There exists a creature on this planet of mythical proportion. The Sasquatch legend will move on for yet another century. In all of the hoopla, noise, and events, Bigfoot is so often exploited, certainly admired, and remains the subject of debate. The legend moves onward and in silence. The fact is this myth has acquired a longevity and level of endearment to many hearts and minds of those who follow its exploits, unarguably within epic proportions.
War and Sasquatch An Unexpected Irony
The myth of war and the myth of the Sasquatch, an irony, transcend time and both become larger and even gigantic in proportion to the reality. Yet, the myths of war are acceptable as a way of life within our society even though harmful, heartbreaking, costly, and rips our individual souls apart. To believe in war is acceptable, ironically sane, a pattern of life within our society; although, the test of time shows us that throughout history, war is most often an insane endeavor, derived from greed, averice, and hate.
On the other end of people’s suspended belief of mythical proportion is Sasquatch. This is a harmless situation, prone to conjecture and often while smiling with good natured debates, and unacceptable to many people. To believe in Bigfoot is a step into insanity, as most that are socially aware will dictate and even sneer within an odd condescending manner while saying so.
The Power of Myth
The suspense, or drama, perhaps due to the mystical power of each, the sensitivity and high emotion factor of the challenge, the quest, and the mythical strength that calls us all toward adventure overwelms our belief system, or acceptability. The overall displacement and contrary nature of each can serve as good examples of our human nature’s will to accept or not accept reasonable arbitration toward the realm of myth.
We have two distinct realms of myth, both based on perceptive belief. Within a comparable mythic ideology, in World War II Ernie Pile, a war correspondent, wrote “War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.” True enough is the fact that war does make giants of average men, those becoming proponents of necessity, and exploited to appease and manipulate those unaware of the reality of battle, or those who distance themselves from the actual battle.
The truth is that war grows into mythical proportion and most often exploited. Ironically, the loss of the surviving warrior’s soul the common fact most often left out of the dramatic actions in the tales, books, and movies about war. But those who support war efforts loose their soul as well. Money dictates here, in this realm of myth and armchair fantasy.
Suspension of Disbelief and Fantasy During Wars
Not so ironic is the fact that during wars and as written history shows, at least when the United States is involved, increased sightings of Sasquatch are more prevalent. Also horror and apocalyptic movies fill motion picture theaters and home movie channels. And not so surprisingly an increase in fiction and especially horror stories, science fiction, and bloody movies depicting the slaughter of zombies and other films increase in popularity.
The mutterings of George Orwell’s character, in 1984, “Sanity is not statistical,” plays a roll in our mythical vs. reality culture, and in what we accept as sanity. The sanity here becomes adverse to the rolls we all play in this society; often time’s acceptable sanity appears insane and certainly debatable. Reality programs become, ironically, dimensional and dictate to us ethics and morals, as being critical of others is paramount in our society today; Although, unseen by ourselves and within ourselves. Critical evaluation becomes our pretense into evaluation, especially in reality television, politics, religion, sports, and often our neighbors and friends. Hatefullness is an obscure feeling that runs away with many people’s soul, without them knowing. Sustainability on war myth is simply unprofitable to one’s inner being.
With Bigfoot the term myth is used here not in the sense of a falsehood or a superstition. Here it conveys actual human experiences, testimonies to fact and sightings, our perceptions of the facts and the debates that follow. This is the substance of myth, the ground floor so to speak, then the myth escalates in structure and power until eventually, perhaps, we indulge into the realm of reality. A “Reality” if allowed. No matter whether it is of war or Sasquatch, human nature expands into creative appeals toward enrichment.
Myth in History
Research finds similar events since BC and the beginning of written recorded history, and show the same escalation of mythical events growing out of proportion, then onward to reality. It is human nature that will most often indulge into the realm of drama, also shown over time, or indulge in the perceptions thereof. Then the drama becomes perceptive reality some how between the mythical phase, perception, and a suspension of actual belief.
Truth Reality and Myth
So how do we convey these truths and compare them to myth. Longevity of any subject, whether real or not, is the virtue that will more often than not succumb to the test of time. That is, the consistent facts become the repetition over time and the growth of interest over many generations becomes the endowment. The downside, lies can also become reality over time.
More often than not and within psychology circles, religion, ethical standards, and the like, myth becomes the template for our lives. Whether or not the myth becomes the reality toward our actual experience in war, or our imagination toward the news and hearing about war; what or how we think or actually perceive ourselves; or what it is we have to believe to go from day to day in the matters of our previous experiences, matters of war included; the myth is the arrangement between our souls and our conscious minds. It ultimately purveys substance, reliability, and the means to move on to another day.
