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What's So Great About Folklore?

© Larry Low

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Three mental sets govern how we look at and deal with the world: convention, doctrine and folklore. Convention requires the least thought. Whether we reside in Honolulu or Hong Kong, it is invariably a good idea to subscribe to its dictates,while driving to the market to buy lettuce for our luncheon salad. Staying on what is considered to be the proper side of the road is more than a good idea. Ignoring convention, an automatic response, can have consequences ranging from the disastrous to the merely embarrassing.

Doctrine dictates and does not demand that we examine its dictates just so long as we adhere to them. The problem with doctrine is that when an insightful response is required far too many of us settle for the conventional response. Entrenchment of doctrine is common in academic circles, as in the case of an Australian doctor, who was a featured speaker at an annual convention of the American Medical Association, some years back.

The good doctor delivered a paper on what was then considered a radical approach to the treatment of stomach ulcers. The Australian claimed that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria. He had been successful in treating this condition with antibiotics. His findings were pooh-hooed by his American counterparts, who looked askance at his findings. That is the bacteria premise was received with a great deal of scepticism by the elite of the medical profession who had for a considerable period of time considered ulcers to be stress sourced and that's all there was to it. Doctrine, once established, does not just roll over and play dead. It negates,ignores, and even villifies its opponents or as in the stomach ulcer case, relegates the doctor's findings to mere folklore. The illustrous American doctors were wont to deny a premise that had become part of alternative medicine. Heaven forbid!

However, when it was learned that this Australian doctor had a veritable ground swell of support for his theories put into practice, a waiting list of 5,000 patients for starters, some of the ulcer experts at the convention agreed to take a serious look at his paper. If you ever suffer from stomach ulcers, you have this Australian doctor, who had somehow gotten others past doctrine, to thank for your speedy cure.

Folklore on the other hand is often delivered tongue in cheek. It does not even require us to accept it for after all it is only mythology and mythology is derived from myth and we all know that veracity is not one of its main features. Folklore provides alternative ways of looking at the world. The acceptance of myth allows for new interpretations.

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