[Child of the 7th Age]

Pio -- That's a very interesting idea about the institutionalized forms of evil. I definitely think these are among the most pernicious in our own time.

I think these are very real and often horrifying. Another example might be the operation of the Holocaust in the Second World War.

However, at this point, I believe, we have passed beyond mythology (beyond in terms of chronology, not importance), and we have entered the realm of human history. This does not belittle or make small these horrible manifestions. I spent years in graduate school earning a doctorate in history precisely because I believed that much of truth and reality is reflected in the historical eye--just as much else is relected in the mythological framework.

So I think you are right to stress how important such forms of evil are to our day, but I see these as history rather than myth. They are evils standing on their own and scattered through society, rather than being incarnated in a single living being.

sharon, the 7th age hobbit