World of Jop

One of the things I really love are old myths and legends. This already started in my youth; After I finished my own books and the one my parents give me from their youth, I had the habit of reading any book of my parens heavily-loaded bookshelves I could get hold on. I would read anything; the books related to nature and animals belonging to my mother, the history & war books belonging to my father and all kind of novels I would not understand a thing of considering the fact I was about 10 than. I even read the books of Jan Wolkers which most definitely can be considered as ‘adult only books’ ;-).

I mostly got fascinated by ancient Roman and Greece history though. The heroic stories about the Troian war, the battle of Termopylae between 100 heroic Spartans and the hughe invading army of the Persian king Xerxes (There will come a movie about this, I read in a newspaper), the story of Romulus and Remus who founded Rome; all would fasincate me beyong imagination. In fact this made me teachers pet during my classes Latin and ancient Greece in college, even though I would never get a hold on the grammar itself and broke some of the all-time low result records in that ;-).

Anyways, this interest never really died and when the years came, I also started to read myths and legends from South America, India, Japan, Indonesia and China. It is truly interesting to see how these stories from very different part of the worlds on one hand have a lot in common, but on the other hand have structural differences. The latter, obviously, is related to cultural differences; I noticed for instance that in some myths from Japan the message very clearly was ‘ stick at the group or else your end will be mostly unpleasant’. In many western stories however, those who goes into the world to find adventure will often find richdom and goodluck… Could it be the latter reflects the ‘individualstic western culture’  and first the more collectivistic Asian culture?’

Perhaps more interesting however are the many simularities…like the common believe in spirits and ghosts….Just like their are so many simularaties in different religions, showing either their must exist such supernatural entities, or there is a universal human need to ‘ create them’, to give the unknown a certain visualisation and make the uncontrolable a bit contrable (for instance by praying or sacrificing…).

The most recent books I read was about stories from Indonesia. In the Indonesia stories, many animals played a role, from tigers to fishes and frogs…the people were very cunning and smart, and ussually inteligence beats power. In many stories, hierarchy also seems to be very important; people are very loyal to their rulers and lords. Interesting when realising that according to culture-expert Hofstede, Indonesia indeed is a very hierarchic country…

Well, I could write hours about this subject I suppose; it interests me, that is why. But I will respect myself until telling about a Dutch legend, in my next posting :-). And, for my Indonesian friends: be alert to KUNTILANAKS!! ;-).