The Girl on Fire!

1. Ordinary World: Katniss Everdeen is the heroine of the Hunger Games. She lived a simple life, in a post-apocalyptic world, hunting birds to feed her family and friends. The government ruled with an iron fist with hopes that the fear the instilled in their people would keep them all in check and allow society to continue to rebuild itself.
2. Call to Adventure: Katniss’s call to adventure comes on the dawn of the 74th annual Hunger Games. Her sister Primrose is called at random to fight to the death in hopes of a victory that would give extra food to her community. Fearing her sister would die, Katniss is forced to volunteer as tribute and take her place.
3. Refusal of the Call: When he family is ripped away from her and she starts to get a better sense of what she is being called upon to do, she waivers a little bit. Her friend Peta also volunteered and as a result she would be forced to kill him in the arena as well. The fear of conflict becomes so great at times that she considers giving up. Her love of her family and her district prevail, and she continues forward.
4. Meeting with the Mentor: Katniss is introduced to a previous winner of the Hunger Games. His life is in total shambles and he is almost always drinking himself under the table. When the going gets tough and the games are about to begin, he pulls himself together and gives her some last minute advice which helps her survive in the arena.
5. Crossing the Threshold: After some publicity and prepping Katniss is sent up a glass elevator and arrives on the battlefield. She can’t turn back and if she gives up, she dies.
6. Tests, Allies and Enemies: The entire arena is designed to facilitate as much killing as possible. There are boobytraps around every bush, and she is required to form alliances to help keep her alive, even with the knowledge that eventually she will have to try to kill them.
7. Approach: She arms herself with a bow, and finds places to wait out the killing as long as possible. She tries to minimize her profile in the games by doing her best to defend everyone who is being attacked. She also has to nurse Peta back to health who has unfortunately gotten the stuffing beat out of him. Mostly because he is a little man boy baby. But that is just my opinion.
8. The Ordeal: Katniss and Peta are the last two left alive. They have to decide whether to die together or live together. I an act of defiance they decide that they will kill each other, when all of the sudden the game-master says that they can both stay alive. The biggest ordeal they now have to face is becoming the golden-children of the corrupt government that literally puts its people in pit and watches them kill each other gladiator style. The political and social pressures from a side of extreme elitists as well as the guilt they feel for surviving is an even bigger ordeal than competing in the Hunger Games in the first place.
9. The Reward: The reward for Katniss is the knowledge that she just stuck it to the man on live TV in front of the entire world. She has given hope to the oppressed and gained some super fame. She gets to go home and see her family. She get’s to feel like the rebel with a cause. Until President Snow decides he wants to destroy her entire world. But that comes later.
10. The Road Back: The challenge on her journey now is to try to go home and feel normal again. She wants to act like nothing ever happened, but the events of the games haunt her. She feels the burden of guilt for being a part of something so terrible and she feels awkward going home knowing that she’s the face of the rebellion disguised as the face of the government.
11. The Resurrection: Katniss’s resurrection comes when she has to confront her demons and accept the fact that things will never be the same. The people look to her as the Mockingjay now, a bird that was genetically modified by the government (but it backfired) and now stands as a symbol of the failures of the government. She doesn’t have to face an physical death in this resurrection, but she does have to accept that her soul is now on the line. She has to figure out how to rally her people and protect them, and it takes deep emotional toll on her.
12. The Elixir: The elixir that Katniss returns with is the elixir of hope. For so long her people thought they would be held captive and starving forever. Seeing that she was able to one-up the government has given them the resolve to become unified and throw down their oppressors. As hard as it is for her, Katniss accepts her new role and prepares her people for a rebellion. To Be Continued. 

Death!

Stephen Cave does an excellent job explaining things that I feel like many people are too afraid to talk about. He makes some very direct observations about how humanity contemplates its own end.

He discusses four main stories that humanity tells itself in order to come to terms with death.

