Best Of The Best Myths - article about Best Of The Best Myths

The best of the best myths, urban or social myths, have been given a rigorous going-over. First we grew out of the old folk myths that our parents used as forms of domestic control: we realized that eating watermelon seeds would not grow a whole fruit in our bellies, that crossing our eyes would not make our eyes stick that way, and, sadly, we learned there was no Santa Claus, no Tooth Fairy, no Easter Bunny, no dead man with a hook for an arm…. Most of us let go of thinking if we flashed our headlights at a driver who hadn’t turned his on yet that we’d be in embroiled in gang wars or that if we drank soda with Pop Rocks that we would die an implosive death…. But as is true to form for humanity as an archetype adoring and myth-clutching culture, new myths have evolved.

As Munich freelance writer Klaus Manhart reiterates in his article, “Likely Story,” in Scientific American Mind, humans need myths. The “brain needs a story…” he writes, and the brain needs, once the story is told, to be able to “explain the unexplainable,” [as Manhart notes Joseph Campbell discovered] to follow through on its imperative to “impose order on the world.”

But while justified in why we need myths, we are also called to our accountability when it comes to potentially damaging myths. Enter the brilliant John Stossel, 20/20’s challenging reporter, to deconstruct the media-driven myths of 2005.

As reported by LBN (Late Breaking News), John Stossel will de-mystify his version of the best of the best of myths--numbers one through ten as follows (on ABC’s 20/20, Friday, January 6, 2006:

Number 10: Americans have less free time than we used to.
Number 9. Money buys happiness.
Number 8: Republicans shrink government.
Number 7: The world is getting too crowded.
Number 6. Chemicals are killing us.
Number 5: Guns are bad.
Number 4: We're drowning in garbage.
Number 3: We're destroying our forests.
Number 2: Getting cold will give you a cold.
Number 1: Life is getting worse.

Now granted, minds such as those belonging to Manhart, Stossel, and we who are reading this have to make sense of the world, have to find an explanation for the unexplained (or inane). But do we have to de-bunk all that keeps us going, in faith, in nihilistic determination and malcontented spite? And, further, hadn’t we gotten over numbers 2, 5, and 9 by now????!!

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