Fairy Tales for the Tenured

Between truth and dream, I know what I want: a dreamy truth -- like truth as depicted in, say, myth.

I say this after having finally gotten around to watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy with Gagdad Jr. Myth is not truth, obviously. But equally obviously, there is truth in myth. Which isn't so strange when you think about it, for it turns out the same is true of history:

Truth is in history, but history is not truth (Dávila).

How can this be? I hate to give credit for anything to postmodernity, but it does at least appreciate the significance of narrative, even if it immediately throws away its deeper meaning. For it is as if they say: Truth is expressed in narrative, therefore, there is no truth. Rather, there are only competing narratives that mask the will to power. 

To put it in mythological terms, there is only the Ring of Power, and anyone who tries to pretend otherwise is either naive or trying to con you. But the truth of what they say isn't new at all, and what they say that's new isn't true.

It is interesting -- spoiler alert in case there's one other person who hasn't seen the movie -- that when finally faced with the choice of forsaking the ring, Frodo can't do it. Best he can do is prevent someone else from having it, Gollum. Frodo essentially murders his rival, and the ring goes down with him. 

Now that expresses a perennial Truth of human nature: if I can't have it, then no one else can, AKA, primordial envy.  

As we've discussed in the past, envy is not the same as greed, which merely desires the object. Rather, envy is much more pernicious, as it is driven to destroy the very thing that arouses its desire. Think of Hitler, who ordered his general to reduce Paris to rubble rather than surrender it to the allies: Paris must not pass into the enemy's hands, except as a field of ruins.

Ironically, the Nazi general who refused the order has sometimes been called the Savior of Paris.   

Say what you want about Hitler, at least he had a consistent ethos: with the allies closing in, he issued what is called the Nero Decree, which ordered the total destruction of anything of value before it fell into the hands of the enemy. Indeed, if Germany couldn't prevail in the struggle, then this only proved Germans themselves to be unworthy of life. Now that is pure envy. 

Reminds me of Hillary in 2016: if I can't have the ring, then at least I can destroy Trump and democracy. The spite continues. If they're going to lose in November, might as well cause as much chaos and destruction as possible -- to our cities, to the border, and to the economy -- and then blame Republicans for it. 

At this point I could veer into a post on Chesterton and Lewis to flesh out the notion of dreamy truth, but that's been done. At One Cosmos we prefer to employ strange words to seek out old civilizations, and to blog where no blogger has blogged before. 

Let's start with some additional aphorisms before we light out for the territories. Or head off to Trader Joes, whichever comes first. 

Just as there are truths that can only be painted, so there are others that are only expressed in legends.

The bridge between nature and man is not science, but myth.

Man often believes he is exchanging a fable for a truth when he is merely exchanging one fable for another fable.

What I want to say is that man cannot avoid myth, because he is a historical -- which is to say, temporal -- being. Not to champion the obvious again, but we simply cannot avoid stories and narratives to structure the deployment of truth in time. Now,

Nothing is explainable outside of history, but history is not enough to explain anything.

Read "narrative" for history, and you get the point. However, not all narratives are created equal, and many are created specifically to deceive, beginning with the narrator. 

A myth is a narrative, but not all narratives are myths. Rather, there are rules, i.e., a hierarchy of truths, and if you confuse the top with the bottom, or vice versa, you are surely entering a world of pain. We'll just end with this aphoristic truism and pick up the thread tomorrow:

News stories are the substitute for truths. 

Fairy tales for the tenured -- for educated white women, the low information crowd, the envious, the corporate gollums, the groomers and other deviants, etc.