Flawed Societal Myths

Dear Friends,

It seems to me that there are no flawed people, there are only flawed societal myths, (philosophies or ethos).

Take any group of impoverished people. There is no deficiency in the people themselves. This has been proven by the fact that many impoverished people have been enriched when they change their philosophies. China for example. The people can be very industrious but languish under an unproductive ethos. Without a proper societal myth any people will falter.

The most destructive ethos a people can have is the mantle of victim hood. No matter the quality of the individual he or she is at a loss if their philosophy tells them that they are nothing but victims. It fosters inaction. Why act if you are only a victim? It fosters anger. Why be happy if you are a victim? It has absolutely no redeeming effects on a people but to make them slaves to their victim hood.

You can judge the ethos of a people by their prosperity. Not the people themselves but the ethos they live under. If they live under a negative ethos then they will live in poverty. Unless some external source of income temporarily disrupts the natural course of their lives. Like oil income for example. If a people cannot sustain themselves it is a sure sign that they labor under a societal myth that makes this so.

Look at the places people have flourished and the places people have floundered. The arctic is an extreme example. The Inuit and Eskimo people have thrived under the most inhospitable conditions the Planet has to offer. Temperature extremes and lack of easily accessible food. No shelter and high winds. Wind chills of over one hundred degrees below zero! No other people on Earth have, not only lived under such hostile conditions, but have thrived doing it!

Another example is Africa. The availability of growing season is unparalleled on the planet. Wild game, nuts and berries abound. There is no end to the opportunities in Africa for an enterprising people. But there is absolute poverty there… as well as no innovation. The problem is the ethos… not the people.

Examples abound of people that have risen in prosperity when they followed one societal myth but have fallen into poverty when the societal myth was destroyed. Rome is but the most obvious example. Ancient China is another example. Many times before and after the warring states period China went from prosperity to poverty then back to prosperity. Confucius explained this as, when people follow the philosophies of the sage kings, Yao, Shun and Yu. What Confucius basically said is that the philosophy of a people determines their prosperity.

So we can rest on the fact that if the same people have been both, impoverished and enriched, it is more dependent on their ethos then the people. To argue otherwise would require a advocate the likes of Daniel Webster.

Thomas Jefferson said in his book, Notes on the Sate of Virginia, that it takes a temperate climate it foster innovation. His argument went like this. If people have it too easy they will not innovate, it is redundant. If people have it too hard they do not have the time to innovate. They must spend every moment surviving. It is only where people have difficulties to force innovation and the time to think about and do innovation. If this is the case maybe innovation in societal myths is best at temperate climates as well.

Now lets examine the societal Myths that foster poverty and hopelessness. As we said before victim hood is one destructive philosophy. Another is decadency. It presaged the fall of every great civilization on Earth to date. Another is dependency of the State. Every time this has been tried it has resulted in the corrosion of societal cohesiveness. Another that has had bad ends is treating barbarians as equals. This has lowered many great civilizations. Groupism is a philosophy that results in the splintering of societies into angry factions. There are many more lessons that we can take from history about good and bad societal myths. The overriding point is that societal myths that reduce people’s reliance on themselves has always had bad results. While those philosophies that have greater reliance in individual actions have had good outcomes in the past.

With this as obvious as I can make it in such a small space, why is it so important for our elected leaders to change our societal myths from the productive ones to the unproductive ones?

Why do you think?