Elixir- Many people new and ancient believe in ways to extend life or hopefully even to become immortal. The Greeks thought many foods or drinks would allow them to live longer or become immortal, for example. Modern day medicine has brought many breakthroughs in life longevity, and in some cases, it has even become a trend for consumers to try and find ways to extend their lives to the maximum. Like Cave explains, we even put billions of dollars into stem cell research and cloning techniques. I think elixir myths are some of the most common stories that people tell themselves, even without be aware of it at times.

Resurrection-This is one of the stories I think many people tend to avoid expressing even if they do believe it. The idea of deceased bodies retaking life is more than many people want to admit, even if they truly believe it. Greek mythology speaks of times when humans taken down to Erebos and then somehow being able to return. Some modern day religions speak of reincarnation, where one who has died is able to come back in a different life form. They don’t necessarily return as a human, but one way or another they are resurrected back into some form of life.

Soul- The ancient Egyptians were huge believers that the soul was the part of the body that would continue into the after-life. They took great care to protect and preserve the souls of the dead so that they would arrive happy and clean on the other side. A modern day example that comes to mind is the idea that is portrayed in the movie “Transendence”. A scientist is terminally ill and decides to have his mind uploaded into a computer that he designed to be self-aware.

Legacy- “The idea that you can live on through the echo that you leave in the world”, says Cave. I really like this observation. I think this is the kind of immortality story that we strive for unconsciously. Everybody grows up wanting to leave behind some sort of legacy. Some of them are family oriented people that want to leave behind a better life for their children than the life that they personally had. Sometimes people want to live on through their fame. Some people just want to be remembered as a great person, and to be talked about long after they are gone.

Based on Cave’s observations I think the best way to be comfortable with any of these stories is to simply decide which one is the most harmonic with our “terror management” system and then cling to it. Most every one that have ever lived has had some sort of fear of death, and demanded some sort of explanation whether it be from a god or a scientist. The trick to life is figuring our which story gives us the most passion to live our lives the best we can. If it is our desire to leave a legacy maybe we need to start having more kids or writing more books. If it is our desire to have some sort of elixir, maybe it’s time to start investing in stem cell research and regrowth-hormones.

I loved Cave’s observations!

Dr. Harrison Wells A.K.A Eobard Thawn

Dr Harrison Wells is considered to be one of the words leading physicists and is the founder of an advanced technology company called S.T.A.R Laboratories. The facility housed the crowning achievement of Dr. Harrison Wells career; a giant particle accelerator. Wells promoted his creation as a gateway into undiscovered sciences. The night he debuted his accelerator to the world, it exploded. The energy generated from the explosion caused a massive electrical storm. The lightning strikes hit people all over the city including one man named Barry Allen, who would become The Flash.

Seemingly feeling remorse for the harm and destruction that he had caused (having ignored warnings from his engineers that the accelerator was unstable), Wells decided to continue to run S.T.A.R Labs with the objective of helping those who had been affected by the lightning. He himself had been confined to a wheelchair after being supposedly paralyzed from the waist down in the explosion. The lightning strikes had created a brand new species of human when the energy affected their cellular structures. This caused them to developed super powers, and the species classification of “meta-humans”. Wells formed a team with a couple of remaining scientists (who didn’t abandon him after the explosion) and nursed Barry Allen back to health. Then they taught him to use his super powers (running at supersonic speeds) to help the people of the city, in particular to fight meta-humans, as the majority affected were criminals.

The plot thickens when Wells own team discovers that the real Dr. Wells was murdered 15 years earlier. Eobard Thawn, a human from the future, had traveled back in time to kill Barry Allen as a child to alter the timeline and prevent the wrongdoings Barry would inflict upon him and his family in the future. Eobard’s method of time travel was that he, too, was a speedster. He was able to run so fast that he ripped the time space continuum. However, the jump depleted his powers so significantly that he wasn’t able to run back to his own time. He was forced to stay in the current timeline. With knowledge from the future of the significance of the real Dr. Wells development of the particle accelerator he decided to kill Wells, steal his body, and then build the accelerator many years earlier than it otherwise would have been built. The accelerator was designed to explode, release the energy and transform Barry into The Flash, create the meta-humans so that Barry could train with his new powers and not feel guilty defeating them, and when the time was right Wells (Thawn) would use Barry’s speedster powers to get him back home.

