Frist MArtin uses a mythology in the colloquial way.. he has been clearly not influenced by me regarding mythology as a structural narrative which by definition is true :) A real myhtology is true by definition because it can not be wrong (within the parameters of the culture), actually it is impossible to think in term of true or false regardins an structural narrative mythology.
Greeks had the structural narrative that Gods interacted with humans frequently, they did not live in two realms of existence completely separated, this was a fundamental part of the structural narrative of the greeks, and that's why it was amtyhology.
In Western europe cities (and I guess most of US big cities) we have our mythologies, or structural narratives, for example the existence of the self is not discuted or think in terms of tru or false, t is obious, we grew thinking in this terms of true or false .. tehre is no doubt that the self exist.. in the same way , my grandma family 70 years ago had never listened about the self, and the idea that one existed and had to grow an improve and all that stuff was not present... and the bororos, well for the bororos there is no self not becuase they do not think about it but because they actively think that the brain is open to everyone, it is their mytholgy as true as it can be,and as real as our self... only that for them, our "self" is kind of crazy.
So , martin is actually referring to narratives which are not structural...and uses myths in the colloquial term as a "false narrative"... Maybe next time he uses the new language.
And regarding money I can talk abut Spain because here we really do know. First thing, compared with the US, money has no influence. Here money has no direct influence,it is indirect, it is via the networking that money provides that bankers and rich can get what they want.
typically, the biggest networking is in the hands of banks. They may have less money compared with other industries, there are people who are more rich and indsutries more relevant that the biggers bankers... but they are the real ones, the ones that really influence and talk with any government and any minister. Economic policy is a mutual understanding, financially pro-banks and then focused on union-managers arrengements for the rest of the economy...
This is why it is very easy to implement new regualtions and policies in almost any sector but economic policy is basically the same no matter who rules.
Migeru can give you more information about that.
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
Again, I'll overgeneralize here about Europeans. Even where there is awareness of powerful interests in gov't, the fact that you have more transparency because money is not passed to politicos directly, creates a tendency to respond to the policies of gov't without a full contextual awareness of corporate interests.
This is just my sense in discussing politics with Europeans. The American response is typically to suss out a politician's hidden motives, whereas Europeans are much more ready to consider politics at the conceptual level. Politics in the USA is so debased because a conceptual discussion of policies is already subverted by the election process which preceded it.
In Europe, the tendency is reversed, so that Americans find difficulty in explaining political policy to Europeans since we tend to harp on the power arrangements rather than discuss policy. Or, for voters who have no interest in power arrangements, they'd rather discuss say lipstick or religion or abortion or being a war hero. For many of these voters, they engage in power relations at the level of worker's rights (i.e. they do consider union membership, minimum wages, etc.)
For others who also ignore policy statements and governing concepts, they may dig deeper and put a keen eye on, say, GE owning NBC, or Disney owning ABC, or Sumner Redstone--a lifelong Democrat--supporting Bush now because he's great for Viacom. We'll notice that SONY and Bertelsmann have had an enormous impact on American culture by pushing laws that streamline book publishing and, unfortunately, destroy literature.
The direct money tie places a different emphasis on politics.
It isn't?
Hah, I thought the EU members rated well on bribery and such.
And I'm not even going to start on the ex communist states.
On the Euro side there may well be plenty of money arriving with the pols via anonymous suitcases and/or plain brown envelopes, but because this is plainly and clearly illegitimate it allows us to maintain the conceit that policy considerations are not structured by the priorities of corporate benefectors (even if the actuality is rather different).
So it's not that our pols aren't whoring themselves to the corps, it's that the default assumption of their being bought and paid for doesn't structure our political discourse the way it does Stateside.
Regards Luke -- #include witty_sig.h
Money suitcases are more lower orders, majors, adn in some cases head of finantial apparatus in political parties....for the networking...
As I said, the important thing is networking, who knows who.. and what you are going to do after you quit government.
