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I’d say Myth spawns Art. It’s a crucial element in how Myth is communicated. But Myth also spawns Ritual, and you couldn’t say that Art does that. They’re different concepts, with a lot of overlap in their referents. Let’s move on to enumerating Campell’s four functions of Myth. I’m pulling these from Occidental Mythology: “The first and most distinctive – vitalizing all – is that of eliciting and supporting a sense of awe before the mystery of being." “The second function of mythology is to render a cosmology, an image of the universe that will support and be supported by this sense of awe before the mystery of a presence and the presence of a mystery.” “A third function of mythology is to support the current social order, to integrate the individual organically with his group; and here again, in the long view, we see that a gradual amplification of the scope and content of the group has been the characteristic sign of man’s advance from the early tribal cluster to the modern post-Alexandrian concept of a single world-society.” “The fourth function of mythology is to initiate the individual into the order of realities of his own psyche, guiding him toward his own spiritual enrichment and realization.” There’s a whole lot here. I was thinking of using The Lion King to draw illustative examples from (particularly for functions 3 and 4), and now that I’m typing I find it a headache-inducing task. For a Sunday night. BTW The Lion King was crafted by a group of screenwriters who were given a “Monomyth How-To” guide drawn from Campbell’s ideas. Under functions 3 and 4 comes something vital: myths provide the metaphors to inform the great transitions we all go through in life. Often via Art, often via Ritual, or both. What are these transitions? We start out like any other mammal, utterly dependent on our mothers. Then we start to individuate, and after quite a few years (and stages) we’re ready to be fully independent. Then we find a mate, procreate, and have to focus much of our energies on caring for our own offspring. Then they go off to college. And hopefully don’t move back in afterwards for an extra decade of remedial nurturing, but if they do, we have to deal with it. Then we retire, our health fails, and we go back to being dependent. And finally die. Each of these stages calls for a transformation of consciousness. And there are Myths to inform each stage, and the richer the Mythology, the more stages are covered. Digression: IMO Rand’s stories are especially good at informing the later stages of the transition from dependence to independence. But don’t do much for any of the other stages. To be continued.

Eiuol, I shall give your perspective due consideration. I find it difficult to respond to an audio conversation, especially when I detect "loaded terms," or indications of bias against Objectivism. It is impossible to insert commentary into such a dialog as Szalapski's podcast, that is, commentary requiring context related to the opposing statement. Perhaps this is merely a matter of different techniques of learning, as you've suggested. The advantage of this forum is the option of isolating a comment (particularly one that may require clarification or context), and responding to the specific portion of the entire statement. It is not my intent to discourage the recently-interested from exploring the ideas of Ayn Rand. Quite the opposite, there are times when I need clarification in order to judge the intent of the other person. Szalapski, Was there anything I said that appears to need clarification or context? I am still somewhat mystified by this reference: "...more Objectivist than 99% of the population," and the element of "remaining impurity." Could you explain?

As far as I know, reservation laws on the vast majority of reservations are very similar to regular local laws. The problem is that federal law prevents non tribe members from owning land on the reservation. So while you can transfer ownership, you can only transfer it within the confines of small tribes (the biggest are the Navajo, at 300,000, but after that it's 20,000 or less), you can't transfer it to outsiders. Which has all kinds of consequences: 1. property values are low 2. real estate can't be used as collateral in loans or mortgages (since the bank can't own it). 3. reservations can't attract investment the way other jurisdictions can (there are lots of countries that restrict land ownership by foreigners, and they end up having the same problem). So young tribe members wishing to build a life, who have trouble raising the money to buy a home (or start a business) react in two different ways: they either decide to depend on local government for help, or they leave the reservation. It's easy to guess which type of person does which, and what the effect is on the overall prosperity levels on reservations. This problem could be solved without any intrusive measures, land confiscations, or any further interference with the sovereignty of reservation governments. There's no need to cause any protests, or any violent reaction, by mandating anything. All that's needed is to remove the race restriction on the federal level. Leave the decision up to the reservation's government. If they want to open up to the world, and invite non-natives to buy land and join their community, fine. If they don't, that's fine as well. Let them be racist. It's their loss, and, eventually, their population would leave, and that would be that.