Hi Dennis, and  hi everyone,

>Dennis wrote:
>...the only mythology that is valid today is the mythology of the planet --
>and we don't have such a mythology. The closest think I know to a planetary
>mythology is Buddhism, which sees all beings as Buddha beings.  The only
>problem is to come to the recogniton of that.  There is nothing to do.

I find this a curious set of statements, given your initial starting point
of Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth.  Seems to me that part of Campbell's
power is his suggestion that myth lies in everyday occurrences, as well as
in high art and various religious cultural inheritances.  Another writer
who has captured some Campbell's power is Roland Barthes, whose Mythologies
examines the mythical elements of everyday life.  Consider for example what
Barthes has to say about the mythic dimension of "The Brain of Einstein":

--"Einstein's brain is a mythical object: paradoxically, the greatest
intelligence of all provides an image of of the most up-to-date machine,
the man who is too powerful is removed from psychology, and introduced into
a world of robots; as is well known, the supermen of science-fiction always
have something reified about them" (68).

Surely, in Campbell's terminology, Einstein would qualify for candidacy to
the "Hero With a Thousand Faces" category, wouldn't he?

Barthes is terrific fun--this essay on Einstein is a good example:  "The
mythology of Einstein shows him as a genius so lacking in magic that one
speaks about his thought as of a functional labour analogous to the
mechanical making of sausages, the grinding of corn or the crushing of
flour: he used to produce thought, continuously, as a mill makes flour, and
death was above all, for him, the cessation of a localized function: 'the
most powerful brain of all has stopped thinking' " (68-9).

I think most everyone on the planet today can understand these mythical
aspects of the brain of Einstein . . . and so I'm not sure what you mean by
suggesting Buddhism as the only "valid" planetary mythology--although it
could be I'm just not reading you correctly.  Or perhaps you have a
narrower conception of myth than I do.  But even in Campbell's framework,
Einstein, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, etc., as well as Buddha, Jesus,
Mohammed, et al. would all qualify as valid mythic heroes, no?

>Dennis:
>...There are two totally different different orders of mythology.  There is
>the mythology that relates you to your nature and to the natural world, of
>which you are a part.  And there is the mythology that is strictly
>sociological, linking you to a particular society.  You are not simply a
>natural man, you are a member of a particular group.

Jim T. here:  This is a little more understandable to me, but why are these
two "totally different orders of mythology"?  Seems to me there *are*
mythic forms that can combine both.  Consider what Barthes has to say about
the unexpectedly and mythically heroic world of modern wrestling (yes,
that's right . . . ).  For Barthes, wrestling conveys at once both timeless
metaphysical themes about nature and human nature, but also provides a
spectacle for the enjoyment of "mere mortal" wrestling fans:

Barthes:
--"The virtue of all-in wrestling is that it is the spectacle of excess.
Here we find a grandiloquence which must have been that of ancient
theaters.  And in fact wrestling is an open-air spectacle, for what makes
the circus or the arena what they are is not the sky . . . it is the
drenching and vertical quality of the flood of light.  Even hidden in the
most squalid Parisian halls, wrestling partakes of the nature of the great
solar spectacles, Greek drama and bullfights: in both, a light without
shadow generates an emotion without reserve.

--"There are people who think wrestling is an ignoble sport.  Wrestling is
not a sport, it is a spectacle, and it is not more ignoble to attend a
wrestled performance of Suffering than a performance of the sorrows of
Arnolphe or Andromaque.  .  .  .  True wrestling, wrongly called amateur
wrestling, is performed in second-rate halls, where the public
spontaneously attunes itself to the spectacular nature of the contest, like
the audience at a suburban cinema.  Then these same people wax indignant
because wrestling is a stage-managed sport (which ought, by the way, to
mitigate its ignominy).  The public is completely uninterested in knowing
whether the contest is rigged or not, and rightly so; it abandons itself to
the primary virtue of the spectacle, which is to abolish all motives and
all consequences: what matters is not what it thinks but what it sees" (15).

