The Power of Myth

Required reading for anyone with any interest in humanity. What a force Joseph Campbell was.

Read the book, and watch the accompanying series.

• People have the notion of saving the world by moving it around and changing the rules but any world is a living world if it's alive.
  - All of life is a meditation. Some people focus on meditating on money; if you have a family to focus on that is your meditation.

This disappointed me. I had heard so much about Campbell with George Lucas adapting the hero journey into Star Wars but in this series of interviews, Campbell is all over the place. Just trying to follow his definition of “consciousness” drove me crazy. It included everything from a inanimate objects “leaf following the sun” having consciousness to “going into a church changes your consciousness”. In the 80's he complains about how children are barbarians with no respect for ritual. He even complains about the Catholic church removing rituals by changing wording to be more modern. He offers some insights into and examples of multi-cultural myths being related but his commentary just comes off as a grump man screaming “myths are dead”