The quote below is from Chapter 1 of “The Power of Myth,” the compiled transcripts of conversations between Campbell and Bill Moyers in 1985-86. These video interviews were edited into the subsequent PBS series of the same name. I’m not sure, but I suspect this book version includes some material not included in the series as aired.
Campbell:
…People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we are really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. (Joseph Campbell, with Bill Moyers, “The Power of Myth.” Doubleday 1988.)
Campbell’s statement approaches Point 3 in my response to Michael Weise, regarding my post on Armstrong’s “History of God.” He’s not quite saying the same thing, but we’re converging.
But the fundamental insight I gain from Campbell’s quote is a vision of the vast majority of human beings I see around me, going through motions of each day, filling it with activity from rising to sleeping. And yet, you get the sense that so much of it is displacement activity, the kind of restless pacing of an animal in a cage. Few ever reach “the rapture of being alive.” And, thinking about it, maybe that is the real issue I have with organized or dogmatic religions. They give us an excuse for not seeking more.
My criteria for meaningfulness, derived from reading several dozen papers on the subject, includes:
intelligibility, value, purpose and emotional fulfillment. The last element is first in respect of what most people would agree makes life FEEL meaningful: emotional intensity. It is worth noting that false beliefs have the capacity to meet all of these criteria. If one adds the requirement that intelligibility include elements known to be True, then the whole enterprise becomes far more difficult. How does one create meaning in a cosmos whose every dimension, from the tiniest subatomic particle to galaxy clusters, is defined by natural science? There IS a mythology that has attempted this very thing: STAR TREK.
Thanks, Michael. I much like the Star Trek analogy, though In full disclosure I’d have to admit that I am among the few people on the planet who have never seen a full episode, including the movies. What can I say?
But seriously, I suspect that for most, it it ONLY about emotion. And why should that be surprising when we are at core emotional beings. I think emotions, however one defines them, drive most of what many consider sentience (is that a word?). In that sense, we already know that virtually everyone believes that what they believe is true, so “truth” is lamentably moot. In reflecting on my earlier posts about a “leadership gene” there is always that small percentage that falls back on science and objectivity and “provability.” But all to often they are the voice in the wilderness.
Bob
There is a splendid PBS Nature production entitled Natural Born Hustlers: Nature’s Best Con Artists. As a biologist, ecologist, wild life expert and student of human existence, you would find this three hour series enthralling. There is strict continuity between what these animals are doing and what people are doing. Animals are using trickery on other animals in the interest of survival and reproduction while humans are playing such games internally, with THEMSELVES. This goes to the heart of the issue of “truth.” Specifically, how, in the midst of widespread duplicity, did a desire for truth and nothing but truth ever arise in the first place?