We live in strange times. Our world grows steadily demystified, dissected, denuded of romance, de-romanticised, if you will. There are no points on the map that havent been scanned and scrubbed vigorously of mystery by satellite imagery. There are no races that hold strange esoteric talents or mysterious cultures living in isolation from any but their own way of life. There are no mysterious creatures of fantastic proportions left to discover. They've even uncovered the poor giant squid, caught like paris hilton on spycam. The mysterious kraken of old lies bared to all, its fearsome unimaginable proportions requiring no further imagination in the cold lens of an underwater camera. There is probably no spot left on earth which, if traced for human contact within the past fifty years, would come up negative. There are no more Macchu Picchus. I mean, of course there is a Macchu Picchu, but whats the point, where's the awe and splendour of the unknown, when you've got fat german tourists and korean shutterbugs crawling over that once inaccessible fort where men considered themselves either gods or dead.
Where is the dragon?
Where is el dorado and shangri-la?
Its not surprising that in these rational, scientifically verifiable times, fantasy sees a redux. These are the days where the only true creatures of awe inspiring fantasy lie within the head. the lion was once considered a semi-mythical creature by the Chinese. There's very little myth left in a creature left to feed, fart and fornicate in a cage.
I'm not pretending to make some sort of point here. Perhaps I have little or nothing of any real substance to say, and a whole bunch of you can get back at me on how new the world is... Write in and try to convince me.
3 comments:
dude things have been deromanticised precisely because they could be...theres lots of stuff left to discover...stuff that can't be deromanticised cause it strange by it very nature...and what we know need not be true at nay rate...
Its not about the quality of the known. Its about the knowable itself. Just about everything is knowable today. Very few real legends can exist in a world where everything can be explained away with scientific/political/philosophical jargon. This is no longer the same world in which dragons lived.
thedragons or something even stranger, nigh unknowable might yet exist in the realm of the unknown. and yes there is perhaps the realm of the unknowable too, though i'm not too sure if it is a really goodidea to endorse an outlooks that tells us that there is the unknowable.
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