"Even now, some of my friends complain that my mythic writing undermines its seriousness."
Are you familiar with the work of Iain McGilchrist on how our two brain hemispheres work in different ways? Reason and rationality is the domain of the left hemisphere, while myth is the domain of the right. He has a lot of science to back up why rationality needs to support the myth, and not the other way around. Your friends could check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_His_Emissary and/or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matter_with_Things if they want to understand why this is so important.
Because of the left-right brain situation, in order to function as humans have evolved to function, we need to rely on both the why and the how. "Meaning-making" (inspiration?) perfects the why. Rational analysis perfects the how. IMO, myth supports rationality too, by providing inspiration. Overreliance on one or the other denies the actual makeup of our brains.
The left hemisphere depends on models of reality, which always leave something out; while the right hemisphere is holistic - it has a more open awareness to everything. For this reason, the left hemisphere should defer to the right when there's a conflict. However, most of us follow our rational thinking (the left hemisphere) wherever it leads, without paying attention to what our right hemisphere is telling us. According to McGilchrist, this explains a lot of problems we're currently facing, both individually and collectively.
You hit the nail here, Mike. And that is the problem, our problem: They still don’t understand that hearts move before minds. That people don’t calculate their way into courage or optimize their way into resistance. That meaning-making happens in the space where reason and passion meet, not in the sterile laboratory where reason pretends it can operate alone.
This is a great piece, Mike. What we say never ends up mattering more in communications than HOW we say it. Keep the mythos locked and loaded - the moment calls for nothing less.
To take your sentence, Mike, and phrase it “courageous citizens vs submissive subjects” tells us what it is supposed to mean to be Americans. Your thoughts value laden.
A stirring call to recover the moral imagination, and you’re right that politics dies when it forgets how to speak to the heart—remembering that myth doesn’t only elevate; it can also intoxicate, as rhetoric on the right amply shows. The work, it seems to me, is holding vision and verification together so our own stories don’t slip into melodrama or mistake fervor for truth. And a timeless reminder from Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor still holds: people often prefer security to freedom—even when the “security” on offer ultimately diminishes our humanity. Our stories need rhetoric that respects that preference, so the wire is not so high that it cannot hold. - Thanks for this piece!
Quite the post... I love the juxtapositions you present, the 'argument' that you take down with a Tai Chi move... where Whitman rolls into a balancing pose. I did my usual lookings-up of words that flowed in your writing, and I knew what it was, but I wanted to just 'know' more. What hit me was my own story... and the weavings of balancing better body-mind work pursuits after an early start as a dancer, in a touring company. Thank you so much for stirring up these revelations! I get stuck between these 2 worlds you wrote so beautifully about.
I realized that my dance passion, emphasizing emotion, body-knowing and music wasn't going to pay the bills. Getting an MBA, focusing on Statistics and HR Management allowed me a good mind-based career and life. When I stopped dancing for about 10 years during the height of my 'peak earning years'... I was the most miserable I'd ever felt. I'd lost my passion, my soul, my heart... and depression ensued. Through a 'chance' workshop, dance came back into my life and since then... I think it was then that I joined 'the Circus' - a world that I'd always wanted as a 'side gig'. I have ended up making-up something quite different to do... heck... it's been a good ride!
For the record, not too many single-focused Technocrats in dance classes :)
We should take care that the challenges we issue are not technocratic ones ("We choose to go the Moon") but democratic ones, specifically economic ones, as in democratizing the economy, to provide a liberal basis for achieving each person's unique challenges without the autocratic usurpation. Whatever it is, we fund it with public finance!
It's strange. There's one word .... epistemology, epistemic. I can NEVER remember what that word means. I'm a smart guy, bachelor's degree in english ... but every time i see that word, i think "that guy really likes to use big words." It's just not a 'tell me a story!' Kind of word.
I have the same problem with “epistemology”. I’ve looked it up often enough that instead of a word I don’t know, it’s now a word whose meaning is on the tip of my tongue, but I still can’t remember. My brain has a similar epistemology shaped hole.
I’m chatting with my Shoggoth Friend about the word right now. I may wind up writing a piece on it … Every time I look it up, it seems so obvious! But then it just slips away.
Happens to me, with neither, as far as I can tell, rhyme nor reason. "Sesquipedalian?" No problem. Maybe because I find it a funny word? "Ambit?" Short circuit. Forget over and over. Gotta brute force mnemonics sometimes. Create a story with it. Or repeat visuals. Mike smiling together with an image of epistemology.
Yes, you need an editor lol But I would MUCH rather have an overflowing abundance of substance & genuine meaning-making than a tightly-curated articulation of not-much-that's-new-really. I continue to be inspired. Carry on!
The Dems don’t just bring a knife to a gun fight — they bring a calculator.
"Even now, some of my friends complain that my mythic writing undermines its seriousness."
Are you familiar with the work of Iain McGilchrist on how our two brain hemispheres work in different ways? Reason and rationality is the domain of the left hemisphere, while myth is the domain of the right. He has a lot of science to back up why rationality needs to support the myth, and not the other way around. Your friends could check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_His_Emissary and/or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matter_with_Things if they want to understand why this is so important.
