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Hey everyone!  Finally figured out this forum thing out.  Phew. 

Anyway...

The first thing that struck me about this discussion was the idea of "Truth", an universal truth and, as an extension, our search for that.  I figure as humans we'll always seek a "truth" we can grasp onto.  Particularly now, with an increasing emphasis on science (we've begun replacing that as our "Truth" instead of religion), it seems important to have your faith invested in something.  My mom told me that humans have this integral, intuitive need to "worship" a greater being, a thought, a belief system, as a part of our survival.  That could be a deity or science or any other ruling force.  It's like we create our own hierarchy in order to be a part of something greater than ourselves.  That probably explains why so many early civilizations created religion despite not interacting with each other.  (So it was not an idea that caught on but was instinctive)  Among eating, breathing and natural means of survival, we also worshiped.  I find that interesting.  It's also why I imagine so many of our creation myths dealt not only with the creation of the tangible but good vs. evil, hope and other aspects of life that are so important to being human.  

Last class we were questioning whether myths were true.  Is science?  Is anything?  While I like these discussions, I think that they can also be a slippery slope.  There's a point in which I need some kind of "reality" or structure, like all humans, to grasp onto before the world seems to be made of mist with no true reality.   So that being said, I sort of approach these discussions with an amount of caution.

Here goes:

I've been thinking about the discussion a lot, and in a way you can say that science and mythology have similarities.  They are certainly after a similar purpose.  Maybe, years from now, the science we know now, the truths we've taken for fact will be found to be complete nonsense.  Or just a very small piece of the bigger picture.  I see what Thomas King meant about stories.  The only thing I understand is that which I know and I know only my own world.  But I think it goes further. 

Since we live in a world in which time as WE (humans) know it is linear, what we perceive as the "past" no longer exists.  Neither does the future.  The past, every minute, becomes a memory and a story and that is all humans are left with, though we do have some tangible evidence that it happened.  For instance, I see that I wrote something down on a piece of paper.  That writing exists, but the act of doing so is now only a memory.  In imagining life that way, we are, as Thomas King said, merely stories that have built upon each other.  Evolving stories.  I think Thomas King was trying to say that we need to use these stories to change our future.  

One thing that I want to draw attention to is a part in which he noted that it was the punitive nature of Judeo-Christian creation story which caused US to create hierarchies and punitive societies.  So.  If we are merely stories, if our lives are stories, the stories that we have created are therefore as equally "True" or "real" and important as our past.  They have as much impact upon ourselves as our history.

I have another thought (looking at this from another angle): The stories we write reflect ourselves.  So, if our creation story encourages punishment, that begins to reflect in our society.  But, if that were true, wouldn't that also prove that we're punitive by nature and our stories are merely a reflection of THAT?

Sorry if a lot of this doesn't make sense.  I've been writing this post over the course of an hour and my brain is doing somersaults.