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Our version of mythos, the news, has some decided benefits, especially in that we are invited to be outraged and to do something about the information we receive. Part of what we learned from Voltaire was that the creation of public opinion depends upon information. It is up to each of us to be informed. Beyond demonstrating, or calling a senator, or writing letters to the editor, most informed people do not do much, and they may not do anything. They may not even vote. Yet the culture often reinforces the idea that the passive act of having an opinion is significant. We all influence one another, and the people who do get active on an issue may do so because they were emboldened by the quiet grumblings that they heard throughout their town.

Still, the news is such a huge cultural effort, and most of us do almost nothing with even the portion that can be called political. Why should the “political news”—economics, war, law—be partnered with deep coverage of the “popular news” of celebrity rape trials, an especially pleasing girl gone missing, a murderous husband on Christmas Eve? What makes them both news? They both happened, but so did a lot of things. Everything, really. So why are we assiduously keeping up on governments and pretty kidnapping victims? Because the news is our myth, helping us do our psychological work the way Demeter and Mother Mary did. Knowing the news holds a kind of cultural righteousness, yet it is not demonstrably good for much unless you get involved. Since most of us do not, it is reasonable to also wonder what we are really doing when we keep up on hard news. Part of the answer is that it makes us feel connected to each other. The soft news is even more useless in the ordinary sense of use.

Remember when the beautiful Mormon girl Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her bed? In her photo, she is posed with her harp. Her mother and father wept and searched. We had all seen girls disappear on the news, and after months go by, we begin to accept the worst. But then the Mormon girl reappeared! A reunion! But a lot had happened out there. Her mother and father are forever changed by their time of waiting and searching. The girl is returned, to be her mother’s child again, but she comes back having experienced a version of adulthood. While she was still denying that she was Elizabeth to the police, she mentioned she had heard about that girl “who ran away.” It suggests that this is how she thought of what had happened. At the time of her return, her father was quoted as saying, “I don’t know what kind of hell she went through. I know very little about the last nine months. I have no doubt that she did fear for her life that night as she left the room, not knowing what would happen to her. She’s grown a lot. She really is a young woman now.”1 Despite the fact that “been through hell” is a common phrase, this idea of the girl’s time away is remarkably similar to Demeter’s understanding of where Kore had been all that past winter. Patty Hearst, too, got stolen, but turned up seduced instead, having been a queen of the underworld. Then one day she’s back, among with the wealthy celebrities again, those gods of Olympus.

Why are we so fascinated by the story of the lost child? The lost child is always you. Kore is always young Demeter, even if she is also Demeter’s daughter. You are the one who had sex with Hades in the underworld and came home changed. Some part of you believes it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been so beautiful and so easily deceived by fancy flowers. I am being dramatic, but what I mean is that losing and refinding is how you make progress in every human endeavor including the finding of oneself, and it is the drama of most love; progress comes in losing and refinding. It is also you who is running away, or hiding, in body or in mind. It is a risky game. Maybe no one will come after you. Though you work like mad to keep parts of you undiscovered, it is horrible to imagine that you will be completely successful. As the psychologist