AMERICAN FARM SCHOOL
BRUCE LANSDALE MEMORIAL
PART IX
Introduction
On February 1, 1990 Bruce Lansdale was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Agriculture by the Faculty of Agriculture of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki. This is the second part of
THE POWER OF MYTH IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT
BY
Bruce M. Lansdale
POWER OF MYTH IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT
Two terms in the title of this talk, “power of myth” and “rural development,” need clarification. The two are equally difficult to define in the present context, where the dictionary definition would not appear to apply.
As a child growing up in Greece I remember my mother reading me a new myth almost nightly, with the favorite ones repeated time and again. They were interspersed, however, with Grimm’s fairy Tales and Aesop’s Fables as if all three groups might fit into the same category. It was only as I grew older that I began to understand the power of these myths in the eyes of the ancient Greeks, the respect the people had for them, their influence on their daily lives. Demeter, Persephone, Dionysos, Artemis, Athena, Poseidon, Hermes, Zeus and Hera were very real gods to me in my youth, every bit as powerful as the Greek Orthodox saints, even though as a Christian I was expected to think of these tales only as fairy stories.
Theseus, Daedalos and Ikaros, Jason (after whom our grandson is named), Heracles and Atalante, became my friends. We were almost afraid to doubt them and were certainly convinced that they were genuine forces in the lives of the ancient Greeks.
It was only this past summer that I became more aware of another dimension in the modern day interpretation of a myth as analysed by the late anthropologist, Joseph Campbell, who worked with Bill Moyers on a series of television programs and accompanying book with the title, The Power of Myth. Growing out of the Campbell-Moyers book I came away with a sense that a specific definition is almost impossible – the whole book is a definition – but that there are certain basic underlying elements:
A myth is a story which is approximately 50% true.
A myth is a guide to behaviour.
A myth is an expression of the wisdom of the ages.
A myth is a public belief.
A myth is a metaphor created by an elite,
a shaman, an artist who took the journey into
“the unknown” and came back to relate the image which is the myth.
A myth is maintained by the “priests”
In a society to carry out the ritual.
Why is a myth different from a dream? “The myth is the public dream and the dream is the private myth. A dream is a personal experience of that deep dark ground that is the support of our conscious lives, and a myth is the society’s dream.”1 The dream is an inexhaustible source of spiritual information about yourself just as the myth is an equally vital source of information about a society.
The poet George Seferis said it well,
“You were coming into the dream
As I was coming out of the dream
And so our lives became one
And it will be difficult
For them to separate again.”
When a whole group of individuals in a community or society come in and out of the same dream, it turns into a myth.
THE MEANING OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT
If there is one word which best describes the goal of rural development, it would no doubt be prosperity. But how do you define prosperity as an element of rural development? Some might use a simple indicator of per capita income in the rural areas. Sociologists often set up a complex series of statistical factors or try to identify what determines prosperity in the minds of the rural population itself, designing a questionnaire to measure it.
Over the years in Greece, both in working with Farm School graduates through a Graduate Follow-up Program, and in organizing a Community Development Program in 165 villages in the prefecture of Thessaloniki, we have developed a sense that there is another dimension of prosperity in rural development which simply cannot be measured statistically. Maybe this immeasurable factor is best described by the following tale of Nasrudin Hodja.
One day a beggar smelled the appetizing odors of a goat being cooked on the spit outside a rich miser’s house. He sat down on a nearby stone and started eating his crust of bread, dreaming that he too was eating a roast, as he sniffed the goat. Just as the beggar was finishing, the rich man spied him and demanded payment for the small of the goat. Following a lengthy argument the two were brought before Hodja, the judge. When he heard the story Hodja asked the beggar if he had any money. Protesting, the poor man finally pulled out two coins to hand over. At that moment Hodja withdrew his hand and allowed the coins to drop on the floor. He then asked the rich man if he had heard the coins dropping on the stone floor. When the miser said he had, Hodja paused for a moment and replied, “May the sound of the coins be payment for the smell of the goat.”
Clearly prosperity is measured by the sound of the coin and by the smell of the goat. This reflects the paradox of values expressed both by village folk and by those of us who are eager to help them. We urge them to progress and at the same time want them to be changeless. We cherish our leisure moments with them but encourage them to be more active and organized. We enjoy the primitiveness of their village, but are forever telling them to build better houses and dairy barns and keep their cows cleaner. We want to sing and dance with them, yet insist that they should make better use of their time.
Two Greek words, which have no real equivalents in English, kakomiris and nikokiris, can be used to define the goal of rural development. The kakomiris (literally translated as “the ill-fated one”) is the peasant whose luck is down or who has suffered some natural misfortune.
Discussion with many villagers confirms that the kakomiris almost always brings the bad luck on himself through lack of adequate planning, even though he is inclined to blame others for all his setbacks. In direct contrast to the kakomiris is the nikokiris (literally translated as “the master of the house”). He initiates action, plans and organizes his work effectively, employs other peasants, and takes advantage of every opportunity to increase his income and the size of his holdings. The nikokiris (the term nikokira applies equally to his female counterpart) is a leader in the village, respected by others for his judgment. Villagers turn to him for support in times of crisis.
There are only rare individuals who are complete kakomiris or fully nikokiris. There is a modal curve with a small group of kakomiris at the lower end of the scale and a similar sized group of nikokiris at the upper end, with the majority bunched at the center.
The goal of rural development, or at least as concerns the “sound of the coin” might best be defined as helping individuals to eliminate their kakomiris qualities while cultivating nikokiris attitudes, values and management skills. It is important, however, that this not be accomplished at the expense of the “smell of the goat” so vital to bringing joy to rural living.
Rural development programs do not operate in a vacuum. They relate closely to the value systems of the people, to their aspirations and dreams, and how they look at themselves. If they think of themselves as kakomiris either relative to other farmers or to their city cousins, and particularly if they believe that there is nothing they can do to change their circumstances, then surely they are condemning themselves to a life of being a kakomiris. If this attitude is a personal dream, it condemns the individual to an “ill-fated” life. If it is shared by a majority of a community, then it acquires the “power of myth” and condemns the whole community or society to a kakomiris existence.
Rural development programs cannot ignore the power of such myths. Nor can they succeed in introducing new attitudes, ideas, or approaches without understanding the underlying dreams and myths. Using Campell’s terminology, schools must cultivate a new myth among their students, and if it is to survive, within the total environment — administration, teachers, instructors and students, of the school.
Essential to rural development programs, therefore, is the cultivation of new myths which promote the prosperity which a society is seeking to attain for itself.
Some of these myths encourage progress among individuals. Others affect families. Many have an impact on communities as a whole, while others may affect a whole segment of a society or even have implications for our planet. This discussion attempts to identify myths at all five of these levels which tended during the first half of this century to hinder development in the rural areas of Greece. Many of these same myths provide major stumbling blocks to development in developing countries today.
Based on this analysis, it is useful to describe some of the activities of development programs, and particularly of the American Farm School on the outskirts of Thessaloniki which may have been helpful in influencing attitudes to a degree that the myths have changed.
Finally, an effort will be made in each case to identify new myths more prevalent today in Greece which have contributed significantly to rural development during the latter part of the twentieth century.