Skip to main content

Making It Real -- Writer's Poke #369




What would it mean to turn myth into fact?


For Joseph Campbell, writing in 1970, one example is landing on the moon. Granted, 1970 seems like the distant past, but consider this: Eugene Cernan was the last person to ever step foot on the moon in 1972. That’s 40 years ago! Why haven’t we been back to the moon in the past 40 years?

Human/Moon direct contact last a mere three years (1969-1972), and only twelve American men ever stepped foot on its surface. Yet our relationship with the moon has been in some ways forever altered as a result. The moon is not unreachable. In theory, we could go back if we wanted to. For America, though, most people probably see the moon as, “Ho-hum. Been there, done that.”

Other nations, such as China, however, are still trying to turn the myth of the moon into fact. China has been able to send an unmanned moon orbiter crashing to its surface, but it has yet to turn the myth of the moon into fact. It’s probably only a matter of time, however, until the Chinese join the United States as members of elite lunar alum.

Space, writes Campbell, may be the best example of the “final frontier” for humanity. Are we the “fruit” of the world? Is it our destiny to go forth into the universe, knowing that its limitless vastness is ours for the taking?

How does the human extension into space provide us with further opportunities to look inward at who and what we are?

“We came all this way to the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.” – Bill Anders, Apollo 8

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Jesus and the Inconvenience of His Word to American Christians

I'm not a preacher, but if you follow the teachings of Jesus, it was he who said: Do to others as you would have them do to you. That's from Luke 6:31 , and reading all of Luke 6 isn't a bad way to spend five minutes of your time.  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%206&version=NIV I guess a lot of Christians understand the Golden Rule and practice it in their daily lives. Others, however, especially political Christians (and specifically those promoting Christian Nationalism) seem to ignore the Golden Rule. They don't care about humanitarian issues. They claim they either don't exist, aren't the problem of the United States, or are the fault of the victims. They counter with distractions like, "Why do you care so much about THEM when you should be caring about the REAL people who matter?" Sorry, but I don't recall Jesus ever dividing people into those who matter more and those who matter less. Of course, Jesus also said not to j...

Microblogging? The Future of Writing with ADHD

Bill Bennett is a very common name. Right now, I'm reading a book by the Australian film maker Bill Bennett. He hiked the Camino in 2013 and then wrote a book (and made an Australian movie, not available in the U.S.) about it.  Seems he kept a blog about that hike, too. I went to look for his Camino blog, and found he started one years after the hike, but he didn't post regularly... His last post from 2022 announced his had Parkinson's and had kept the diagnosis secret for 4 years.  Now that almost three years have passed from that post, I wonder what's happened to him.  Blogs are weird. They just sit there. Anyone can stumble upon them, and read them. So I decided to keep looking for his Camino blog.  https://billbennett.blog/home/ *** And I found another Bill Bennett, this one from New Zealand, who keeps a microblog. It's current and updated. "What's a microblog?" My wife asked. Well, I said, it's a small blog. Just a sentence or two for a post. ...