The poetry of myth

El Cabrero has been on the road this week. Instead of ranting about current events, I'm trying to settle accounts with the ideas of Joseph Campbell, the famous student of mythology. My short take is that when he's good, he's really good. And the converse.

Here's some classic Campbell:

Whenever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved. Such a blight has certainly descended on the Bible and on a great part of the Christian cult.

To bring the images back to life, one has to seek, not interesting applications to modern affairs, but illuminating hints from the inspired past. When these are found, vast areas of half-dead iconography disclose again their permanently human meaning.

It's hard not to agree with a good bit of that, especially when you think about the lunacies of literalism, such as "creation science." I can't go all the way with Campbell and am allergic to his politics but he does have his moments.

JUST ONE LINK. Here's my latest rant on cuts to the Head Start program. Notice that I performed the charitable act of feeding a troll.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Symbolism, not history?

As I mentioned yesterday, I decided to read Joseph Campbell's famous book on myths, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I am not a Campbellite and have some political and other issues with him and his ideas, but he makes some interesting points.

One of his intellectual habits that probably shocks people who associate their religion with actual historical events is that for him the story is all, not what really happened.  At one point, after quoting the story of Jesus' Transfiguration, he writes,

We may doubt whether such a scene ever actually took place. But that would not help us any; for we are concerned, at present, with the problems of symbolism, not of historicity. We do not particularly care whether Rip van Winkle, Kamar al-Zaman, or Jesus Christ ever actually lived. Their stories are what concerns us: and these stories are so widely distributed over the world--attached to various heroes in various lands--that the question of whether this or that local carrier of the universal theme may or may not have been a historical, living man can be of only secondary moment. The stressing of this historical element will lead to confusion; it will simply obfuscate the picture message.

It is true that insisting on literal facts can kill the point of the story, but I think at some points what actually happened does matter, to the extent it can be known.

My main problem with Campbell is summed up in the phrase "local carrier of the universal theme." I think a respectful study of myths and folklore doesn't reveal a universal theme; it reveals all kinds of themes. He believed in a mono-myth. I prefer multi-myths.

SO HERE WE ARE IN BISMARCK. Well, I guess I can scratch "visiting North Dakota" off my bucket list. I tagged along when a delegation of WV legislators visited the state to learn about its Legacy Fund. We've been pushing for something similar here for a few years now. Here's coverage from the Bismarck Tribune. The hospitality has been great, as have the accents (a little like Minnesota). I think all of us who came have learned a lot--I just hope we seal the deal in the legislature.

GOOD NEWS FOR WV FAMILIES. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin announced today that he is requesting that federal health regulators allow the children of public employees to sign up for CHIP, the Children's Health Insurance Program.This move will save families and the state a lot of money. This is something my friends at the WV Center on Budget and Policy advocated in a recent report.

I would blog more, but this is a good local beer town. Don't wait up.

The power of myth

There's no getting around stories. We seem hardwired to tell them, hear them, and make them up (consciously or otherwise). A while back, a friend loaned me a book titled Winning the Story Wars: Why those who tell--and live--the best stories will rule the future by Jonah Sachs.

I think the title makes a good point. A great deal of politics is about controlling the narrative. I enjoyed the book, although I got a bit lost in the weeds. Sachs based a great deal of his ideas on those of Joseph Campbell.

I have to admit that I am not a Campbell fan. I dislike his politics and disagree with his view that somehow all cultures are part of a mono-myth. I don't think the whole human race is watching one movie. Still, I decided to check out his best known book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Official Goat Rope verdict: 35% very cool; 65% not so much.

Still he has some good lines in there. Like this one about myth from page 1:

Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, myths of man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind. It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.

SO HERE'S WHERE I'M OFF TO: North Dakota (!).

AND HERE'S ANOTHER ENDORSEMENT of creating a Future Fund for WV.

NOT THE NEWEST NEWS, but this protest against the Master of the Universe WV Attorney General was interesting.

MORE CLIMATE CHANGE TO DENY here.

NOTE: I'm on the road so posts may be irregular and links may be behind the times.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

PUBLIC DREAMS?

Heracles, courtesy of wikipedia.

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) is probably the most popular interpreter of myths today. Campbell was the author of The Masks of God, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and many other works. His works also inspired Star Wars creator George Lucas.

Campbell's public following grew by leaps and bounds with PBS's broadcast of The Power of Myth, a series of interviews between Campbell and Bill Moyers. Strongly influenced by Jung, he believed that all myths worldwide shared similar themes and spiritual insights. He sometimes spoke of a "monomyth," such as that of the quest of a hero, as if all humanity was basically watching the same psychic movie.

One problem with that approach is that it selectively picks from many diverse myths and imposes a general interpretation on widely diverse traditions with widely different systems of meaning.

He had a knack for catchy phrases such as this one:

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

Sounds good but doesn't hold up too well. Myths are enduring stories repeated over time, whereas dreams are physiological events, most of which are not remembered or retold. Myths provide a world of meaning for those who accept them, whereas most dreams are mental static that have little influence on daily life (although we arguably should pay more attention to them than we do).

The problem with overgeneralizing about myths is that in doing so one creates a more or less artificial construct that loses a lot of particularity. As one of El Cabrero's teachers used to say, you can't unscramble an egg. Instead of lumping all myths together into some gigantic stew, it might be more interesting to look at different traditions in their own terms.

THE SURGE IS WORKING? You decide.

THE TREE ARMY. Here's Bill McKibben on the relevance of New Deal era programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps today.

COAL AND/OR HEALTH. A new study by a WVU researcher finds that residents of the state's coalfields are more likely than other West Virginians to suffer from chronic heart, lung and kidney disease.

SOME DAYS YOU EAT THE BEAR... Here's Dean Baker on the credit crisis and corporate bailouts.

THE WIRE. Here's a critical view of El Cabrero's favorite TV show that talks about all the positive things in Baltimore and other cities that the show ignores.
Point well taken, but can somebody tell the folks at HBO to get that season 5 DVD out soon?

SPIDERS AND SNAKES. New research is studying the question of whether the common fear of snakes and spiders is an evolutionary inheritance or something learned.

LOOK TO THE ANT, THOU SLUGGARD! They invented farming 50 million years ago when we were just a twinkle in a primate's eye.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED