Maybe, Maybe, Maybe

This week I am awake. This week I have more to say.

This week there is no peanut butter in sight--just a vague dancing hangover from last night, but it's manageable.

Sounds good. Let's go.

So some people wonder why cultures have myths--I wonder why not? First let's take life, simple enough as it is: the every day-type stuff, routines, general monotony. Obviously we get through it, because we're not dead yet. But what gets us through is having something to believe in. Take, for example, Christianity, probably one of the largest metanarratives of our culture. Faith in God keeps many people afloat, keeps them walking on the blah days, keeps them standing on the awful ones. And while it doesn't exactly tell of a higher power "vomiting the Moon and Stars," it can be considered a bit of a myth, can't it? For the purposes of my argument, anyway.

But that's a bit of a touchy subject, so maybe I don't want to get too far into that.

What I'm trying to say, in my incoherent-as-always sort of way, is that to know anything, you have to have been told it before. You believe what you are told, and then you work that into your life. Honestly, if one attempts to keep an open mind, it can be difficult to prove that anything we know is not all a myth. What if it is? What if everything we've ever been told is a lie? Can we really prove it all, or are we, mostly, going on faith?

Maybe myths aren't all about mystical creatures and amazing happenings that we can't fathom and need to explain away. Maybe myths are more along the lines of the ordinary, and maybe we take it for granted. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I feel like that's all I can get out today. "Maybe" must be the word of the day.

...How come I come out with all this stuff, and at the end it feels like I haven't said anything at all?? I suppose the whole point of a blog is to get down your thoughts, just into words, even if they're not coherent in the slightest. It's like one of those [crappy] first drafts. So maybe later I can use it to form something sensible. Meaningful. Until then...

I would also like to take a moment to ponder the statement that metanarratives can lead to oppression. I find this prompt interesting. Maybe (there it is again) we should decide what it is we consider "oppression" to be... Hmmm, oppression. I see... force. Being forced into things, into lines, into... stereotypes. Ah, yes, another touchy subject there--stereotypes. If an entire culture believes something fiercely enough, it must be difficult for the individual not to do so. There's that whole "mass reality" idea again. Hmm. Hmmmmm. This isn't always a good thing. The masses can't always reign supreme; individuality needs to continue to spring forth every once in awhile (okay, maybe more than every once in awhile) for society to keep functioning. Renewing itself, in a way.

So then maybe we find ourselves in a bit of a predicament... How do we fix this?

We could fill our society with these "micronarratives... a kind of storytelling that does not seek to legitimize itself through reference to a single grand narrative outside itself." Maybe these are simpler. Maybe this way, if you want to believe the myth, you can go ahead and believe the myth--but everyone else isn't necessarily going to be persecuted if they don't. Maybe. Maybe...

This pondering was not exhausted to the full extent to which it could have been exhausted.

I have yet to produce a clearly concise and insightful blog. My time will come.