Editor's Note: The following excerpt describes the
need to evolve a new World Mythology in Joseph Campbell's own eloquent
words. The concept is important because the traditional 'nation'
boundaries are dissolving — not necessarily as nation states, but in the
realization of our interconnectedness. The view of the world has become
planetary — each nation, coalition, or political entity makes decisions, not in
a vacuum, but that have widespread impact on many (if not all) other nations of
the world.
Tribalism,
Nationalism, Globalism
By
Joseph Campbell
"We need myths
that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the
planet. A model for this is the United States. Here were thirteen
different little colony nations that decided to act in the mutual
interest, without disregarding the individual interests of any one of
them."
"We can't have
a mythology for a long, long time to come. Things are changing too fast
to become mythologized. The individual has to find an aspect of myth
that relates to his own life. We have today to learn to get back into
accord with the wisdom of nature and realize again our brotherhood with
the animals and with the water and with the sea."
"If you will
think of ourselves as coming out of the earth, rather than having been
thrown in here from somewhere else, you see that we are
the earth, we are the consciousness of the earth. These are the eyes of
the earth. And this is the voice of the earth."
"You can't
predict what a myth is going to be any more than you can predict what
you're going to dream tonight. Myths and dreams come from the same
place. They come from realizations of some kind that have then to find
expression in symbolic form. And the only myth that is going to be worth
thinking about in the immediate future is one that is talking about the
entire planet, not the city, not these people, but the planet, and
everybody on it."
"This is the
ground of what the myth is to be. It's already here: the eye of reason,
not of my nationality; the eye of reason, not of my religious community;
the eye of
reason, not of my linguistic community. Do you see? And this would be
the philosophy for the entire planet, not for this group, that group, or
the other group."
"When you see
the earth from the moon, you don't see any divisions there of nations or
states. This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come.
That is the country that we are going to be celebrating. And those are
the people that we are one with."
Excerpted from The
Power of Myth
Chapter 1, "Myth and the Modern World"
