The Myth of Tobacco Road
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The Myth of Tobacco Road Adam Scott LeRoy 1 Received: 8 January 2020 / Revised: 20 February 2020 / Accepted: 27 February 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract
In this paper, I use descriptive observation to analyze the song “Tobacco Road.” During analysis, I describe certain principles of structural-systemic epistemology and define categories to elaborate on relationships between technology and primary and ideal forms of a skill. In this way, qualitatively differently forms of transmission for magical thinking and myths originate. Analysis reveals certain forms of magical thinking and myth inherent to “Tobacco Road.” I conclude by applying this myth to current social dilemmas. Keywords Myth . Magical thinking . Ideal form . Social expectation Before his death, an American musician named Tom Petty hosted a radio program featuring blues and rock music from the mid-twentieth century. Sometimes he would spin a song called “Tobacco Road” by the Nashville Teens. As Petty would note during his introduction, The Nashville Teens were not from Nashville and they were not teenagers. That humorous contradiction made a song I had already heard numerous times far more interesting. I dug into the history of “Tobacco Road.” I thought about it a lot.1 To me, the song represented a certain peculiarity of the early twenty-first century. The material conditions of technological advancement create readily accessible, near pristine artifacts. Of course, that is not the only outcome but—as the cultural environment is a source of reorganization within the behavioral environment—these artifacts become a source of development in a way inaccessible to previous generations. The presence of fully formed skills within the cultural environment becomes expansive. 1
A reviewer of this article felt that my inclusion of these personal and cultural details would be uninteresting to non-American readers. Whether this is true or not would be the subject of a much longer paper and is beyond the scope of this article. Here, I will only note that throughout this article I rely on my personal experiences and the conclusions of authors from a variety of cultural backgrounds. To my knowledge, the American examples I have relied upon (e.g., musicians, songs, time periods) have correlates to other cultures. Some readers may benefit from transposing such relevant cultural correlates over my own to make the example more relatable. Some examples will be known to an international audience.
* Adam Scott LeRoy [email protected]
1
Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA
LeRoy
To be fair, perhaps an adolescent saw the Bayeaux Tapestry in the twelfth century and internalized some qualities about Bishop Odo. But this seems different than seeing, say, the Concert for Bangladesh some 30 years after it happened and, later, purchasing a certain shirt because it looked like the one George Harrison wore (which is something I did). I do not mean to fetishize any particular moment in historical development or the technology itself. I simply note that qual
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