The Changing Guise of Myths: Philosophical Essays (Modernity in Question)

Each of us, waking in the morning, has to open the world we have woken into. We have to endow meaning to people, objects and tasks, have to secure a place in the chaos of time passing. When opening their eyes during the palpable reality of a dream, a person will dream beyond the dream, will carry over meanings and experiences from one sphere to another. The author of these collected essays puts various strategies under the microscope which we deploy to make the world material, analyzing the mythical structures we use for this purpose – interpreting anew their changing guise in the contemporary. Being witness to the changing material desert of post-Soviet Eastern Europe transforming into the over-saturated jungle of modern capitalism, he offers a unique window into the seemingly obvious – only to unveil its manifold human aspects of the hidden. Cover Table of contents 1. The question of longevity... The changing guise of myths Women, men and Plato The question of longevity... Will men survive? Curriculum vitae Cows Chopsticks and fork The odds of risk Workaholic The remote control: an odyssey Weather forecast Plague At the windowpane 2. Melancholies and rituals Melancholies and rituals On cruelty On the sense of guilt On sorrow On fear On anxiety On envy On disquiet On flattery On respect or neo-cannibalism On wonderment On smell From beyond the grave The right to hatred On cruelty, a reprise 3. The war of icons Catwalk Hierophany, or fashion according to pre-modern times Time, or fashion according to modernity The war of the iconoclasts and iconodules Palmers – voluptuous ads The mall Metro Stadium Street Haiku Titanic Let us love pop culture The question of chaos The cat and spider – where lieth force? This book is an analysis of contemporary life, seen under the perspective of immutable, ancient myths. It researches into the field of philosophical anthropology, where different moods of today’s life are analyzed. Then, different aspects of the culture of the late modernity, seen as a society of spectacle, are discussed.