The Power of Myth

Author: Joseph Campbell

notes

1. Myth and the Modern World

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

• Our inner lives are equally as important as our outer lives — there, we have tasks, too (2)
  • “All of life is a meditation, most of it unintentional” (19)
• Stories and mythology are a map of the soul
  • “They are the world’s dreams” (19)
  • We don’t have comparable literature to take the place of mythology
    • {I disagree}
  • “we tell stories to try to come to terms with the world, to harmonize our lives with reality” (2)
  • “what human beings have in common is revealed in myths” (4)
  • Wisdom of life (11)
  • Myths have timeless themes across culture (13)
    • Life-nourishing
  • Create “fixed stars” and “known horizons” (16)
• A life of perfection is a life with no love
  • “It is the imperfections of life that are lovable” (3)
  • “The umbilical point, the humanity, the thing that makes you human and not supernatural and immortal—that’s what’s lovable” (4)
  • Suffering is imperfection
• Existence is meaning in itself (5)
• Modern society lacks rituals (9)
  • Marriage is a spiritual exercise, but its meaning has been degraded over time (8)
    • It is a union of two into one
    • {Isn’t marriage primarily a social construct?}
  • America has no ethos, or an unstated mythology, so it relies heavily on law

thoughts

• Campbell’s ideas are very cool, but the way he talks about certain topics gives me the impression that he has a more conservative worldview
• He has a tendency to romanticize and glamorize ancient societies while only highlighting the bad of the present
  • Is he projecting a desire, or is this grounded in research? How does he know whether people before felt more rapture?
  • This makes me slightly skeptical, but I do agree that society and attention to humanity is degrading