The out of myth for our times

A while ago I was struck by something that Joeseph Campbell said.

During an interview with Bill Moyers he was asked what he believed was a myth of our time. His response has stuck with me for quite some time. Although his frame of reference for societies that generated myths evolved over many many centuries, as did their myths. Our society seems to be evolving much more rapidly than their so why wouldn’t our myths. We may not generate the same class of myths, such as Gilgamesh or The Odessy, maybe more mini-myths.

MY CASE:
Lately there has been an eruption of the true value of technology. How much time does this really save? Is it environmental mining all these rare elements for technology? Is technology making us dumber? There has been no overarching senate committee assembled to answer these questions, no think tank and no religious pundits (really no pundits). These questions have been turned over to the arts, as they were in the times of Gilgamesh. Movies have begun to weave the stories of unknown. Starting with star wars, THX -1138, Star Trek . . but since these frame stories were filled with the classic stories of father/son connection, rebellious youth .. the frame became its own story. Movies that follow those of Iasic Asimov, like I am Robot. Enemy of the state is one that touches on the pervasiveness of technology, coincidentally both with Will Smith.

There is one riff that I wanted to peer into. Between Enemy of the state and D.J. Caruso’s new flick with Shia Lebouf, Eagle eye, there comes an issue with technology. Enemy of the state touches on the power of technology in the hands of the renegade few. Where eagle eye removes the human element and places the control in the hands of computers/technology. The frame story of technology taking control is interesting, is it the power of Google when we search for the capital of a small country in Europe and once we find the exact number we move on. Compare that information searching to that of a good old school library. You have to find the encyclopedia look up the country, possible get distracted along the way. But the fact that you have invested so much more time into the mission of fact-finding, you don’t mind picking up a couple other facts along the way. Cutting down on the time expenditure has also cut down on the information found. These nightmarish tales, some might even call them myths, of computer overpowering the control of information and using it to their own idea of “right,” have become more and more prevalent.