Last night I watched the Black Cauldron, a great Disney movie. It had all the old characters we've grown so accustomed to in Western culture. The wise wizard, the young apprentice who has to find his warrior strength to battle the dark lord boss who is holding the princess and the fate of humanity in his high tower. Along the way there were fairies and barbarians, Castles and country sides, swords and spells. Hey this character is Luke Skywalker, and there is Gollum, I thought while shoving garlic butter bread sticks in my mouth--archetypal characters.
I wonder what a modern mythology would look like. I don't mean replacing the dark lord with a corporate CEO, or changing the castles to skyscrapers, or the princess to a depressed emo punk, but I mean a new story all together. Would we even recognize such a story if we came into contact with it?
Is the love story, the warriors story, the Good vs. Evil Story, the coming of age story, are they hardwired in us? Perhaps a brand spanking new story would be incomprehensible to us. Will we scoff at it, brushing it off as modern art?
If we are on the cusp of changing as organisms from Homo Sapien to Homo Digitalis, then surly our stories will change as well. And that is what is really exciting, the language, the stories we'll tell in the future!
It really bothers me when people poo-poo ideas because of buzz words in the language of the idea. When people turn off their brain when the word alien or cyborg is spoken. Those words are just sketches, man. The quick sporadic pencil lines beneath the Mona Lisa. We will come up with new words. We are trying to describe now what is not yet possible to imagine. "That is just science fiction!" they say, "quit living in fantasy!"; But science fiction is a bridge between the old mythologies and the new. Science fiction is just one way of speculating about the stuff awaiting us around the bend in the timeline.
Or the religious who reject such ideas because such ideas aren't found in the book of Revelation--they frustrate me to no end. Don't go there Matt, if God would have meant us to fly he would have given us wings. A church member smirking, rolling their eyes because they know the Bible doesn't mention space men or cloning. Don't stray too far from the faith, they'll say. I don’t think there are any limits on the imagination while living a life in Christ. He didn't give us wings but he did give us a burning curiosity and an almost uncontrollable imagination, the tools used to lift us off the ground.
God laughs at earthly wisdom, I've been told. I seriously doubt it! I think God is up there in the clouds looking down, tapping his foot, drinking a glass of wine while bobbing his head to the rythm of the harps and horns--the angelic jazz, "Yes, Yes!" His voice rings, getting higher and higher, almost in song. “They've finally turned over that stone after all these millennium, eh? Good for them, I can't wait till they find the next surprise." says God.
(Dad, this is not about you, our conversation just got me thinking. You are one of the wise ones!)
3 comments:
I see the posts switched back...
I made this long, deep post to this one, agreeing with you... I think the internet ate it.
Summed up: Our ability to think, our curiosity, our desire to grow and expand are gifts from God.
To not use those, would be a refusal of that very gift that God bestowed upon us.
oh man, wish I could have read it. That new blog template was cool but for some reason, it wouldn't allow comments. I agree with your statement about gifts too.
If you liked the move The Black Cauldron you should read The Prydain Chronicles, which containes The Black Cauldron. The books are by Lloyd Alexander.
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