Common Use of the Word, "Myth"

Joseph Campbell believed that "...each of us has an individual myth that's driving us, which we may or may not know." This forum is for assistance and inspiration in the quest to find your own personal mythology.

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CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

romansh wrote:
CarmelaBear wrote: In a graph or chart, the 2's would be clustered in the wealth class, and the 1's would be found in larger sets at the poor end of a graph or matrix.
I am interested ... can you show me the data or at least provide a link.


A couple links I quickly googled suggested getting married actually makes one wealthier.

I have not read it all but looks interesting
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Myths-Brai ... f_=asap_bc
I took a course on poverty at the university in the fall of last year, and although the backup research is now buried in a box somewhere, (if I kept any of it at all), the subject was raised in a Time Magazine article that I squirreled away. It is dated August 3, 2015, and the piece by Haley Sweetland Edwards includes this:
...most young Americans report that they would like to get married one day--if not for love and companionship, then to share the burden of raising children, split expenses and earn the benefits of joint tax filings.

But the orthodoxy that marriage is an unequivocal economic good is being questioned by some. The problem with "the idea that marriage equals economic stability" is simply that it gets the causality backward, argues Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women. "People aren't poor because they're not getting married. People aren't getting married because they are poor."

In this view, the reason marriage rates are declining among nearly every age group, race and ethnicity in the U.S. is not that people are making irrational decisions about their financial futures. It's that the entire economic playing field has changed.

There's little question the demographics of earning have changed. In 1960, 93% of adult men ages 25 to 34 were in the labor force. By 2012, that share had fallen to 82%. Median wages, adjusted for inflation, fell even faster. Men of prime marrying age--25 to 34--make 20% less today than their counterparts in 1980. This, says Joan Entmacher, a vice president of the National Women's Law Center, strains relationships and discourages marriage.

Lower-income men and women have been disproportionately affected, particularly in African-American and Hispanic communities, where the decline in marriage has also been the most pronounced. In 2012, 36% of African Americans over age 25 had never been married--a fourfold increase in 50 years. White Americans in the same age group saw their never-married numbers doubled during the same period, from 8% in 1960 to 16% in 2012. Meanwhile, high divorce rates, which peaked in the '70s and '80s, have fueled singledom among baby boomers. In 2010, about a third of adults ages 46 to 64 were single, up from 13% in 1970, according to a 2012 Bowling Green State University study.

Tellingly, the only group of Americans that is marrying more often, and staying together longer, are those on the top of the income ladder, where people are most likely to find financial stability from a partner. "It's a chicken-and-egg problem," says June Carbone, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and the co-author of Marriage Markets: How Inequality is Remaking the American Family. "Marriage brings financial security, but you need financial security to want to get married."
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Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

romansh
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Post by romansh »

Carmela
I corrected the link in my post it should have been this one

http://www.thompsonlaw.ca/pdf_folder/millcouple.pdf

I think it is a bit more complicated than a nasty group of rich greedy people living the high life on the downtrodden and thus inhibiting the poor to be happy and married.
"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

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Post by Roncooper »

How much money do you need to love your cat?
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. -Isaac Newton

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

romansh wrote: I think it is a bit more complicated than a nasty group of rich greedy people living the high life on the downtrodden and thus inhibiting the poor to be happy and married.
I agree. The temptation to create an easy target is too sweet and easy. What I should have realized is that a failed political and economic system is in desperate need of major policy changes. None of the presidential candidates or major parties seem to be capable of understanding or re-designing the dysfunctional institutions of the American empire of military overspending and wholesale transfer of political power to a twisted and financialized economic juggernaut. Even Wall Street is beginning to wake up to the awful and slow suicidal and genocidal track the U.S. is pursuing and promoting with such vigor.

If I were not fearful that my best ideas would be co-opted by enemies of democracy, I would share my ideas about how to improve the situation. Unfortunately, humanity has good reason to be afraid of this country. The U.S. is a dreadful national threat to others, and most especially those who seem to be re-living long gone imperial glory days by misguided support of American adventures.

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Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Roncooper wrote:How much money do you need to love your cat?
Well, for starters, you have to be able to afford to live where one is allowed to keep a cat. Then, there are the the toys and catnip, feeding and the vet bills, the medical insurance and the last expenses...not to mention time and effort, especially with regard to litter box issues. It runs into the thousands.

When cats allow people to express love toward them, the love they give in return is priceless.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

romansh
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Post by romansh »

CarmelaBear wrote:
romansh wrote: I think it is a bit more complicated than a nasty group of rich greedy people living the high life on the downtrodden and thus inhibiting the poor to be happy and married.
I agree.
Then why continue to paint it so bleakly.

We can see whole bunch of different causes at play ...
Some that come to mind include.
  1. Women choosing to enter the job market
    Delaying starting families
    Sourcing work off shore
    A change in work habits in our younger people
    Implementation of technology
    Requirement for higher education
    An elevated sense of environmental concerns
This is a simple list that affect economy. Economy is chaotic, not simply because people are involved but because it is a complex feedback system.

While blaming it on someone else may in some way be satisfying on the whole it is counter productive, at least in my opinion.

I can't help thinking if what you are seeing is a result of US's culture of individualism; this stems back at least two centuries. It will take a while to reverse this trend.
"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

Roncooper
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Post by Roncooper »

Carmela wrote,
Roncooper wrote:
How much money do you need to love your cat?


Well, for starters, you have to be able to afford to live where one is allowed to keep a cat. Then, there are the the toys and catnip, feeding and the vet bills, the medical insurance and the last expenses...not to mention time and effort, especially with regard to litter box issues. It runs into the thousands.