In this sense, the spectacle is felt and not rationalized.  Barthes goes on
in some detail to discuss the mythic drama of what remains an essentially
scripted performance.  "What is thus displayed for the public is the great
spectacle of Suffering, Defeat, and Justice.  Wrestling presents man's
suffering with all the amplification of tragic masks" (19).  In such a
context, the prevalence of foul play and cheap shots in wrestling becomes
almost an absolute requirement of the genre-- "For a wrestling-fan, nothing
is finer than the revengeful fury of a betrayed fighter who throws himself
vehemently not on a successful opponent but on the smarting image of foul
play" (22).  Mythic wrestling is thus almost by definition, unfair--like
life itself, with its senseless struggles and chaotic turns of fortune.
"This explains why sudden changes of circumstances have in the eyes of
wrestling habitués a sort of moral beauty," Barthes explains: "they enjoy
them as they would enjoy an inspired episode in a novel, and the greater
the contrast between the success of a move and the reversal of fortune, the
nearer the good luck of a contestant to his downfall, the more satisfying
the dramatic mime is felt to be" (22).  In short, wrestling takes on a
somber tragic dimension that mimics the life and death struggles all
creatures face in nature.

It's just a marvelous essay, and Barthes's reflections elsewhere in the
book on topics like toys, gladiator films, and plastic make for fun
reading.  Let me just post here the final paragraphs of his essay on "The
World of Wrestling."  "World" for Barthes is a significant term, synonymous
in many important ways with the concept, "nature."  Barthes says that
"wrestlers remain gods because they are, for a few moments, the key which
opens Nature."

Barthes:
". . .  Wrestlers, who are very experienced, know perfectly how to direct
the spontaneous episodes of the fight so as to make them conform to the
image which the public has of the great legendary themes of its mythology.
A wrestler can irritate or disgust, he never disappoints, for he always
accomplishes completely, by a progressive solidification of signs, what the
public expects of him.  In wrestling, nothing exists except in the
absolute, there is no symbol, no allusion, everything is presented
exhaustively.  Leaving nothing in the shade, each action discards all
parasitic meanings and ceremonially offers to the public a pure and full
signification, rounded like Nature.  This grandiloquence is nothing but the
popular and age-old image of the perfect intelligibility of reality.  What
is portrayed by wrestling is therefore an ideal understanding of things; it
is the euphoria of men raised for a while above the constitutive ambiguity
of everyday situations and placed before the panoramic view of a univocal
Nature, in which signs at last correspond to causes, without obstacle,
without evasion, without contradiction.

--"When the hero or the villain of the drama, the man who was seen a few
minutes earlier possessed by moral rage, magnified into a sort of
metaphysical sign, leaves the wrestling hall, impassive, anonymous,
carrying a small suitcase and arm-in-arm with his wife, no one can doubt
that wrestling holds that power of transmutation which is common to
Spectacle and to Religious Worship.  In the ring, and even in the depths of
their voluntary ignominy, wrestlers remain gods because they are, for a few
moments, the key which opens Nature, the pure gesture which separates Good
from Evil, and unveils the form of a Justice which is at last intelligible"
(24-25).

Perhaps heroic wrestling provides a model for doing environmental ethics in
a cynical age when various high-culture academic myths no longer seem to
inspire and motivate the masses.  What is our current planetary myth?  Is
it misanthropy and mistrust of human abilities?  Or is it the power of
Einstein's brain?  Nearly all mythic heros in the past have confirmed and
*reinforced* positive human values--does our current environmental
mythology lead us to idolize nature and fear ourselves?   Given the
post-atomic fear of science and the widespread loss of faith in the
goodness of humanity, it probably is time to look elsewhere for new heros .
. . .  hmmm, ethicists as wrestlers . . . .

Jim T.


Barthes, Roland. 1972. Mythologies. Translated by A. Lavers. London: J. Cape.
Campbell, Joseph. 1968. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. [2d ] ed.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.


>
>...Now, the biblical tradition is a socially oriented mythology.  Nature is
>condemned.  In the nineteenth century, scholars thought of mythology and
>ritual as an attempt to control nature.  But that is magic, not mythology or
>religion.
>Nature religions are not attempts to control nature but to help you put
>yourself in accord with it.  But when nature is thought of as evil, you
>control it, or try to, and hence the tension, the anxiety, the cutting down
>of forests, the annihilation of native people.  And the accent here
>separates us from nature.
>
>...Once you reject the idea of the Fall in the Garden, man is not cut off
>from his source.
>
>I just felt compelled to share this with you.  In my book, Joseph Campbell
>was truly THE MAN.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Dennis Kostecki