Gav and all:
Campbell used to say that theists and atheists are alike in that they both
take myth literally. The former thinks the literal interpretation is true
and the latter thinks its false. But then there are those who don't take it
literally. I like the third option, which rejects theism BECAUSE of its
literalism. This is Joe's big theme; that myths have to be understood AS
myths, that their truth will be lost if they are read literally. I think
Pirsig's mysticism and his anti-theism are both consistant with this
non-theistic, experience-based spirituality. It doesn't hurt that Pirsig
recommends Cambpell to the readers of Lila.
I have to stop myself from commenting on everything because the weather is
too fine to be sitting at my computer, but I couldn't resist spending a
little time. You've raised some of my favorite topics...
Gav's analysis of star wars:
The threshold of adventure is gained at a spaceport bar in Mos Eisley. Here
Luke has his first flirt with
death, averted by the intervention of ben kenobi. The seriousness of the
the adventure is established here - it is life and death, but it is
countered by the strangeness and levity of the barroom clientele and their
interactions. The bar represents the hair's breadth between life and death
and the humour of this. ...
dmb says:
I'd add that the strangeness at the threshold speaks to the idea that the
hero's adventure really begins when he leaves the familiar world behind and
enters a new realm. The life and death motif plays into this part of the
myth insofar as death is the ultimate unfamiliar realm. The hero's
willingness to cross the threshold, then, is a kind of prefiguration of that
ultimate surrender. Its also a classic movie device because there is not
drama unless something important is at stake, something to be lost or won.
Backing up just a bit to the call to adventure, the hero usually starts out
in the ordinary world, living his ordinary life but there is some kind of
problem with the prevailing order. His call to adventure will involve some
kind of request that he be the one who sets things right and again because
we need some drama it is no fun if our hero immediately says, "yea sure,
let's rock and roll". Instead he usually is reluctant to get involved and
has to be coaxed by a mentor or by further events. But by the time he stands
at the threshold there has been some level of commitment to the task ahead.
So this is where, storywise, things really get moving. This is where the
hero will take his first leap into the unknown and stepping out of the
ordinary world also symbolizes a shift in consciousness. In Pirsigian terms,
the hero is about to leave the static world.
Gav said:
Luke's tutelage under Ben reaches a transition point when ben allows himself
(with luke looking on) to be struck down by darth before saying to him that
to kill him will make him more powerful than he can possibly imagine. His
dissappearance upon death adds to the mystery of his statement, underlining
the relativity of death. The reality of the 'other side' (the implicate
order) is reinforced continually from here on with many interventions by
ben's ghost.
dmb quotes from Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces (258-9):
"And so, to grasp the full value of the mythological figures that have come
down to us, we must understand that they are not only symptoms of the
unconscious (as indeed are all human thoughts and acts) but also controlled
and intended statements of certain spiritual principles, which have remained
as constat throughout the course of human history as the form and nervous
structure of the human physique itself. Breifly formulated, the universal
dotrine teaches that all the visible structures of the world - all things
and beings - are the effects of a ubiquitous power out of which they rise,
which supports and fills them during the period of their manifestation, and
back into which they must ultimately dissolve. This is the power known to
science as energy, to the Melanesians as mana, to the Souix Indians as
wakonda, the Hindus as shakti, and the Christians as the power of God. Its
manifestation in the psyche is termed, by the psychoanalysts, libido. And
its manfestation in the cosmos is the structure and flux of the universe
itself.
The apprehension of the SOURCE of this undifferentiated yet everywhere
particulariized substratum of being is rendered frustrate by the very organs
through which the apprehension must be accomplished. The forms of
sensibility and the categories of human thought, which are themselves
maifestations of this power, so confine the mind that it is normally
impossible not only to see, but even to conceive, beyond the colorful,
fluid, infinitely various and bewildering phenomenal spectacle. The function
of ritual and myth is to make possible, and then to facilitate, the jump -
by analogy. Forms and conceptions that the mind and its senses can
comprehend are presented and arranged in such a way as to suggest a truth or
openness beyond, And then, the condition for meditation having been
provided, the individual is left alone. Myth is but the penultimate; the
ultimate is opensness - that void, or being, beyond the categories - into
which the mind must plunge alone and be dissoved. Therefore God and the gods
are only convenient means - themsleves of the nature of the world of names
and forms, though eloquent of, and ultimately conducvie to, the ineffable.
They are mere symbols to move and awaken the mind, and to call it past
themselves.
...'For,' as Jesus states it, 'behold, the kingdom of God is within you.'
Indeed, the lapse of superconsciousness into the state of unconsciousness is
precisely the meaning of the Biblical image of the Fall. The constriction of
consciousness, to which we owe the fact that we see not the source of the
universal power but only the phenomenal forms reflected from that power,
turns super consciousness into unconsciousness and, at the same instant and
by the same token, creates the world. Redemption consists in the return to
superconsciousness and therewith the dissolution of the world. This is the
great theme and formula of the cosmogonic cycle, the mythical image of the
world's coming to manifestation and subsequent return into the nonmanifest
condition. Equally, the birth, life and death of the individual may be
regarded as a descent into unconsciousness and return. The hero is the one
who, while still alive, knows and represents the claims of the
superconsciousness which throughout creation is more or less unconscious.
The adventure of the hero repersents the moment when, while still alive, he
found and opened the road to the light beyond the dark walls of our living
death.
Gav said:
...Luke's father has been (nearly) totally incorporated within the empire,
so much so that his very body is more technology than organism. It seems
therefore that luke must overcome his father if he is to overcome the
empire. ...vader is life in the service of technology. Technology and
nature are not separate, the force binds all.
dmb says:
This is one of those dark visions I brought up the other day in relation to
artficial intelligence. This is just one of many science fiction pieces that
casts technology as in league with the bad guys. Notice how Darth is
faceless and depends on technology for his very breath. Here we have an
image of humanity being integrated with and replaced by technology. And
notice how the DEATH star is NOT a life-giving sun like most other stars.
This is the problem with the prevailing order, the problem which gave rise
to Luke's call to adventure in the first place. In this out of kilter world
technology serves oppression rather than freedom. This aspect of the story
speaks to our time in particular. This vision says that technology has
become hostile to human life and freedom, has become an overwhelming
instrument of power and control. I think this part of the story is neither
far away nor long ago.
In the Matrix we get this added notion that hardly anybody even realizes
that they are exploited prisoners living in a high-tech cocoon that seals us
off from the real world, that we aren't even living a real life.
These are myths for our time and they center around the dangers of
technology. Like all myths, they are not to be understood literally. But as
myths they're worth pondering. Ask yourself what technology serves in our
world. Wealth and power have more than a little to do with it. Few branches
of technology are more advance than military technology. I'm not saying the
upside doesn't exist, of course, but its easy to see what the dominant
trends are.
dmb
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