Entire cultures tell of these types of stories, even to promote common men and warriors into mythical legends, because that is what the human experience indulges itself upon. That war is devastating and heartbreaking to all those involved is a fact. It is those uninvolved and displaced from the experience all together that war is a myth, a happy and forced truth for their soul to survive. Profoundly, these people succumb to war like behavior, although not warriors.
The Armchair Warrior
Proponents of those who defend war as a resolution are those who have never experienced war, as history shows. A fear takes hold where they exploit the war myth, with ideals such as fight or die for the society at large. But these are the same people that do not go to fight and die in wars; rather they have sidestepped the military or send someone in their place. Confirmation is as easy as asking a mother of a dead soldier, then ask her of the social relevance of her son or daughters death. Ideology vs. reality often becomes simply a lack of principles.
Those who cannot imagine themselves in support of something mysterious and mythical, ironically is the other end of the myth scale. Where the myth was supportable in one occasion is not supported in another. A myth, or a suspended belief in Bigfoot, is often unacceptable or unusable in the common virtues of daily life; Thereby, as harmless as it is Sasquatch does not exist.
Myth and the Soul
Within both occasions this is where the soul takes over, out of fear, where it will equate a perception into the conscious mind, whether real or not. A needed myth at the time will be promoted, such as the necessity to participate in war. This is most often perpetuated through a process of intimidation and awkward hearsay presented as truth. The test of time shows a mass of costly and wrong decisions made by those who displace myth, and use it to their advantage.
There is no doubt that Sasquatch portrays independence and freedom from all of our social ills and vices. There remains a simple innocence about this creature, a curiosity prevails. But there is more, and on an ideological level it exists as strong as the conscious level of every one of our souls. If indeed it does exist, and is conscious of the facts, then it must scoff at our ways of living, our standards, our ethics, and our lack of principles toward human rights.
In reality this is the stuff that makes war. It is the minute process of mine is better than yours attitude. Ironically, creatures such as a Sasquatch most often are the “Unknowns” and individuals that become our society’s enemy. The creature knows this from observation over past decades and has developed a profound ability to survive unseen. Whether this situation is a conscious or unconscious level of safety, only the creature knows.
Sasquatch will remain the ideology of freedom, of the ability to escape our society at will, and get away with ignoring our façade of social attributes. Certainly, we can all admire that independence. The mythical creature will not succumb to our sacrifices involving human nature, compromises of our souls, in order to perform our accepted way of daily life.
Perceptions become a strong entity toward belief, whether wrong or right. If we remain proponents of death, in the name of a supposed and ill perceived method of security and reaction only, then one must question where we stand as human beings as well as the question of sustaining human rights and the power that upholds those same rights.
The Virtues of Bigfoot
No matter, Bigfoot will always have an admiring individual looking on with awestruck and bewildered admiration. It will be perhaps with an awkward form of jealousy toward the creature’s ability to evade ideology that is contrary toward the human spirit itself, or the soul, as most of us accept just in order to get-along in an inept society.
This mythical creature of creature’s for as long as it roams throughout nature, we as mankind will have a symbolic necessity within our very souls kept alive. We will know there is still a freedom that exists, as we live vicariously within the heart and soul of the Sasquatch as it roams and keeps roaming unblemished and untarnished by us as a society.
In summation, we as a society have taken as truth the war myth. This is in spite of time tested history that shows beyond a doubt the reasons for us going to war were invalid. Worse, the reasons were not only hypothetical, but dishonest, lies, and misinformation. Our sons and daughters have died because of this.
On the contrary, we have the myth of Sasquatch. It is an innocent myth of honesty, freedom, and most of the things we all hold dear to our hearts as a nation and as a society. Yet, most of us fail to believe in this high spirited non-adversarial situation and pass it off as a story, or those who have actually seen Bigfoot as insane, or a far worse perception, idiots of the worst type.
If a Sasquatch can not exist within our creative sprit, our souls, then we have either lived to long and become too cynical, or we have simply lost our souls to a society that endeavors toward profits rather than the human spirit and people in general.
David Nichols, ed., Ernie’s War: The Best of Ernie Pyle’s World War II Dispatches (New York: Touchstone, 1986), 81.
George Orwell, 1984 (New York, Penguin Plum, 1983).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigfoot
http://animal.discovery.com/videos/lost-tapes-bigfoot.html
Photojournalist - Journalist 