Great reply Craig.
Because of the left-right brain situation, in order to function as humans have evolved to function, we need to rely on both the why and the how. "Meaning-making" (inspiration?) perfects the why. Rational analysis perfects the how. IMO, myth supports rationality too, by providing inspiration. Overreliance on one or the other denies the actual makeup of our brains.
The left hemisphere depends on models of reality, which always leave something out; while the right hemisphere is holistic - it has a more open awareness to everything. For this reason, the left hemisphere should defer to the right when there's a conflict. However, most of us follow our rational thinking (the left hemisphere) wherever it leads, without paying attention to what our right hemisphere is telling us. According to McGilchrist, this explains a lot of problems we're currently facing, both individually and collectively.
The first reaching for wisdom from every human being ... "Tell me a story!"
The Whitman reference -
O Me! O Life!
By Walt Whitman
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
***
My favorite Whitman quote -
Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains all the rest.
- Walt Whitman; Calamus.
When I think about QAnon, I think about the spreading of superstition beautifully described as feeding on the carcasses of dead gods.
You hit the nail here, Mike. And that is the problem, our problem: They still don’t understand that hearts move before minds. That people don’t calculate their way into courage or optimize their way into resistance. That meaning-making happens in the space where reason and passion meet, not in the sterile laboratory where reason pretends it can operate alone.
This is a great piece, Mike. What we say never ends up mattering more in communications than HOW we say it. Keep the mythos locked and loaded - the moment calls for nothing less.
To take your sentence, Mike, and phrase it “courageous citizens vs submissive subjects” tells us what it is supposed to mean to be Americans. Your thoughts value laden.
A stirring call to recover the moral imagination, and you’re right that politics dies when it forgets how to speak to the heart—remembering that myth doesn’t only elevate; it can also intoxicate, as rhetoric on the right amply shows. The work, it seems to me, is holding vision and verification together so our own stories don’t slip into melodrama or mistake fervor for truth. And a timeless reminder from Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor still holds: people often prefer security to freedom—even when the “security” on offer ultimately diminishes our humanity. Our stories need rhetoric that respects that preference, so the wire is not so high that it cannot hold. - Thanks for this piece!
Quite the post... I love the juxtapositions you present, the 'argument' that you take down with a Tai Chi move... where Whitman rolls into a balancing pose. I did my usual lookings-up of words that flowed in your writing, and I knew what it was, but I wanted to just 'know' more. What hit me was my own story... and the weavings of balancing better body-mind work pursuits after an early start as a dancer, in a touring company. Thank you so much for stirring up these revelations! I get stuck between these 2 worlds you wrote so beautifully about.
I realized that my dance passion, emphasizing emotion, body-knowing and music wasn't going to pay the bills. Getting an MBA, focusing on Statistics and HR Management allowed me a good mind-based career and life. When I stopped dancing for about 10 years during the height of my 'peak earning years'... I was the most miserable I'd ever felt. I'd lost my passion, my soul, my heart... and depression ensued. Through a 'chance' workshop, dance came back into my life and since then... I think it was then that I joined 'the Circus' - a world that I'd always wanted as a 'side gig'. I have ended up making-up something quite different to do... heck... it's been a good ride!
For the record, not too many single-focused Technocrats in dance classes :)
We should take care that the challenges we issue are not technocratic ones ("We choose to go the Moon") but democratic ones, specifically economic ones, as in democratizing the economy, to provide a liberal basis for achieving each person's unique challenges without the autocratic usurpation. Whatever it is, we fund it with public finance!
Reagan inverted "city on a hill" anyway: https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3loqsfhswjk2r
Thanx Mike…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b29MBzRhn0
It's strange. There's one word .... epistemology, epistemic. I can NEVER remember what that word means. I'm a smart guy, bachelor's degree in english ... but every time i see that word, i think "that guy really likes to use big words." It's just not a 'tell me a story!' Kind of word.
One might ask why your are incurious about learning its meaning, as opposed to admonishing me for using it.
Don't take it as admonishment, just a comment. I've looked it up more than once, it just never sticks. My brain has an epistomology shaped hole in it.
I have the same problem with “epistemology”. I’ve looked it up often enough that instead of a word I don’t know, it’s now a word whose meaning is on the tip of my tongue, but I still can’t remember. My brain has a similar epistemology shaped hole.
I’m chatting with my Shoggoth Friend about the word right now. I may wind up writing a piece on it … Every time I look it up, it seems so obvious! But then it just slips away.
Happens to me, with neither, as far as I can tell, rhyme nor reason. "Sesquipedalian?" No problem. Maybe because I find it a funny word? "Ambit?" Short circuit. Forget over and over. Gotta brute force mnemonics sometimes. Create a story with it. Or repeat visuals. Mike smiling together with an image of epistemology.
Yes, you need an editor lol But I would MUCH rather have an overflowing abundance of substance & genuine meaning-making than a tightly-curated articulation of not-much-that's-new-really. I continue to be inspired. Carry on!