> [!summary] Progressive Summary # Structured Notes ## Definitions ## Chapter Summaries [[2020-06-23]] When conversing, we give feedback on the flow of information every 6 seconds. This can be visual or oral. Our brains are addicted to new informaton. We want people to skip "the things we already know". In myth, the things that everybody knows is often omitted. Over time, this is completely forgotten. This is called the Lethe Effect. [[2020-06-25]] In the North Pole, the Inuits believed that the Bear Spirit would thwart them if it heard them plotting to hunt bears, so they used euphemisms to refer to bears - ie "the brown one", *bruin*, which led to our word "bear". Sometimes the myth writer will explain the implicit knowledge when he knows the audience needs it. When Snorri Sturluson (12th century) describes Loki's punishment for killing Baldr, he writes that venom is constantly dripping on him, but his wife Sigyn holds a bowl to catch the venom. When it becomes full, she has to empty it, at which point a few drops get on his face. He says that Loki "shudders", and then explains that this shudder is an earthquake. More often, the implicit knowledge is left unexplained. When Moses comes down and is angry that his followers are worshipping the Golden Calf, we have to deduce that the Golden Calf is the sun. This is because the Egyptians worshipped the sun, and they pictured the sun as a cow-goddess who gives birth to a golden calf at dawn each day. The Israelites had been living in Egypt, and had embraced the solar religion of their hosts. ### Chapter 7: Multiple Aspects - The More the Merrier > Because a phenomenon may have so many aspects, modern scholars of myth in particular and of ancient cultures in general do well to cultivate as a working method the knack of dollying their mental “camera” around to as many different viewpoints as possible. Until we see what the mythmakers are looking at on this particular occasion—from their point of view or “camera angle”—it may be impossible to understand what they are talking about. We'll refer to this powerful method as solving the Camera-Angle Problem: To understand what a story is talking about, we may have to observe the situation from a very particular viewpoint. # Quotes # References