Criminally underrated perspective. Almost as much so as it is mistakenly believed to be understood.
Death is unique in the way that anything man can ever imagine, achieve, or hope to achieve is suddenly and forcibly re-evaluated if one ever happens to find one’s self on It’s doorstep. Some people desire or otherwise enjoy this. And some certainly need it. Unfortunately, what is exciting or momentous the first time around becomes boring and vacuous once repeated, this often leading to a cycle of undesirable and socially-destructive (or at least annoying) behaviors. Thus is why there are better, much more recommended wells for a man’s mind to drink from, so as to satiate his existential thirst he himself cannot even understand.
I suppose the fledgling adage “if it bleeds, it leads” applies to more than one might immediately suspect.
There was once folklore in the US about a massive slave revolt where black men take up arms and kill all the white people. Bloodshed in the streets. Strangely enough, that folklore had a significant part to play in the fall into civil war.
Whenever I need a pick me up, Baudrillard provides:
The wonderful final scene of Jurassic Park, in which the cloned neodinosaurs wreck the museum and wreak havoc upon their fossilized ancestors – quite a good anticipation of the fate of our own species, trapped between its fossils and its clones.
The problem of the human species is that we are beginning to have seen it all already, and are even starting to feel this ourselves. Given humanity’s virtual mastery of the world and its total(?) success as a species, it is no longer its evolution but its disappearance that is becoming interesting. It is at this point that the dinosaurs are celebrating their sensational comeback. We are using the dinosaurs to flirt with our own abolition as a species. We are projecting ourselves into the past in the form of the only species whose domination was as total as ours, and which has spectacularly disappeared.
Noah’s earth was spiritually cleansing in a mikvah, a baptism, a sprinkling of holy water. It’s a renewal, a reconstitution, not just physically, but a resanctification.
Tumah to taharah.
Is this every apocalypse story? Probably not, but it should be.
The whole account of the coming of the messiah is part of the Jewish tradition. What it represents specifically if not looked upon literally is up for debate, and I don’t suggest expertise in mythological interpretion. My point was just that it should be interpreted that way.
As a general observation, mythology (apocalyptic or not) occupies a cultural space somewhere between fiction and non-fiction. An author of true fiction fully admits he is making up the entirety of his story and he may or may not try to impart symbolic significance to it.
Mythology, on the other hand, is not generally thought to have a single author, but instead are tales passed down through generations. They may have certain threads of non-fiction to them that might have been written in a way to serve a function, perhaps to express a virtue or tradition. They also might be believed by readers to be fully, partially, or not at all true depending upon the reader. As in, some do accept the Bible is non-fiction to some degree, yet no one believes modern works of fiction are true.
We can also distinguish out parables, like Aesop, where no on believes there was actually a fox that spoke of sour grapes or a tortoise that outran an unfocused hare.
You mentioned archtypes in a prior post, which might have been an intentional nod to Jung, who has written extensively on the signficance of mythology. His view, from what I’ve been reading, is that there are cultural consistencies across all of humanity with regard to certain mythologies, all pointing in the direction that humans have a priori emotional drivers that are revealed through certain mythological structures. For example, David beating goliath, where a small virtuous hero is able to overcome great adversity is thought to be a universally accepted notion of righteousness. That is, the collective unconscious already contains these notions and they get revealed through story telling.
You asked about the Jewish view of the Messiah, and it does not have a notion of salvation attached to a direct child of God. That was really the reason I asked which messiah story you were referencing. There are very different stories in that regard. I would think the Jewish one relates more to adhering to the convenant and sanctifying the world and the Christian to God’s ultimate grace.
What people scribble down on a poorly thought out government survey is not always what they truly feel inside, in case you were not aware.
Ask anyone if they are happy. To admit that you are not is to seek a reason for why you are not. This search for a reason turns into a very real enemy, even if none actually exists and the real cause belies the person in the mirror. We do not like admitting we made poor life choices or missed out on great opportunity. So we act as if we didn’t. This is how the brain maintains its homeostasis. Cognitive bias. We don’t like to be wrong, particularly in moments of high stress or strife. So we double down. It’s part of how mankind survives.
All men are actors on a stage, wise men say. We have our entrances and we have our exists. We all have one thing in common. We certainly like to keep up appearance.
Who knows, maybe they really are. However. One must remember. Ignorance is bliss. Smiles are contagious. Which would mean, so are frowns. If I were a government I would be quite aware of psychological phenomena such as copycat crime and copycat suicide as well as the underlying evolutionary herd mentality responsible and perhaps flub the truth just a little every now and then. For the good of the populous, of course.
Nothing concrete or indisputably damning, I simply wanted to offer a reminder as to the general unreliability of most surveys coupled with specific reasons that may or may not accompany this particular “touchy” subject matter of “happiness” as it just so happens to consciously and unconsciously relate to and explore a fundamental depth of human existence and purpose that many people base their entire identities and value as human beings upon.
Figured it may have been of use to one or more persons reading, is all. No trouble.
