Sunday, February 01, 2004

I was thinking tonight on the way home about how, for those of us who seek truth, being absolutely and irrepressibly faithful to the dictum of always being truthful is completely core to the mission. The only way we can get people to challenge the truth of the dominant mythology or question is to avoid simply creating an alternative mythos. I know that process is frustrating, and seems counterproductive at times, as if we are fighting some battle without using the tools or weapons of our opponent, despite having those techniques and technologies available. But we will never win on those grounds, using their rules, using their tools. Even if we win the moment, the year, the decade, the century, we simply replace who wields the dominate mythology, not the existence of mythology itself. And, in the short term, unless our messages are as completely clear and cogent and irrefutable as possible will we stand a chance against views that are aired and reinforced every day in every way, some of them constantly digging at the core facts and values we espouse. I was thinking of this specifically in relation to the factoid that people spout about Superbowl Sunday being the number one day for domestic violence. Someone brought it up casually, as if it were no big deal, that everyone knew it, that Katherine Mckinnon wrote it in a book that every introductory women's studies class reads. I still don't know that he believed me, despite my insistence that as someone who used to do domestic violence work, I especially hated the fact that people still quoted that mistruth because it impacts all of the other body of statistics critical in helping defeat the mythology of men's ownership over women's bodies. Or the owning of anyone by anyone one else, physically or psychically. I was also thinking whether or not the nation or the world could survive a massive terrorist attack, broadcast on live television, or even a bombing that we all knew, watching, was killing tens or hundreds of thousands of people in that instant. Would we become enraged, watching something jeopardize our Super Bowl Sunday supremecy, or sink into a such an empathetic wail throughout the world, understanding in that moment how closely our deaths and our killings embrace, that our screams became song, decrying violence forevermore. I was also thinking, on the drive home, about whether or not part of being a prophet is simply taking people a step into the next phase of being in language and imagery that simply guide people along, without giving them overload. Which begs the question of whether there isn't some intelligensia, more organic than self-identified sentient, that speaks to our species through our philosophers, poets and priests, helping guide, rather than cajole. If some of the mythologies we hold are essential to our evolutionary process. I wonder if there are people in history who have had a more concious awareness of this almost socio-biological dialectic 2:35:20 AM