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ISBN: 9780776604442

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Myths We Live By

Colin Grant challenges the popular use of "myth" as a dismissive designation of the superstitions and falsehoods of "other" cultures. The author maintains that myths occupy a place in our present-day lives that is every bit as important to us as the divinities and heroes of classical antiquity were to the ancients. The myths themselves are in a constant state of flux and transformation. They ebb and flow, both within the context of wider culture and individual experience.

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Colin Grant

Colin Grant is an independent historian who works for BBC Radio. The son of Jamaican immigrants, he lives in London.

Chapter Title Contents Contributors Pages Year Price

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 To appreciate myth in this comprehensive and engaging sense, we have to get away from the popular equation of myth with falsehood, and we must distinguish the personal sense of myth from the … 17 $2.21

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 Science itself may now be somewhat facing this problematic fate because of the ecologically destructive side effects of technological processes. 28 $3.64

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 Insofar as sport operates with these mythic perspectives, providing a way of orienting ourselves in time and even offering hints of eternity, it clearly functions with mythic overtones of … 20 $2.60

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 The consumer myth is not about materialism,- it is about spiritual reality. It represents the most sustained attempt in the history of humanity to accord total spiritual significance to material … 16 $2.08

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 Talk of values may be a way of fooling ourselves into thinking we are dealing with something substantial when there is really no substance at all except whatever we choose to inject. 13 $1.69

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 In posing issues of life and death in a particularly dramatic way, the ecology crisis may be posing the issue of our fundamental mythic allegiance today more forcefully than does any other area. 17 $2.21

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 When the topic of sex is raised in terms of the question of basic visions that are at stake in myth, a specific dimension of the sexual revolution appears even more prominent than issues of … 17 $2.21

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 The basic comprehensive reality we refer to in our discussions, the horizon of meaning that we take for granted, as our ancestors took the reality of God for granted, is society. 15 $1.95

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 What we have seen is that not only do we live by myth, but these mythic commitments become most evident when they take on religious proportions. Every living myth we have considered ends up … 13 $1.69

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 There are indications of an increasing recognition of our self-conscious involvement in myth in the sense of basic perspectives and priorities that shape life for us. But this living sense of … 10 $1.30