Dr. Harrison Wells is an excellent trickster because he has all of the characteristics of a trickster as defined by Hyde and Hynes. A couple examples:

Ambiguous and anomalous- Well is a time traveler and a supersonic speedster. He is not governed by time, space, physics, or traffic stops. He is a master of chaos, especially chaos that he can mask to look like order.

Deceiver and trickster- He is able to deceive the entire world into thinking he is the original Harrison Wells. He is a genius, who leads people to believe that he has made a mistake and will do anything to make restitution. He even confines himself to a wheelchair to appear vulnerable and impacted by the disaster he caused. He is really manipulating everyone and everything in order to get himself home to his timeline (his hunger!).

Shape-shifter- Aside from the fact that successfully stole someone else’s body and disguises himself in a wheelchair, he is also able to impersonating a loving and caring mentor. Everyone he works with has a deep respect and loyalty for him. He is encouraging and warm with his scientists and even Barry (the one he came into the past to kill as a child).

I could go on a lot longer, but I won’t. Sorry.

Tricky Tricksters!

Trickster myths are by far my favorite myths so far!

In the myth “The Story of Nanni”, Nanni uses disguises and tricks (covering himself in gum and rolling around on the ground) to steal beans from the farmers children while he is away. The children think that he is just playing a game with them and don’t realize that he is letting the beans stick to his body and then taking them home to feed his own family. The farmer eventually catches on and ends up getting his hands cut off and returns home with no food. His family decides to leave him, so he continues his shapeshifting by putting on disguises and running ahead of his family. His hope was to convince his family that they had nowhere to go and should return to him. His tricks were successful and his family came home, under the conditions that Nanni made them promise to follow before he would let them back in. This is the perfect example of the shapeshifting characteristic. It also shows that Nanni was bricoleur, using his surroundings to help carry out his tricks.

In the Native American myths, Coyote embodies almost all of the characteristics of a trickster. He is an expert deceiver and trickster, though he doesn’t have any concept of limitations and normally sees his tricks through to the end, even if he ends up getting caught in his own traps. His excitement often causes him to go from the hunter to the prey and back again.

The modern day trickster that I am considering for my analysis is Dr. Harrison Wells from The Flash. SPOILER ALERT. He is a scientist that does not act within the bounds of time and space. He is a genius, but at times becomes so confident in his intelligence that he doesn’t realize his plans are failing. He goes through waves of doing good things for people, unless it conflicts with his personal agenda, and then he is willing to sacrifice anyone to get what he wants. He has a very obvious God complex, and delights in taking all matters into his own hands. He doesn’t think he really has any enemies because he thinks everyone around him is too unintelligent to stop him from doing what he wants. Also, he is from the future and can run at speeds of over mach 2.

Apocalyptic Disaster Myths and Current Anxieties

I thought the insights and claims made by Elaine Pagels were very interesting. They definitely added a new perspective to the Book of Revelations and end-of-the-world stories I’ve become familiar with, having grown up as a Christian.

The idea I found most interesting were the observations that Pagels makes when she refers to the Book of Revelation as being “anti-roman propaganda”. I had never heard that interpretation before, but after reading her texts and listening to her interviews, I think she has a good point. The myths and end-of-the-world stories written by St. John of Patmos are clearly fueled by the emotions he was feeling during the chaos of the time. As the bible has been reconfigured and passed on through the generations I think people adapted the myths to convey the emotions they were experiencing during their own hard times. Pagels demonstrates that many of the different Christian denominations had their own interpretations of the Book of Revelation, and that they used it to propel their own doctrines and agendas.

When we compare this to the year 2015, I think there are still many people, both affiliated and unaffiliated with a Christian church, who adapt and interpret the myths to convey their own thoughts and concerns for the future. There are more end-of-the-world stories than we can even count anymore. In particular we like to focus on disasters. Some disaster like Hurricane Katrina were thought to be the beginning of the end. Even as recently as September 28th there were groups all over the country that were preparing for the beginning of the end with the supermoon bloodmoon. I read articles and even hand firsthand experience talking to people who were preparing for the end of the world because they had read the Book of Revelation and it makes mentions of the moon turning to blood at the time of the second coming. People were buying absurd amounts of food so they could bunker down, some people quit their jobs and even sold their homes. They may have jumped the gun a little bit, but I think its notable that they were so impacted by the myths that they went to such extreme measures.

