tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3256339348557514118.post3387430349912545791..comments2024-01-08T16:40:28.947+05:30Comments on Savitri Era Open Forum: If Joseph Campbell was alive today, he would be cheering on Dennett, Dawkins, Harris and HitchensTusar Nath Mohapatrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12067509498066370100noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3256339348557514118.post-34560096357197635842010-02-21T05:38:47.505+05:302010-02-21T05:38:47.505+05:30I really wonder what Joseph Campbell would say to ...I really wonder what Joseph Campbell would say to Hitchens and Dawkins and the like. It seems to me that those two are perpetrating a world view that considers myth as consisting entirely of fear-based nonsense which can only be taken literally and therefore must be rejected outright. They are representatives of a hyper-materialist ideology apparently pre-emptive of any capacity to digest symbolic material so as to manifest the mind state of one's native divinity. Instead they would have us all cling rigidly to the dogmatic worship of what is "evident" to a mind narrowly conditioned to believe that the little section of the psyche involved in linear, conceptual processing is somehow the one and only abode of a vague superstitious entity they call "truth". Religion, if you know what that word means, can never be harmful, but it so happens that it barely exists at all in the modern west. It was stamped out almost entirely by the early pseudo-christian church and the frankly rather stupid literal-minded scientism which replaced the intellectual supremacy of the church is having a go at putting the last nails in the coffin.<br /><br /> Joseph Campbell would have us wake from our forgetful stupor to recall where these myths come from and what they are for, whereas our modern tunnel-visioned evangelists - whether those who take myths literally and believe them, or those who take them literally and reject them while proffering their own crippled fundamentalist ideologies - would have us all follow suit in the forfeiture of our own depth, transformed into shallow little drones running entirely on the paltry fumes of conceptual data.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3256339348557514118.post-48772095413912129832008-05-21T17:10:00.000+05:302008-05-21T17:10:00.000+05:30JOSEPH CAMPBELLMyth works when you know what it is...JOSEPH CAMPBELL<BR/><BR/>Myth works when you know what it is about, when it says something to you because it says something about you. We must become mythic as a species if we are to survive. The great individuation of cultures each based on their myths must lead, through an emphasis on their similarities, to a planetization of mankind. For all things are one; the hero has a thousand faces, a unity in diversity. Myth is like a force field; it unfolds and calls forth our own special genius and is the basis of our understanding of our world, ourselves and our own transformation through life’s inevitable trials and tribulations.-Robert Siegel discussing Joseph Campbell on "The Spirit of Things", ABC Radio National, 17 January 1999, 6:05-7:00 pm.<BR/><BR/> <BR/><BR/>You popularized an attitude, an understanding,<BR/><BR/>of myth with a remarkable consistency <BR/><BR/>with that universal myth <BR/><BR/>that has captured my heart and mind <BR/><BR/>in this post-war world1. <BR/><BR/>I have been redesigning, retooling this protean self <BR/><BR/>and losing myself, giving myself, expanding myself<BR/><BR/>around this mythic base, this essence, this core,<BR/><BR/>where a yearning, pathos, has produced a sweetness,<BR/><BR/>dulce, settling in, an abundance scooped up, an updraft,<BR/><BR/>scooped up, with a bliss quotient that is inestimable,<BR/><BR/>indefinable. But there is always the work, the giving,<BR/><BR/>always more, a doubling of effort, a fatigue, a mystery,<BR/><BR/>a sadness, a tension, a working out of the myth in my<BR/><BR/>own life, in its individuality and its collective identity.<BR/><BR/> <BR/><BR/>Ron Price<BR/><BR/>17 January 1999<BR/><BR/> 1 Joseph Campbell is the great popularizer of myth in the post-war period, beginning with his first book The Hero With a Thousand Faces(1949). There are many similarities between Campbell and the Baha’i concept of myth, certainly a great deal that has been useful to me.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13459686900548904521noreply@blogger.com