We Tell Ourselves #1: Eden, Utopia
We, men and women of Western civilization, sometimes tell ourselves many stories -- myths -- with little regard for historical truths, and the various stories we tell ourselves sometime contradict one another.Â
We tell ourselves that humanity is at its best when people are at one with nature. The fall of man began when he was evicted from the Garden of Eden. Before civilization and agriculture, Adam and Eve were pure.
Civilization corrupted Western man, so he sought Eden, and in 1498, Christopher Columbus at last discovered the Garden of Eden -- in Trinidad, of all places.
Early French explorers to Tahiti were greeted by primitive tribes whose women greeted them graciously with sex. Such nice people were these savage Tahitian!
In justifying our myth of the purity and virtue of men in harmony with nature, we even incorrectly project our myth onto our iconic philosophers, as is the case with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. A motif in our myth of the incorrupt man of nature (and our other folklore) is to disregard evidence to the contrary, so even Rousseau is taken out of context and is attributed with promulgating the virtues of the noble savage.
Set aside the Mundugumor for another of one of our myths -- Margaret Mead found her own noble savages in the Arapesh.
Karl Marx envisioned a communist utopia where man is freed from capitalism so that he can return to harmony with nature.
Television spots lead us to the belief that the Native Americans were at one with the land, animals, and plants; they were true conservationists and non-polluting environmentalists who kept America clean. Everybody saw the Indian cry over roadside pollution.
In case they had forgotten, John Milton reminded his 17th century readers that paradise was lost.
Ah, the stories we tell ourselves.Â
I'm not sure what "We Tell Ourselves #2" will be here at Dustin Hartley Brand, but perhaps something concerning omnium bellum contra omnes?
