In ancient Egypt there were many mutually exclusive myths of creation, because from each of these very different explanations of the beginning of life a unique and valuable lesson could be learned that would enrich life in the present. Within every human culture a battle rages between the conflicting notions that knowledge and truth are static concepts to be achieved and protected against the threat posed by change and the notion that knowledge and truth by their very nature are ideas that one never achieves but rather an endless process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis as a necessity of maintaining human viability in adaptation to an ever changing reality.
For me, one of the most interesting expressions of the conflicting approach to maintaining American viability as a society, with the knowledge that every other previous society has declined, is what I think of as the inherently American process of cultural co-optation, while at the same time allowing our identify as American to be changed by the different
