Joseph Campbell and The Mythological Dimension

Joseph Campbell was a world Famous College Professor. This is a quote from "Volume 1. The way of the Animal Powers: Begin quote:

We live, today, in a terminal moraine of myths and mythic symbols, fragments large and small of traditions that formerly inspired and gave rise to civilizations. Our prevailing, Newtonian world view is of a three-dimensional space,"Always similar and immovable," within which changes occur through  a dimension of time that is also continuous, absolute and enduring. Here material bodies, drawn and held together by a mysterious force called "gravity" are moved according to mechanical laws of cause and effect, the cause of the world itself being represented as the act of a deity generally envisioned as an anthropomorphic "spiritual" body, intangible, yet capable of functioning physically as a "First Cause" ---such a one as appears in Michaelangelo's representation of The Beginning, on the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel in Rome. As Newton himself wrote of this imagined moment: "It seems probable to me that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and firgures, and with such properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them: and that these primitive particles being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them: even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces: no ordingary power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first creation."

But this hard and fast mythology is now itself breaking into pieces. Newton's "impenetrable particles" have exploded, and in the realm of subatomic physics that is opening to the mind's eye--beyond reach of direct scrutiny and to be known only by way of direct scrutiny and to be known only by way of observed dynamic effects-- the entire universe appears(to quote one recent interpreter)" as a dynamic web of inseparable energy patterns"---------- end quote from page 8 from Volume one of "Joseph Campbell "The way of the Animal Powers".


To understand where we came from usually we start from where we are now. However, since so many children tend to learn science as the ONLY basis of reality as teens they often have no reference points to other points of view held down through the centuries by various individuals and people's. As time goes on this likely will be even more and more of a problem of only viewing the universe in ONE Way which will lessen greatly the genius and positivity of the entire human race.

Creativity comes from viewing the universe in literally in an infinite amount of ways. Without that the human race might stifle itself into complete boredom and could lead to it's eventual demise. So, the human race might actually "Die of Boredom" eventually.


So, teaching your children other points of view in addition to science might be important to the survival of the human race. For example, something I learned recently is that 1/3 of the population of earth lives in Adobe structures because of their resilience in low rain high heat areas of the world. Many adobe structures are still here from hundreds of years ago especially in New Mexico that date back to the 1600s and some even from the 1500s. Also, there are native American Adobe structures that likely date back much further than this throughout north, south and Central America.

I suppose this information about Adobes could be thought of as scientific too. However, from my point of view it is more about cultural roots and ways of surviving in harsh climates both hot and cold when there is a low enough amount of rain coming down on a yearly basis to not wash way the adobes eventually. By adding more coats of adobe on the outside (especially on the flat roofs) the same adobe structure can be useful in keeping people warm in the winters and cool in the summers for hundreds of years or more.


Also, we have had to move (scientifically speaking) from Newton's Mechanistic solid view of the world of science to Einstein's Theory of Relativity to the present (partial repeat quote from above)
"the entire universe appears(to quote one recent interpreter)" as a dynamic web of inseparable energy patterns".

This is quite a switch for the civilized educated world to grasp. Also, since I would have to say that at the very least (all cities on earth might now be called civilized at present), this likely couldn't be said when I was a child. So now, uneducated masses of people have to (if they study science) grasp both Newton and Einstein and everything else since and try to make sense of it even if their grandmother or grandfather might be classified by many people still as "witch doctors" or the more educated view of Shamans, medicine men and medicine women or even atheistic, animistic, or whatever. So, the panoply of different views that people still today bring to the study of science in some ways is still almost infinite in their private views of reality and what reality is.