Myths to Live By (Print and Electronic)

This is a forum to discuss specific questions, thoughts and issues raised in the books (paper and electronic) that are part of The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell.

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CarmelaBear
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Re: One work, or a collection?

Post by CarmelaBear »

MarDan1492 wrote:We now have a divide wider and deeper, a divide between the hip, developing personality in the modern world to which Campbell refers, and the personalities developing in societies that still celbrate the dogmatic traditions and myths.

Comments?

Welcome to the Conversations, MarDan1492.

I was watching a TV show the other day where the commentator remarked that the majority of people in the State of MIssissippi believe that President Obama is a Moslem and was foreign born. They do not believe in climate change or the impact of industrial waste on our planetary habitat. They do not accept evolution and are are quite sure that civilization will go down in flames if women take care of their own reproductive health issues.

The mythology underlying this great divide between the down home country folk of the deep south and their citified cousins is social light years away from anything you and I would regard as informed or literate. It is not simply part of the Bible Belt tradition, it is rooted in history that goes back centuries, when societies safeguarded their core experience of family and community by enforcing strict social rules of clear heirarchy.

In the face of the vast and deep transformation being wrought throughout the planet, when the horizon has been lifted from the edge of the earth to the windows of a space vehicle, people who rely upon their own familiar mythological stories are beating a hasty retreat to the certainty of dogmatism and a firm theological basis for law and order.

That's just in the United States.

Take the whole rest of the world and it's almost urban newbies v. rural hardliners and the newbies only win in the cities. The minute they approach the hinterlands, the game changes radically, and it's every man for himself, because the system in the rural areas tends to reflect the better established views. Beware of doctors with jars of leeches.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Hey, Stephen. What's cooking?

8)
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

bodhibliss
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Post by bodhibliss »

Lots of good things. For example, Joseph Campbell's short stories are being published this month in a volume called Mythic Imagination.

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