The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

by Seth Godin

Our parents’ myths, though, came from a very different place. For them it was the threat of annihilation coming from the Kremlin, the bright promise of college, and the legendary power of the corporation that created the stories we were told. These new sources of power (and risk) led to a very different set of modern myths. We told stories of a different sort of industrial outcome, myths about fitting in and obedience and not getting too uppity. And these myths resonated with our parents (and with us) because they made us feel like there was a path available for us to take. They resonated because society reflected the modern myths at the same time that it enforced them. The myths of the company man and the college boy and the jock and the happy homemaker were swallowed whole. We saw in them the dreams society had for us, and we made those dreams our dreams. In fact, they were our faith. We believed in the promise and accepted the offer of the industrialist. “We will do this if you will give us that.” This is why Betty Friedan and George Carlin were such a threat. They had the guts to challenge the modern faith of the industrial regime. Within a generation, the Homeric myths of bravery and guts were supplanted by the workaday unbrave myths of Leave It to Beaver and Archie Bunker. Sure, there were still superheroes in the comic books hidden under our beds, but these heroes were never meant to be us—they were the idle pastimes of boys who hadn’t yet come to realize that the a...