I think there are people in the world that truly fear these sorts of disaster myths, and I don’t want to belittle those anxieties by any means. But I think we have all observed that many of these myths seem to be a form of propaganda, normally to sell movie tickets, popcorn, and fan merchandise. Hollywood capitalizes on these fears by creating film after film about how the world is going to end. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry to try to convince people that their deepest end-of-the-world fears are entirely possible, and maybe not too distant from the present day. If we look back at 2012, there was a movie made about how the world was going to end. Millions of people thought it would end that December in some huge natural disaster. While that didn’t happen, we certainly saw a lot of people getting all worked up about it.

When St John of Patmos was writing about the apocalypse I don’t think he even imagined how impacted some people would become based on his words 2000 years later. We have let our fear of things happening beyond our control become an obsession. I think our society craves that kind of chaos. My own brother-in-law truly believes that there will be a zombie apocalypse and that he’ll be a survivor who will spend his days hunting them The Walking Dead-style. It’s not that anyone want’s to die in a huge disaster, but I think many people (including many Christians) have gone from being afraid of something terrible happening, to just wondering if/how they will survive it.

Creation

I find the similarities in the creation myths to be very interesting considering that each culture was so different. Regardless of the time and space that separated the cultures, there were still some similarities that make it seem like their historians and storytellers were getting together an collaborating on their myths.

One of the aspects of creation myth that is so fascinating is the idea of chaos transitioning to order, beginning almost out of a void of nothingness. In Greek mythology Gaia (Mother Earth) springs forth out of nothingness and begins to not only create life, but also to organize it. This of course is similar to the Hebrew interpretations of a supreme deity (ex Nihilo creation) suddenly and miraculously creating life, and assigning it into categories and sub categories. Norse mythology, I think is the most interesting creation myth of them all. It is so complex in terms of what ultimately caused the creation of life and elements and earth. It’s probably the most chaotic of all the creation myths as far as how many characters were involved, and yet every chaotic character played a role in organizing and taming the chaos they themselves were causing.

Of course there are more similarities and distinctions in these cultures and their myths than we can talk about, but my biggest question is why did many of these myths not stand the tests of time? It seems like nearly every descendent culture of Greek, Hebrew, and Norse mythology have settled into either an adaptation of the Hebrew creation myths or they are strictly focused on the science of creation. Why have most of these cultures seemingly abandoned their creations myths? Or have they? Maybe I’m wrong.

Gaia- Mother Earth

Gaia is Mother of Everything! Known by mortals as Earth and by cult as Ge. Bow and be wowed! Chaos sat in emptiness until suddenly Earth sprang forth. She would give order to Chaos. Using her creative powers she gave birth to Pontus, Uranus, and Ourea, otherwise known as the Sea, the Sky, and the Mountains. As we look around our mortal world there are nothing but symbols and emblems of the power of Mother Earth! There is no place in the heavens, on land, or in the sea where her power and majesty is withheld!

She is the ultimate mother and most fearless of the Gods and Goddesses. She wanted so badly to protect her children, that she convinced one Cronus to castrate his own father. This mother to son friendship didn’t last forever though. She warned Cronus that one day his own son would overpower him. Cronus, being a little arrogant, decided to swallow all of his children so this couldn’t happen. Gaia hates when fathers swallow their children, so when Cronus’s youngest son, Zeus, was born, she wrapped a baby sized stone in a blanket and let Cronus swallow it. Zeus, of course, would eventually rise to power, but that’s another story.

Isn’t this the type of God we want to protect us all?  She is a goddess with literally no boundaries when it comes to the protection of her people. She gave weapons to her children to dismember their misbehaving fathers. She committed acts of espionage and foolery, which influenced the fates of many gods. She created all of the beauty that we around us. We have so much to worship her for that there isn’t even time to consider worshiping other deities.

