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Guest Blog: Karen Armstrong Excerpt
A couple of quick notes before we get to the guest blog today (the first in awhile, I know!). First is that the e-book of Serenity Adventures is now available at Drive Thru RPG as an e-book. I have word that the book is off to print as well, getting words actually embedded on paper, and it will soon exist in tangible format. In the meantime, the Drive Thru RPG version has a sample available, so go check it out!
Second note: you may have heard that several Americans were detained this week in China for documenting a pro-Tibetan protest. Among these journalists was my good friend Brian Conley, the founder of Alive in Baghdad. The news is that these independent journalists are going to be held for 10 days before being deported (so we're only a week away from them coming home). While I know that Brian would prefer for people to focus on the people who are suffering from constant oppression rather than his plight, I wanted to take this moment to mention them here on the blog, and encourage people to follow this story in the news--and if you feel so moved, see what you can do to help.
Third note: I've noticed that deadlines manage to become more and more brutal the longer I try to pretend they're not there. I've beaten one, have another on Monday, and then have until mid-September until my next firm (LFR) deadline. We'll see if this gives me a chance to catch up on my soft deadlines!
And now, for the introduction. Karen Armstrong is a freelance scholar well known for her writings about religion, as well as two memoirs about her experiences finding faith and losing it. <lj user=randyhoyt>, who I was delighted to meet at MythCon last weekend (and whose online magazine Journey to the Sea you'll be hearing about quite a bit on this blog in the future), expanded my knowledge of Armstrong over the course of a very informative conversation: in short, she is not only a bestselling writer and engaging scholar of monotheism, but a woman with a deep story of her own, which look forward to reading. The most pertinent of her works to this blog is her A Short History of Myth, from which this (also short) excerpt is taken. I have taken the liberty of replacing her "imagination" with "Imagination" in my mind (referring to Barfield's work, and I suspect Coleridge's), but it can be read well either way.
I hope you enjoy it!
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Another peculiar characteristic of the human mind is its ability to have ideas and experiences that we cannot explain rationally. We have imagination, a faculty that enables us to think of something that is not immediately present, and that, when we first conceive it, has no objective existence. The imagination is the faculty that produces religion and mythology. Today mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute; we often dismiss it as irrational and self-indulgent. But the imagination is also the faculty that has enabled scientists to bring new knowledge to light and to invent technology that has made us immeasurably more effective. The imagination of scientists has enabled us to travel through outer space and walk on the moon, feats that were once only possible in the realm of myth. Mythology and science both extend the scope of human beings. Like science and technology, mythology, as we shall see, is not about opting out of this world, but about enabling us to live more intensely within it.
Second note: you may have heard that several Americans were detained this week in China for documenting a pro-Tibetan protest. Among these journalists was my good friend Brian Conley, the founder of Alive in Baghdad. The news is that these independent journalists are going to be held for 10 days before being deported (so we're only a week away from them coming home). While I know that Brian would prefer for people to focus on the people who are suffering from constant oppression rather than his plight, I wanted to take this moment to mention them here on the blog, and encourage people to follow this story in the news--and if you feel so moved, see what you can do to help.
Third note: I've noticed that deadlines manage to become more and more brutal the longer I try to pretend they're not there. I've beaten one, have another on Monday, and then have until mid-September until my next firm (LFR) deadline. We'll see if this gives me a chance to catch up on my soft deadlines!
And now, for the introduction. Karen Armstrong is a freelance scholar well known for her writings about religion, as well as two memoirs about her experiences finding faith and losing it. <lj user=randyhoyt>, who I was delighted to meet at MythCon last weekend (and whose online magazine Journey to the Sea you'll be hearing about quite a bit on this blog in the future), expanded my knowledge of Armstrong over the course of a very informative conversation: in short, she is not only a bestselling writer and engaging scholar of monotheism, but a woman with a deep story of her own, which look forward to reading. The most pertinent of her works to this blog is her A Short History of Myth, from which this (also short) excerpt is taken. I have taken the liberty of replacing her "imagination" with "Imagination" in my mind (referring to Barfield's work, and I suspect Coleridge's), but it can be read well either way.
I hope you enjoy it!
--
Another peculiar characteristic of the human mind is its ability to have ideas and experiences that we cannot explain rationally. We have imagination, a faculty that enables us to think of something that is not immediately present, and that, when we first conceive it, has no objective existence. The imagination is the faculty that produces religion and mythology. Today mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute; we often dismiss it as irrational and self-indulgent. But the imagination is also the faculty that has enabled scientists to bring new knowledge to light and to invent technology that has made us immeasurably more effective. The imagination of scientists has enabled us to travel through outer space and walk on the moon, feats that were once only possible in the realm of myth. Mythology and science both extend the scope of human beings. Like science and technology, mythology, as we shall see, is not about opting out of this world, but about enabling us to live more intensely within it.
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Re: mythology and imaginative thinking--yes! Yes, indeed!
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I think this book is an incredibly important one for those of us raised in the modern, Western world. She is exactly right, that mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute. In this very short book, she does an excellent job of explaining the role mythic thinking has played in human history and discussing ways it can continue to do so today. Here's a few more excerpts from this book that really spoke to me:
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