Noah, mytho-poetics, politics

The following are my comments to the IPS Noah thread. Perhaps check out Bryant's post on mytho-poetic thought? While we can retrofit mythical beliefs with our metaphorical and/or allegorical elaborations, most folks see the likes of Job and Noah as literal. And those folks think our mytho-poetics is just more Satan. It ain't going to 'help' them one bit, i.e. help them to not enact all the misanthropy, ethnocentrism, genocide etc. Mytho-poetics is for us educated folk to feed our own bubbles.

By what means do we get folks to develop past literal interpretations of the Bible, Koran etc.? At a certain point we tell children that Santa Claus isn't a real person but stands for the spirit of giving. At what point do we do the same with the Bible? If not, we get these folks in government trying to turn back the progress we've made in terms of human rights, separation of church and state, and on and on. Did you see the recent Supreme Corp ruling on $ = speech? And how they'll likely give corp's religion to deny contraception?

To answer my own question above, we can still leave people to believe whatever they want, including a literal belief in the Bible. But we create law to prevent them from imposing those beliefs on others. And we create law by electing representatives committed to progressive laws like separation of church and state, equal rights, etc. And we elect those kinds of people by framing our ideas in such a way as to manipulate the uninformed majority of voters. Even those who register Democrat, who are often poor or lower-middle class, struggling to get by and have no time for education or 'self-development.'

Those of us with the rare opportunity for things like mytho-poetic reflection then need to get politically active to support ideas and candidates that keep progressing. And fight like hell those that don't, or we will get reenactments of Noah, to wit, the regressive takeover of Congress and the Supreme Corp, and laws giving corps religion. Only now the Noah story is drowning most of us in poverty, disease, hunger, depression, hopelessness. Have you seen the Ryan budget? There is the mytho-poetic result of literal belief in the Bible and/or other metaphysical structures (like capitalism). Glory be unto God and the rich, and damn the rest of us lazy, fallen bastards who get what we deserve.