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Carl Jung talks about a collective unconscious and I have to say that I find it absolutely fascinating that our symbols are so durable and our desires petrified

Carl Jung talks about a collective unconscious and I have to say that I find it absolutely fascinating that our symbols are so durable and our desires petrified. We have a core psychology of what it means to be human that remains unchanged and so its stories remain unchanged.

Outdoorsman 11y ago
Humans do indeed love a narrative...start telling a story, particularly one with an unusual character(s) in an interesting situation, then stop telling it and see what happens...you'll be prompted: "Go on, what happened next?"....at our core I think we're very hungry for knowledge, and eventually the closure provided when a story comes to a satisfactory ending... For the majority of our time on the planet the oral tradition was all that was available to us... I think the simpler the elements of a story are--e.g., good vs evil, good eventually wins, etc., (easily remember-able) the greater the odds are that it will be passed down through generations, or the ages, with changes and embellishments...
pessimizer 11y ago
I think that they're glossing over the fact that many/most of these old narratives have been viewed as extremely difficult to relate to by different generations in different ways, all of which have rewritten, simplified, changed the morals of, and bowdlerized them in hundreds of different ways and abandoned the originals. Many/most of the Grimm stories were virtually unknown in their original forms over the past century - until they were published again over the past 5 years or so. edit: of course, I'm calling the Grimm publications the "original forms" here - I'm sure that most were unrecognizable even then from whatever they had been when they were first told (if they were ever told a first time rather than just evolving from nothing through a continual telephone-game/repurposing process.)
jhanschoo 11y ago
While the idea of a collective unconscious is romantic, the primary reason why fairytales date back so far is because the ancient Europeans practiced a culture that prized the ability to recite old poetry and stories. When you consider that there are so many variations on fairytales due to innovations in ora transmission, yet we are able to pretty much accurately piece together one editorially authoritative version of the Illiad, the ability for oral tradition to preserve stories doesn't seem so impressive anymore.

Outdoorsman 11y ago

Humans do indeed love a narrative...start telling a story, particularly one with an unusual character(s) in an interesting situation, then stop telling it and see what happens...you'll be prompted: "Go on, what happened next?"....at our core I think we're very hungry for knowledge, and eventually the closure provided when a story comes to a satisfactory ending... For the majority of our time on the planet the oral tradition was all that was available to us... I think the simpler the elements of a story are--e.g., good vs evil, good eventually wins, etc., (easily remember-able) the greater the odds are that it will be passed down through generations, or the ages, with changes and embellishments...

pessimizer 11y ago

I think that they're glossing over the fact that many/most of these old narratives have been viewed as extremely difficult to relate to by different generations in different ways, all of which have rewritten, simplified, changed the morals of, and bowdlerized them in hundreds of different ways and abandoned the originals. Many/most of the Grimm stories were virtually unknown in their original forms over the past century - until they were published again over the past 5 years or so. edit: of course, I'm calling the Grimm publications the "original forms" here - I'm sure that most were unrecognizable even then from whatever they had been when they were first told (if they were ever told a first time rather than just evolving from nothing through a continual telephone-game/repurposing process.)

jhanschoo 11y ago

While the idea of a collective unconscious is romantic, the primary reason why fairytales date back so far is because the ancient Europeans practiced a culture that prized the ability to recite old poetry and stories. When you consider that there are so many variations on fairytales due to innovations in ora transmission, yet we are able to pretty much accurately piece together one editorially authoritative version of the Illiad, the ability for oral tradition to preserve stories doesn't seem so impressive anymore.