missing the point................

      This old story is a myth, but it is not hard to imagine why such a story gets passed on.  It tells a figurative truth within a literal falsehood, a pathway to a kind of knowledge.

     Yes, technically speaking, it's a lie.

     Technically speaking, you can look at any human life as the sum of a complex collection of chemical reactions, in much the same way as you can look at any beautiful painted as a simple collection of pigments, which is to say, you can miss the point of anything.

-Jarod K. Anderson

The Emperor's new clothes............

Irony, paradox, contradiction, consternation -- these define the times in which we live. . . . 

Historians are never going to rate Trump as a great or even mediocre president. Even so, they may one day come to appreciate the Trump era as the moment when things long hidden became plain to see, when hitherto widely accepted falsehoods, fabrications, and obsolete assumptions about American democracy finally became untenable. For that, if for nothing else, we may yet have reason to thank our 45th president for services rendered.

-As extracted from this Zero Hedge post

The magic ring of myth...................

     Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, myths of man have flourished;  and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and  mind.   It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into the human cultural manifestation.  Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.

-Joseph Campbell,  The Hero With A Thousand Faces

Inexhaustible.............

     Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, myths of man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind.  It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into the human cultural manifestation.

-Joseph Campbell,  The Hero With A  Thousand Faces

Belief...................................

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.” 

-Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts On Common Things

Awfully expensive pencils...................

...................................................................and myths that die hard.

via

More than you want to think about..........

..............................................................social security:


9 "myths" inspected and rejected.  Myth #1:  We don't need to worry about social security for many years.   Reality:


Although 2034 seems to be far away, many of today’s newest retirees would likely still be on the program – turning 80 – and today’s 49-year-olds would be reaching the normal retirement age. At that point, all beneficiaries would face an immediate across-the-board benefit cut of about one-fifth.

If the sums have been done correctly, your (then aged 82) faithful blogger will be losing out on (the 2016 equivalent) $292 per month if, and when, that reduction hits.  By 2034 (Lord willing), your faithful blogger will also have received more than twice in benefits than paid into the system.  Color me not complaining.

Great myths.........................

...............................................................of investing.

As the great Mark Twain (may have) said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” That’s particularly true in the investment world because we know, to a mathematical certainty, that avoiding errors provides more bang for the buck than making correct calls and generating outperformance. 

Ten myths right here.

via

Who knew............................

Not having heard of Priapus, the Oracle Google was consulted:

In Greek mythology, Priapus (/praɪˈeɪpəs/;^[1] Greek: Πρίαπος, Priapos), was a minor rustic fertility God, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. Priapus is marked by his oversized, permanent erection, which gave rise to the medical term priapism. He became a popular figure in Roman erotic art and Latin literature, and is the subject of the often humorously obscene collection of verse called the Priapeia.

image via

Can I get an Amen............................?

"life doesn't stay fixed."
-happiness myths here

The comfort.................................

For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
-John F. Kennedy

thanks Glenn

Mythology distracts us................................

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.  Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations.  We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
-John F. Kennedy, June 11, 1962 as excerpted from here

The Founders, properly considered.........

     Aaron Burr's life represents the antidote to lazy history.  His experiences, his mistakes, and his radical insights combine to give us a better picture of the political culture that defined his generation.  To conceive of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and their ilk as they were on their best day is to compress the life of any modern president into the most memorable line in an inaugural address that someone else wrote for him.  The founders were far more numerous than popular history suggests, and far less righteous and dignified.  The historic memory does not hold much history.  That is why Burr, the fallen founder, is more representative that one might otherwise suggest.
     The founders contributed wisdom and often exhibited courage.  But to remove them from political time as if they were ever, on a single day, holy men or paragons of virtue misses their true vocation and their true motivation.  They did not live inside an impossibly romantic political forum where great minds communed on a regular basis to remind each other of their noblest ideals.  They did not spend the bulk of their time sitting at their desks writing treatises, or standing before their congressional peers making sublime speeches.  The lawyers among them were more typically engrossed in the ugly details of a property case, or in a dogged debate inside a courtroom;  many speculators among them mulled over the looming threat of debtor's prison.  They spent their time engaged in the polite banter of the tea parlor, and indulged in secret sexual trysts with prostitutes, mistresses, and in the South, slaves.
     These were our founders:  imperfect men in a less than perfect nation, grasping at opportunities.  That they did good for their country is understood, and worth our celebration:  that they were also jealous, resentful, self-protective, and covetous politicians should be no less a part of their collective biography.  What separates history from myth is that history takes in the whole picture, whereas myth averts our eyes from the truth when it turns men into heroes and gods.
-Nancy Isenberg, as excerpted from her conclusion to Fallen Founder:  The Life of Aaron Burr

I hate it when this happens.............................

Cherished and long held beliefs are exposed as myths.  Apparently us history majors get fooled just as much as those science majors.  Of course, I never directly studied The War To End All Wars in college.  Reckon I just accumulated a bunch of incorrect facts by osmosis.  Here is a debunking sample:

Versailles was not harsh but was portrayed as such by Hitler who sought to create a tidal wave of anti-Versailles sentiment on which he could then ride into power.

thanks

From the "You Can't Win Them All Department"....

As excerpted from the introduction to T. Boone Pickens's The First Billion Is The Hardest:

I've been in this business for over half a century, and I've heard more than my share of stupid ideas.  These are the worst:
       
       Myth No. 5:   New technology will enable us to discover enormous untapped reservoirs of oil.

Oops.  The book was published in 2008.  Talk about timing.  Check out the following charts showing oil production, just in Texas and North Dakota, from the "new technology" of horizontal drilling combined with fracking.

Well, it's a comfort to know that very smart, very capable, and very successful people can often be spectacularly wrong.

Took me a moment, too.............

Happy Saint Pat's Day........................

from the wonderful world of Bilbo

Speaking of a Credo...............

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge —
That myth is more potent than history.
I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts —
That hope always triumphs over experience —
That laughter is the only cure for grief.
And I believe that love is stronger than death.
-Robert Fulghum

Hey, wait a minute. You mean........................

thanks jessica

Beguiling, yet chimerical.............................

"Scientists often strive for special status by claiming a unique form of 'objectivity' inherent in a supposedly universal procedure called the scientific method.  We attain this objectivity by clearing the mind of all preconceptions and then simply seeing, in a pure and unfettered way, what nature presents. This image may be beguiling, but the claim is chimerical, and ultimately haughty and divisive.  For the myth of pure perception raises scientists to a pinnacle above all other struggling intellectuals, who must remain mired in constraints of culture and psyche.
     "But followers of the myth are ultimately hurt and limited, for the immense complexity of the world cannot be grasped or ordered without concepts. 'All observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service.'  Objectivity is not an unobtainable emptying of mind, but a willingness to abandon a set of preferences - for or against some view, as Darwin said - when the world seems to work in a contrary way."
-Stephen Jay Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack

Opening paragraphs............

    The religions of ancient Greece and Rome are extinct.  The so-called divinities of Olympus have not a single worshipper among living men.  They belong now not to the department of theology, but to those of literature and taste.  There they still hold their place, and will continue to hold it, for they are too closely connected with the finest productions of poetry and art, both ancient and modern, to pass into oblivion.
-Thomas Bulfinch, The Age of Fable