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In her book Touch Magic, a collection of essays advocating
the critical importance of traditional myths, folk, and fairy tales, Jane Yolen <Link
to bio> (one of our advisors and conference speakers) writes that “if
we deny our children their historical, cultural heritage, their birthright
to these stories, what then? Instead of creating men and women who have a grasp
of literary allusion and symbolic language, and a metaphorical tool for dealing
with the serious problems of life, we will be creating stunted boys and girls
who speak only a barren language, a language that accurately reflects their
equally barren minds.”
People are and will always be separated from one another
by culture differences. In order for society to move beyond age-old conflicts
and become a global culture, we need a very high level of scholarship to work
through our ways of thinking, to determine why we allow our thinking to be
isolated by cultural barriers, and to learn how we can change and learn to
respect and embrace diverse and even conflicting truths. Psychologists, anthropologists,
theologians, and other scholars, as well as artists, novelists, poets, musicians,
filmmakers, and performers, are already doing this critical work.
Again, we believe that the world would be a better place
if more people knew about the work that artists, educators, scholars, business
professionals, and psychologists are doing in the field that we collectively
refer to as Mythic Literacy. The results of this scholarship must be translated
and delivered cleverly to a wider audience. For this reason, we have created
the Mythic Imagination Institute.
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