Everyone wonders why Europeans are so susceptible to guilt. One explanation is that all cultures have a foundation myth that tells them who they are, and the foundation myth of modern Europeans is a negative one.
How do you recognize a foundation myth? It fulfills three functions.
- It explains the origin and structure of the world (and society).
- It defines ultimate good and evil (and from those definitions are derived the values that are used to justify the holding of power).
- It determines what is held sacred in that society.
For modern Westerners the story of WWII has become their foundation myth. It fulfills all three functions.
- We live in the ‘Post-War World’. The lines on the map, the institutions, the sense of what era we live in, all arise from the starting point of WWII.
- Ultimate evil is Nazis. Ultimate good is opposing Nazis. The values derived from these definitions are anti-racism, equality, diversity, anti-nationalism and so on.
- The only thing that is held sacred, that cannot be denied or mocked in the contemporary West, is the Holocaust.
The problem is that all three functions are backwards or negative.
Instead of the origin event being one of fertility and new life, it was a conflagration of death and destruction.
Instead of ultimate good taking the central position in the story that slot is occupied by ultimate evil. Everyone knows that Adolf Hitler, the personification of evil, holds the centre point of the WWII story.
Instead of that which is held sacred being something mysterious and sublime it (the Holocaust) is an obscenity.
Having a negative foundation myth means the tree of life for Westerners is poisoned. People don’t realize it but the bounds of allowable thought and the orientation of ideas are all downstream from the myth of the society. As long as our understanding of who we are is determined by this negative foundation myth the only direction is down.
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I do not believe that ‘modern westerners’ even consider WWI & WWII to be ‘real wars’ They were engineered by the banking systems of the time. War is very profitable and now the same banking control systems persist everywhere all over the world. WWI & WWII – Vietnam- was Sadam Husain was just another Hitler? A fall guy for the banks so the banks can restructure /control finance. GM owns Mercedes as repayment to the US! If we consider Josef Stalin, a known all-out racist He makes the so-called Holocaust look like an afternoon in the park! I do not belittle but the difference is vast in terms of numbers, Why does the media always point to the Holocaust? a minor event in caparison. There is nothing sacred in wanton violence. The Nazi mindset is everywhere. The root of the problem is the banking systems, without finance nothing happens. Make the banks responsible for their investments in terms of weapons and we will see a change. This can be done they cannot excuse themselves.
To answer your question, If African Americans owned New York Times, the NYT would concentrate on propaganda about the plight of their people. If the Japanese owned Time Magazine it would display the hard times of their people, more than the hard times other peoples endured. To understand how Hollywood works, watch this documentary, An Empire of Their Own. https://youtu.be/Q2YZws9xYEQ
An interesting vid. My question was rhetorical, apologise if I implied otherwise. The palpable underlying stream that undermines our society is well known, like the elephant in the room it roams at will destroying anything in its path. The Holocaust is the elephant in the room. The power of this phantom granted more authority than is qualified. The little boy who cried WOLF! – Too many times realised too late. Those who use/abuse the power of the phantom must follow the same fate. Society must start to ignore the Phantom, stop feeding it like the people of the village of the little boy. For everyone to heal.