Currently Reading: The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
The disappearance of myth is killing us.
If you know me, you’ve heard my thoughts on the world we created and how we may better it.
My main questions are: why is our world so fucked up (and does every generation think this?) and how can we fix it? The real key here is identifying the underlying problem that links all the examples of fucked-up-ness together.
Such examples include but are not limited to the following:
Former President Donald Trump’s national and international power and the consequential polarization within U.S. politics.
The education crisis (teacher shortage & burnout, impacts from COVID-19, inequality, etc.).
The current silent depression and, therefore, an unaffordable economy.
The mental health crisis among the younger generations.
Reverberations of the opioid crisis in the U.S.A.
Constant conflict, wars, and violence (Ukraine and Russia, more recently Israel and Palestine, the drug war in Latin America, Sudan, Ethiopia civil conflict, the list goes on, thank you, Wikipedia, who says that’s not a reliable source…).
Frequent school shootings in the U.S.A.
The ever-present fear of nuclear war.
The climate crisis!
The patriarchy's constant conflict and possession of a woman’s right to her own body (i.e. the overturn of Roe v. Wade).
The erasure of the Native American experience, knowledge, and people.
Hate crimes against marginalized communities (i.e. Black, LGBTQIA+, Jewish, Asian, etc.).
I’m sure I’m missing things, but that’s what comes to the top of my mind.
So how do we right these wrongs? Correct these failures and create a better world. According to some people, I’m expecting too much from my hopes for a different reality. I blamed Capitalism for a little while, but when confronted with the question, “But, what’s the alternative?” I had no solid response. For a while, I also felt like this internal conversation and thought pattern of mine was not widely shared. I know that’s not entirely correct, though, because I read a lot of books and books open the door to understanding the questions all humans have had throughout our existence. Some of my more recent favorites include dystopian science fiction The Parable Series by Octavia Butler, anything Malcolm Gladwell, Stephen King’s On Writing, and currently The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers.
All of these have an overarching theme of how people approach living in their reality/world, which touches on my original questions and on the real mission behind asking these questions and reading these books: figuring out how I should live and move forward in this world. No singular book has answered these questions as directly as The Power of Myth, the written version of the conversation between American journalist, political commentator, and former White House Press Secretary under Johnson, Bill Moyers, and Joseph Campbell, mythologist, teacher, and storyteller.
The conversation revolves around Joseph Campbell’s knowledge of mythology and the idea that we have lost mythology, and therefore have no accurate or appropriate mythology to guide our rapidly changing minds and reality. The conversation and its release occurred in 1987/1988, and I believe it is still applicable and maybe even more relevant now.
I’ll preface this, also, by saying I am only 2/8 sections of this book: Myth and the Modern World and The Journey Inward.
Moyers and Campbell outline the basics in the section on Myth and the Modern World.
Humans are imperfect beings in need of rituals and expectations in order to move successfully through society. Mythology is the way in which rituals and expectations are communicated and outlines how we are to understand ourselves and the world around us. Myths offer models for how to live one’s life and without them, we find ourselves where we are now, steeped in disillusionment, violence, mental health crises, and a rapidly decaying planet.
The rise of secularization and technology has distanced us from the mythologies, most often communicated through religion, and the mythologies that are still practiced are inappropriate to our times — they no longer reflect our current reality. We have no mythologies to guide and comfort us in the face of this new, rapidly changing world.
The point of participating in myths is to connect your physical self with your internal being and consciousness. Myths support us in reconciling the frightening dichotomies and realities of the world. Life eats life and the horrors of the world are necessary to an extent. How we cope with this fact is where mythology comes into play. Now that there is no appropriate mythology today, we see people relying on drugs, constant social media usage, and streaming in order to dull the disconnection between our reality and ourselves. We search for ways to understand and connect with ourselves and others and without over-arching, grounding mythology, we find ourselves more disconnected from ourselves and others than ever.
I believe, our current mythology, if you take out common religions, is cultural content. The gods of today are not spiritual beings or religious figures, they are other imperfect humans who preach their lifestyle brands on the internet. Who you subscribe to and who you follow signals your values and your personal myths. With no common mythologies and rituals to guide us through the various stages of human life, people do not always conform to the expectations the government or society has outlined. The great powers that be ask us to conform to a social order, but have failed to provide us with a way to understand and participate in said social order. We once had mythologies that led us through life stages, helped us understand our inner world as well as the outer world, and taught us how to interact with nature in healing, renewable ways, but many myths have long been erased, condemned, or altered in order to support the latest technologies and validate the greed rampaging the world.
“This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself…As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you. One thing we know: there is only one God. No man, be he Red Man or White Man, can be apart. We are brothers after all.”
Chief Seattle, one of the last spokesmen of the Paleolithic moral order; 1852. (p. 43)
In section II, The Journey Inward,
Moyers and Campbell discuss various creation myths and how they have shaped how we view the male and female genders and other mythological images like the tempting serpent and the darkness from which we find light.
They also speak on the universal journey people take using mythology to understand their inner selves. Campbell explains the importance of dreams in terms of understanding our inner selves and how “the myth is the public dream and the dream is the private myth” (p.48). When one’s personal myths or dreams, are out of step with the public dream, a person finds themselves forced to adapt to a system that does not work for them. Interestingly enough, Campbell describes these people as “neurotic,” which Moyers points out is a trait of many visionaries and world leaders. Campbell explains that visionaries, leaders, artists, and general dreamers often find themselves “moved out of the society that would have protected them, and into the dark forest, into the world of fire, of original experience” (p. 49). Without the appropriate mythology, I think more and more people are finding themselves unprotected in the dark forest where they must fumble and feel their way through the bramble until they maybe make it to the other side, to the side of understanding and transcendence. Many find themselves trapped in the dark forest, forced to cope outside of society, misunderstood, and condemned for their “unacceptable” methods of coping (drinking, drugs, sex, etc.). With no mythology, people are forced to reckon with the brutal realities of life on their own.
“I think what we are looking for is a way of experiencing the world that will open to us the transcendent that informs it, and at the same time forms ourselves within it. That is what people want. That is what the soul asks for.”
Joseph Campbell (p. 61)
So, there is an answer.
My inability to reconcile my inner, spiritual self with the world's happenings is explainable. I do not identify as religious and I am at constant odds with the modern god of technology, therefore, I have no comforting myths as guidance. In a way, I feel relieved. There is still no solution in place, but the questions have been validated. There is a deficiency in our ability to understand and interpret the world. No wonder we are so drawn to art, religion, literature, and music, these are all forms of contemplating, understanding and interpreting the realities of life and our inner worlds.
I love this book so far and highly recommend you give it a read if this at all piqued your interest. If not, I’m going to keep writing about it as I read through the sections as my own way of digesting the material. I hope it is of interest, of use, and/or a source of comfort.
Stay tuned for part III: The First Storytellers.