[Steve] Instead of trying to make me look like a dick (did you have me confused with Platt or something?) I wish you would have snipped your quote of me after I pretty much said exactly what this quote of Campbell's says.
[Arlo] Wasn't trying to make you look like anything. I thought you were denying Campbell ever said that, so I provided the quote and reference. (And I don't have to make Platt look like anything, he does a good enough job of that all by his lonesome). [Steve] Note that this quote is not a condemnation of ALL religion--only religion as it is commonly practiced. [Arlo] I disagree, but maybe this is just terminology again. What he's saying (as I see it) is that religion IS (as you point out in your other post) worshiping the symbol rather than the symbolism. That's what MAKES it "religion" as opposed to symbolic metaphor. [Steve] If Campbell had found no value in "other people's religion" he wasted his career, don't you think? [Arlo] Not at all. I think he found it shortsighted and ultimately defeating to concretize myth, that the tendency towards "exoteric" readings of myth moved man AWAY from understanding and towards power and social structures. And here's where the terminology comes into play for me. The more you move away from "exoteric" and into "esoteric", the less and less what you are doing could be considered "religion". Think of it this way, if Campbell was saying "hey, we have this enormous library here, and if we play around in it and read and think and ponder and wonder, we may get closer to understanding the human condition", but then there are all these people who take ONE book, say Gulliver's Travels, and call it The One True Book, and say there is no meaning in any of the others... do you think Campbell would find value in that? Sure, there is still value in Gulliver, but the "religion" that would form around this one book is nothing Campbell would say is "good". Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
