When I think back on some of the points of view I espoused or defended as a very young man, I'm filled with a kind of shame that practically makes me want to jump out of my own body. Even with the excuse of having been young, of not having lived long enough to gain more perspective, I still find it hard to accept how glibly I spouted ideas that weren't mine, without even the sense to attempt to filter them through some kind of an analytical process. But then, we are fed many myths, powerful ones, from the time we are children onward-- and I suppose as angry as my young self makes me, I am grateful that as I logged in more years and experience I was able to gradually reject many of the simplistic ideas of my youth and exchange them for slightly more nuanced ones. In truth, when I look and listen to those around me, I see that not many people do...
I grew up an American Jew, to two Israeli parents. Though they were not at all religious, they sent me to a Yeshiva in New York City, one with a strong Zionist bent, where I was exposed to (or force-fed, depending on your point of view) myths of various kinds-- American, Jewish, Zionist, etc. I was a child whose imagination, like most children, was strongly affected by stories, and like most children, whose developing taste buds run toward strong, simple flavors, I was drawn to strong, simple, moral fables. "Thor" comic books, "Star Trek" on TV, "The Adventures of Robin Hood". Tales of iconic Heroes whose primary attributes were a strong and unassailable moral sense, and the courage to act on it...
As an budding American screenwriter in the late 80s, it was impossible to escape the influence of mythic thinking and storytelling. Joseph Campbell's books and the concept of the hero's journey were (and are) the coin of the realm. And it all felt so familiar and natural to me... but I was growing up, too, and all this mythology was making me uneasy. Exposure to more nuanced creative expression was causing me to grow bored and frustrated with the generally simplistic exercises of mainstream filmmaking. And experiences traveling in the US, in Israel and in apartheid-era South Africa were beginning to give me a perspective on the double edged sword of mythic thinking itself.
On the one hand, to people in the midst of dramatic conflict, it gives strength and fortitude of a kind sometimes hard to imagine, and it provides an absolute and unshakable basis from which to sally forth with the aforementioned strength and fortitude. But the other edge of the sword is too often used, both cynically and in innocence, as a tool for the shearing away of any empathetic or sympathetic impulse toward a competing point of view. Even so, with full awareness of such pitfalls, myths are hard to let go of. A breakdown in mythic thinking can allow for growth and the appreciation of nuance, but it often results in a dearly held idea's demise. Once comforting structures appear flimsy and inadequate, forms we previously saw as beautiful become dull and predictable, and our spirits cry out for something new, and, almost by definition, unknown. And the unknown is, of course, terrifying. And who's to say that after all the terrors and agonies of change, the new form will be better than that of the discarded one..?
As a movie maker here in the States, in a field where there is usually little more at stake than money, with variations perhaps in what are already absurdly high standards of living, I see every day how utterly terrified people are of embracing any kind of experimentation or change. So I am little surprised that in a country like Israel, where lives, limbs, and entire ways of life are at stake, people hold onto their myths like buoys in a stormy sea. Even as Jews and Arabs, secularists and religionists, and every other kind of "ists" under the sun hurl bombs, bullets, bottles and rocks at one another, they are with equal fervor attempting to impose and impress their competing mythologies on their own minds, the minds of their children, and on the world's collective imagination. And I believe that all involved have a deep sense that it's the winner of the mythological war whose victory will last the longest, well past the victory of any army on any battlefield in any particular war on any given day...
The power of myth has been able to sustain storytellers and their audiences in every corner of the world from the dawn of humanity to the present day. It has sustained the Israeli Jews, the Palestinian Arabs, and everyone caught up in our conflict through seemingly never-ending adversity and turbulence. But until the day we discard these monumental, pre-determined, limited and limiting fables in favor of more nuanced and unfamiliar stories, we will remain children who never grow to experience pleasures and uncertainties of adulthood.
Boaz Yakin is the author of the new book Jerusalem: A Family Portrait.
via Books on HuffingtonPost.com
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