Originally published in the Herald-Zeitung January 1, 2024
Years before his death in 1987, the renowned mythologist, Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) offered reflections in an interview about where he saw we were as a culture and as a nation. This and other interviews are contained in a host of interviews just published in November: Joseph Campbell: Myth and Meaning. Conversations on Mythology and Life.
In our current plight of accelerating information and increasing tribal loyalty groups bent on their own political and economic agenda, Campbell saw that this structure was out of date and detrimental to the real crisis of today: the health of the planet.
He dreamed that out of this static state of rigid dogmatism there might be an evolving mythic image of a global man [sic]. Today we would say a global person. It would, however, require a collective effort to transcend national identities for it to occur. Such a migration of thought would allow us to ease the tensions today between a “pull toward a more universal perspective and a contraction into tribal, sectarian groups.”
But Campbell was a life-long, card-carrying optimist. He believed that we could as a species create a mythology for people “recognizing the humanity of a person on the other side of the tennis net.” Such a mythology would allow a collective pilgrimage, not of nations, but of a species into a realm of no more horizons but the planet itself. The horizons placed on any group or collection of people and nations, are placed on it by the myths they choose to ritualize their values through. Campbell believed that when such limitations are removed, a global perspective would be possible.
He is clear-eyed, however, in what he proposed decades ago: “Nothing will really straighten out until the sociological image of the planet, rather than of this group or that group, takes over.” He made this remark well before the climate catastrophe was yet to enter our consciousness in the language, much less the insistent factions that deny there is even a problem.
His thinking, as one who studied world mythologies for his entire adult life, is that “in terms of history, we are coming to an end of a national and tribal consciousness.” Even the interest groups that cling to their own agendas have the capacity to shift their perspective to see that “the shared interest group before us is “our society is the human race. And our little suburb is the globe. Spaceship Earth.”
Campbell had a novel take on the root image of all viable, organic myths, namely, the way they promote accord with the world of nature; he even includes history as part of nature, including our human nature; damaging, exhausting, and exploiting the Earth is to exploit our own natures in this destructive cycle.
While we all recognize the global reach of the myth of capitalism which unites the world order, it does nothing to elevate the spirit of humankind, which is essential for our survival. Campbell saw this in world mythologies; for him the “new myth is going to be one that recognizes the whole planet as our society.” People experience this sense of unity when visiting other countries and befriending and engaging others in human conversations. Within a global consciousness, the foreign becomes family.
Finally, as Campbell asserts: “in one’s political action and influences, if one can think of oneself as a member of a world community without betraying the legitimate interests of one’s local neighborhood, one would be helping the world forward.”
The result of all these efforts performed by each of us, would be a breakthrough, “which has to be of the recognition of the planet as the Holy Land.” Such a miraculous revisioning of ourselves could lift us out of self-serving interests into a world community where the planet herself is respected as our true home.
In the wide sweep of human history, dreams of the future have often come through.