You did not imagine it and I remember Eowyn saying, "Courage, Merry". While they were doing battle with the Nazgul riding that "dragony thing" (which was so powerful I wonder why they bothered with horses before they were washed away in the Elves' moat) Pippin had found himself as a knight of Gondor at the command the mad and paranoid Steward, Denethor.Steve3007 wrote: ↑July 5th, 2018, 2:02 pmFair enough. I myself remember, as a child, being moved by one of the hobbits (Merry or Pippin, I forget which one) having a sudden rush of empathy for that woman (I forget her name) who dressed up as a male soldier to go to war against those terrible dark forces and defended her king (I forget his name) against that big dragony thing with one of the nine riding on it. And I definitely didn't believe that hobbits or dragony things or people who were one of the nine really existed.Dark Matter wrote:I don't think a myth has to be in the realm of the possible to convey a message; in fact it may make it more difficult.
(Does anybody know what the hell I'm talking about here? I didn't just imagine this did I? It was in the book wasn't it?)
Also, it was actually Eowyn who felt sorry for Merry, whom her father had forbidden to go into battle based on size discrimination. Eowyn empathised because Theodon had forbidden her to ride too, hence her disguise (if it was real her boobs may have been distractingly uncomfortable in male armour). Here is an example of how myths are effective - this story talks about people whose capacities are unfairly ignored and underestimated, and are denied a shot at self actualisation.
Thus, while I've been bantering away with DM about myths, his and Belinda's spirited defence of them in a sense is important. Humans need to pass on information from generation to generation because for the most the various generations, despite their tussles, love each other and want the best for their relatives, peers and others. A story - information presented in the hope of helping is, in a fundamental sense, an act of love. It's an attempt to improve the life of the other through greater knowledge.
How do we pass on the information so it will be remembered? After all, we don't want important information forgotten. Stories.
We require narratives so that we can link the new information with the old - basically to extend or amend our existing paradigms/personal stories. Nothing is harder to remember than an isolated concept that doesn't connect with any of your existing knowledge. Thus words are easier to remember (and crack) as passwords than randomised strings.
So, aside from kinetic teaching, when the ancients and mediaevals in pre-literal times needed to transmit information, stories would have been the easiest, most memorable, engaging and comprehensible form of cultural transmission.
By contrast, hard science is not a myth or s story. The researchers often just do their stuff and leave others to tell the stories. Popular science writers and documentary makers are the ones who present myths that are based on science, not the boffins who are just working the data. Unfortunately, many people cannot tell the difference and attribute the loose standards of popular science works to hard research. The latter often has almost no myth or story at all to tell - pointedly so - although stories can be gleaned via inference from the observations.
However, in hard science there is no attempt at simplification or to be memorable or meaningful as is in myths. Hard science is more the stuff about which myths are made, not myths in itself. Actual science consists of raw human abstractions and observations of things, although the germ of the myths may lie in research papers' summaries and conclusions. However, if a research paper is a myth then the word "myth" becomes almost meaningless via ambiguity, like "love".
Sorry, the above is laboured and could probably have mostly been said in ten words, but hopefully this small part of my story (as at 5.31pm, 6 July 18) is at least almost clear :)