What do you think of this, which may be fictitious?
I think it expresses what we remember of the 1950s that makes us yearn for them as a time, at least in our collective memory, of consideration, thoughtfulness, adequately reimbursed labor, self-sufficiency, simplicity, quiet and human values, before these blessings were deemed curses — and that fiction accepted as fact — by the defiantly estranged.
The tone and specifics of this work accurately depict ideals of the 1950s in a large portion of the United States, especially the suburbs, which then were just growing.
It reflects the best effort of the day to adjust the manners of living to the industrialized conditions that grew out of World War II production techniques being applied to an expansion of household goods available to moderate-to higher-earning families.
It can be termed a myth if by myth is meant a symbol or integrated set of symbols that depict man’s essential nature, his yearned for potentiality, as distinguished from the universal struggle and tragedy that characterize his existential condition, his actuality, of estrangement from himself and God.
A myth acts in the same way as the law, reminding man of the norm of life, arising from his own essential nature, and thereby commanding that norm as normative for all that he does and is.
Neither a myth nor law has power to enable or enforce obedience to itself. Neither can compel man to live even in anticipation or partial fulfillment of his own potentiality. But they stand as sentinels describing and thereby prescribing how things should be.
Peace, cooperation and harmony are man’s potentiality and his destiny. Only the immediation of Grace, together with response to Grace in faith — itself a gift of Grace — fulfilling man’s existence by reuniting it with his essence, but without destroying its rational structure, has power to bring forth obedience to law and actualization of ideals expressed in myths. Grace does this by accepting what is unacceptable, that is, by enfolding all in the power of love, which is the reality of all.
God is love. Love is God.
This work is useful in expressing that truth in the form of myth, a myth easily recalled by those who experienced it directly, a myth for whose substance even those who spurn or revile it yearn — because it expresses the truth of their reality.
AMDG