Editor's Note:
The following excerpt describes the need to evolve a new World
Mythology in Joseph Campbell's own eloquent words. The concept
is important because the traditional 'nation' boundaries are
dissolving — not necessarily as nation states, but in the
realization of our interconnectedness. The view of the world has
become planetary — each nation, coalition, or political entity
makes decisions, not in a vacuum, but that have widespread
impact on many (if not all) other nations of the world.
Tribalism, Nationalism, Globalism
By Joseph Campbell
"We need myths that will identify
the individual not with his local group but with the planet. A
model for this is the United States. Here were thirteen
different little colony nations that decided to act in the
mutual interest, without disregarding the individual interests
of any one of them."
"We can't have a mythology for a
long, long time to come. Things are changing too fast to become
mythologized. The individual has to find an aspect of myth that
relates to his own life. We have today to learn to get back into
accord with the wisdom of nature and realize again our
brotherhood with the animals and with the water and with the
sea."
"If you will think of ourselves as
coming out of the earth, rather than having been thrown in here
from somewhere else, you see that we are the earth, we are the
consciousness of the earth. These are the eyes of the earth. And
this is the voice of the earth."
"You can't predict what a myth is
going to be any more than you can predict what you're going to
dream tonight. Myths and dreams come from the same place. They
come from realizations of some kind that have then to find
expression in symbolic form. And the only myth that is going to
be worth thinking about in the immediate future is one that is
talking about the entire planet, not the city, not these people,
but the planet, and everybody on it."
"This is the ground of what the
myth is to be. It's already here: the eye of reason, not of my
nationality; the eye of reason, not of my religious community;
the eye of reason, not of my linguistic community. Do you see?
And this would be the philosophy for the entire planet, not for
this group, that group, or the other group."
"When you see the earth from the
moon, you don't see any divisions there of nations or states.
This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come.
That is the country that we are going to be celebrating. And
those are the people that we are one with."
Excerpted from
The Power of Myth
Chapter 1, "Myth and the Modern World"