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Myth is a story that can be retold by anyone with infinite variation and still be recognizable as itself.

The outline of surviving myth is re-recognized in the lives of each generation.

It's an instrument by which people simplify, rationalize, and retell social complexities. It's a means to

haul the abstract, the global and the relative into the realm of the concrete, the local,

and the absolute. It's a way to lay claim to faith in certain values. If those who attempt to

interpret the world do so only through the prism of professional thinkers and ignore the

persistence of myth in everyday thought and speech, the interpretations will be deficient.

This is the importance of the Robin Hood myth. It's the first and often the only political,

economic fable we learn. It's not a children's story, although it is childlike. It contains the three

essential ingredients of grown-up narrative, love, death, and money, without being a love story,

a tragedy, or a comedy. It doesn't tell of the founding of a people. It's not a fairy

story or a religious myth. It has no monsters, gods or wizards in it, only human beings. It's not a

parable. In place of a moral, it has a plan of action.

What does Robin Hood do?

We all know.

He takes from the rich to give to the poor.

A change has come over, Robin Hood.

On the surface, he's the same. The notion of taking from the rich to give to the poor

is as popular as ever. But in the deeper version of his legend, the behavior-shaping myth,

he's become hard to recognize. The storytelling that makes up popular political discourse is crowded with tales of robbery.

But the story has been cloven.

...