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to Learn How You Can (Dot) Com.
We hope to educate and
entertain you. These articles will open your mind to a world of knowledge.
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The Best of the Best
Myths
The best of the best myths, urban or social myths, have
been given a rigorous going-over. First we grew out of the old folk myths
that our parents used as forms of domestic control: we realized that
eating watermelon seeds would not grow a whole fruit in our bellies, that
crossing our eyes would not make our eyes stick that way, and, sadly, we
learned there was no Santa Claus, no Tooth Fairy, no Easter Bunny, no dead
man with a hook for an arm…. Most of us let go of thinking if we flashed
our headlights at a driver who hadn’t turned his on yet that we’d be in
embroiled in gang wars or that if we drank soda with Pop Rocks that we
would die an implosive death…. But as is true to form for humanity as an
archetype adoring and myth-clutching culture, new myths have evolved.
As Munich freelance writer Klaus Manhart reiterates in his article,
“Likely Story,” in Scientific American Mind, humans need myths. The “brain
needs a story…” he writes, and the brain needs, once the story is told, to
be able to “explain the unexplainable,” [as Manhart notes Joseph Campbell
discovered] to follow through on its imperative to “impose order on the
world.”
But while justified in why we need myths, we are also called to our
accountability when it comes to potentially damaging myths. Enter the
brilliant John Stossel, 20/20’s challenging reporter, to deconstruct the
media-driven myths of 2005.
As reported by LBN (Late Breaking News), John Stossel will de-mystify his
version of the best of the best of myths--numbers one through ten as
follows (on ABC’s 20/20, Friday, January 6, 2006:
Number 10: Americans have less free time than we used to.
Number 9. Money buys happiness.
Number 8: Republicans shrink government.
Number 7: The world is getting too crowded.
Number 6. Chemicals are killing us.
Number 5: Guns are bad.
Number 4: We're drowning in garbage.
Number 3: We're destroying our forests.
Number 2: Getting cold will give you a cold.
Number 1: Life is getting worse.
Now granted, minds such as those belonging to Manhart, Stossel, and we who
are reading this have to make sense of the world, have to find an
explanation for the unexplained (or inane). But do we have to de-bunk all
that keeps us going, in faith, in nihilistic determination and
malcontented spite? And, further, hadn’t we gotten over numbers 2, 5, and
9 by now????!!
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