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The Meaning of Myth: With 12 Greek Myths Retold and Interpreted by a Psychiatrist

Book by Neel Burton · 4 quotes · Mythology, Philosophy, Boston Tea Party

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The Meaning of Myth: With 12 Greek Myths Retold and Interpreted by a Psychiatrist Quotes

“Ultimately, whether myth is religion or folk tale is, and always has been, a question of faith. When Europeans encountered the narratives of the peoples they colonized, they dismissed them as ‘myths’—whence the modern, pejorative sense of ‘myth’ as ‘fiction’ or ‘falsehood’—but their own Garden of Eden, Holy Trinity, and Easter Resurrection they regarded instead as theology.”

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Book:The Meaning of Myth: With 12 Greek Myths Retold and Interpreted by a Psychiatrist
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“Both the European Union and the United States are in some sense the heirs of Rome. Like Rome, the United States is founded on a republican myth of liberation from a tyrannical oppressor. Just as the Rape of Lucretia led to the overthrow of the last Etruscan king, so the Boston Tea Party led to the overthrow of the British crown. The Founding Fathers of the United States sought quite literally to create a New Rome, with, for instance, a clear separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government—with the legislative branch called, as in Rome, the Senate. They even debated whether the executive branch would not be better represented, as in Rome, by two consuls rather than the president that they eventually settled for. The extended period of relative peace and prosperity since the end of the Second World War has been dubbed the Pax Americana [‘American Peace’], after the Pax Romana which perdured from the accession of Augustus in 27 BCE to the death of the last of the Five Good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius, in 180 CE. The United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union can be accounted for, in part, by the ghost of the nineteenth century Pax Britannica, when the British Empire was not merely a province of Rome but a Rome unto herself.”

MythUnited States Of AmericaEuropean UnionRoman EmpireBrexitFounding FathersThomas JeffersonBoston Tea PartyUs Senate
Book:The Meaning of Myth: With 12 Greek Myths Retold and Interpreted by a Psychiatrist
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