She is even the creator of man! We can worship gods of love, war, and sex as much as we want, but without a body how could this be so? Our bodies are formed of the mud of Earth. When we die our bodies return to the ground. Without Gaia we wouldn’t be alive to debate the worship of the other puny gods!

Gaia is the goddess that the other gods practically worshiped. Don’t waste time worshiping your sub-par immortals. Go Gaia or go to Hades!

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a video I liked about Gaia, but just imagine your favorite movie of all time (mine is Remember the Titans), and then imagine that Gaia plays all of the main characters, supporting characters, and provided the sets, sites, and lighting. You’re welcome.

Works Cited

Martin, Richard. Myths of the Ancient Greeks. New York: New American Library, 2003. Print.

Other Greek Deities, Larson Divine Specialists, Ge and Helios 157

Enyclopedia Mythica http://www.pantheon.org/articles/g/greek_creation_myths.html

Image Credit http://www.maicar.com/GML/Gaia.html

Fate

Fate seems to be one of the most powerful forces in Greek mythology. It ruled both the God’s and the humans, regardless of how powerful they were. Fate held everybody accountable. The Fates controlled who lived and who died and when. They controlled how much good and evil each individual would have in their life. They even followed some people into the afterlife to make sure they couldn’t escape their fate. Some God’s became so obsessed with their own fate that they tried to change it, like Ouranos. Which obviously didn’t work out too well for him.

I think today people are still obsessed with their fate, even though we don’t really seem to know what our fate is. The world is full of people trying to chase down their dreams or fulfill their destinies. It’s seen in religion more than anywhere else. The Bible preaches of using willpower and agency to determine the course of our lives, but that ultimately there are things that God commands us to do and potential he wants us to live up to. The idea of a God and a Satan who are both trying to influence how we behave and what course to follow in our lives leads some people to think that their whole lives are already planned out for them. Others choose to dismiss these ideas altogether.

Again, I’m really not too well-versed in Greek mythology yet. Ive done the readings but struggle a bit to make some connections with the material. So my perspectives and interpretations might be lacking here. Reading some of your insights and thoughts have been very enlightening and I hope to be able to contribute some thoughts of my own, that won’t sound so elementary. Feedback welcome from all!

Myths and why we still need them.

When I think of the word “myth” the first thing that comes to mind is an embellished story or a parable that has been adapted, as it has been passed from generation to generation, to help us understand our history. I am not extremely familiar with ancient mythology and what ideas it encompassed though it seems to me that myth and religion are different, but interdependent. While we may not widely associate the term “myth” with religion, most religions seem to be founded on myths whether they be encounters between God and man in the Bible or tales of triumph of man over monster. Myth could be defined as the doctrine and religion could be defined as the practice of the concepts that myth represents. Again, this is not an area that I am familiar with so maybe my understanding lacks depth or perspective. It’s for this very reason that I think this class will be beneficial to me.

After reading and listening to Karen Armstrong explain her views, I think she makes some very interesting points about the human condition. Myth seems to have been abandoned by our society in general, and I think it shows. We tend to act based on reason and logic. If an idea is not presented with raw data or facts, we are hesitant to embrace it, even if it provides a solution to our very existence! It seems that myth was once the glue that held societies together. Armstrong states that “we are meaning-seeking creatures”. There was a time when humans seemed to be more unified in that we were all lost together. We weren’t fully aware of what our purpose was. Logos determined that we needed to communicate, sleep, hunt, eat, and survive, but only mythos could help us understand WHY to live. I think in our modern day society we have gone a little backwards. Armstrong argued that “mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute”. Mythical thinking is regarded as naïve and irrational. I think we are missing out on valuable insight and influence by disregarding mythos and strictly embracing logos. I think we absolutely still need myths. Studying myths can increase our ability to cope with our humanity. They can help us cope with suffering, fear, loss, death, disability, and will ultimately help us answer questions about our existence that logic simply can’t address.