When cats allow people to express love toward them, the love they give in return is priceless.

:lol:
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. -Isaac Newton

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

romansh wrote:I can't help thinking if what you are seeing is a result of US's culture of individualism; this stems back at least two centuries. It will take a while to reverse this trend.
There is no "silver bullet" to fix the serious, severe problems, but one economic journalist has a number of suggestions in this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Makers-Takers-Fi ... B014BR46P2

Policy recommendations include the general principle that the rules of capitalism are entirely man-made and must be altered by human intervention. They are not divinely inspired. The author suggests that this means Congress can:

--work to make finance more transparent, in part, by simplifying the institutions so that we can have more effective access to banking activities;

--stop rewarding debt over equity under a regime that currently punishes individuals and companies for trying to engage in business instead of stock trading and encourages everyone to borrow instead of earning and investing the old fashioned way;

--re-thinking who companies are run for--not just profit-seeking stockholders and CEO's, but customers, trading partners, workers and society at large;

--build a national growth strategy that makes sensible real policy for growth across the board, [which IMHO means giving up the idea that privatization of legitimate, exclusive government functions can continue to hide a bloated military budget that is doing to the U.S. what the military spending of the U.S.S.R. did to that nation---suicidal robbing of the treasury for covert, incompetent and unethical programs and projects];

--and re-defining the central mission of the economic system so that finance is no longer at the top of the food chain, but a servant to other interests. [The book's author suggests that capitalism is about business, and I would tend to believe it is about the consumer, but we agree that finance cannot continue to rule the roost.]


[**This synopsis of recommendations is the result of my paraphrasing, with apologies to experts for my amateur understanding of a complex area of study.]

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Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

Andreas
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Post by Andreas »

Well I guess the problem is not how much money you need to love someone or cats. The problem is if the cats will love you back if you dont have money. lol

And I am pretty sure no cat will ever come close to you to be loved if you dont treat her something and treats need money.
“To live is enough.” ― Shunryu Suzuki

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Andreas wrote:Well I guess the problem is not how much money you need to love someone or cats. The problem is if the cats will love you back if you dont have money. lol

And I am pretty sure no cat will ever come close to you to be loved if you dont treat her something and treats need money.
You're not talking about cats, and it depends on what one offers in the way of "treats".

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

romansh
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Post by romansh »

CarmelaBear wrote:
romansh wrote:I can't help thinking if what you are seeing is a result of US's culture of individualism; this stems back at least two centuries. It will take a while to reverse this trend.
There is no "silver bullet" to fix the serious, severe problems, but one economic journalist has a number of suggestions in this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Makers-Takers-Fi ... B014BR46P2


...
The severe problems?
I think we could implement everything you want and there still would be people complaining.

It is us that needs to change.
"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

Andreas
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Post by Andreas »

CarmelaBear wrote:
Andreas wrote:Well I guess the problem is not how much money you need to love someone or cats. The problem is if the cats will love you back if you dont have money. lol

And I am pretty sure no cat will ever come close to you to be loved if you dont treat her something and treats need money.
You're not talking about cats, and it depends on what one offers in the way of "treats".

~
People, cats, same thing. And it doesn't depend. The treats are the same.. Treats that money can buy. You already answered this in your last post.

You said..
Then, there are the the toys and catnip, feeding and the vet bills, the medical insurance and the last expenses
People (or just women) need toys too and a car, house, and expensive holidays lol etc etc. Anyway I am not of the opinion that money can bring happiness but they do provide some stability and better conditions for happiness.
“To live is enough.” ― Shunryu Suzuki

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

romansh wrote:I think we could implement everything you want and there still would be people complaining.

It is us that needs to change.
Both need changing. One is a systemic issue and the other has to do with public opinion and motivation.

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Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Andreas wrote: .....they do provide some stability and better conditions for happiness.
Modern society has certain organizing principles. Money is one that can be useful, and there are many segments of the human community who have so little money, that it really gets to be almost completely irrelevant.

Resources, on the other hand, are universal. They include our physical bodies and a brain that functions to make sense of experience.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

CarmelaBear wrote:
Andreas wrote: .....they do provide some stability and better conditions for happiness.
Modern society has certain organizing principles. Money is one that can be useful, and there are many segments of the human community who have so little money, that it really gets to be almost completely irrelevant.

Resources, on the other hand, are universal. They include our physical bodies and a brain that functions to make sense of experience.

~
Science is beginning to discover the reality basis for much that religion-mythology has claimed for millennia. We experience the body. It starts from the union of egg and sperm, it develops into an entity with specific location and dimension, and eventually appears to die, at least as a shell or house for that part of us that is essentially beyond Newtonian physics and closer to dark matter and dark energy and quantum mechanics than it is to traditional rationalistic or mechanistic reality. It is that part of ourselves that is non-corporeal and survives the death of what we know as the body's common experience. It is the experience of transcending this time and this space.

Campbell hoped he would survive death, but he was not sure. Science is opening the door to the spiritual aspect, the transcendent part of our consciousness, which permeates all of nature, and if he had lived long enough to try DMT, the "spirit molecule" found in plants and animals, he would have assured his audiences that we are actually embodied spirits. We are mostly soul, partly mind and incidentally body-brain. He would have assured us that love is entirely universal, unconditional and non-judgmental. The life we know on a macro level is mostly non-material, and it is not confined to the body we inhabit now. It's infinite, transcendent and mostly about meeting challenges and having adventures until we are unable to bear the weight of experience in this kind of reality and we must either be removed from this experience or we choose to leave it. Everyone is capable of living full, happy lives.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

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