[Joe] Wow!
[Ron] likewise, nice post. I'm a big fan of Campbell. 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 _________________________________________________________________ Get a preview of Live Earth, the hottest event this summer - only on MSN http://liveearth.msn.com?source=msntaglineliveearthhm 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/ 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/ 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/
