anthems at our ball games, or that we utter as we point our fingers at the other across the planet who does differently (and so, does what is bad)."

We'll continue our engagement with the Greek myths of the Titans, Prometheus specifically, at the High Desert Mythological RoundTable Tuesday April 28th, 7-9PM at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center. If you're in the area, hope to see you. If not, stay tuned here.