Reflections on reading Bill Moyer’s interviews of Joseph Campbell in “The Power of Myth:”

We see ourselves today as external to nature, just as we see ourselves as external to religion.  We think we can just change religions like we change clothes.  Or, we see religions as a chinese menu–a little of this, a little of that.  But historically–or better, prehistorically–religion was embedded in you, just as you were embedded in nature.  There wasn’t a name for it;  it was a belief, but not a belief “system” that could be tweaked.  It was a very part of you, like your heart or your lungs or, in a sense, your breath.  You were born into it, nurtured in it, lived in it, and died in it.  That’s a major reason aboriginal cultures fall apart when confronted by radical, revolutionary (vs evolutionary) change.

Our relationship to nature was similar, if not identical.  We were born into nature,  nurtured in it, lived it and breathed it, were part of its very dynamic, just as was the bear and chipmunk  and mockingbird.  You didn’t live outside of it and step out to venture in it or experience it as a lark or as recreation.  It was you, and you it.

Now we think we can just put on and take off religion and nature both, or do without.  That’s partly why we, as a world culture, are so screwed up today.  Our minds are not evolved beyond that world.  We struggle constantly as individuals to fill that void, with wildly varying degrees of success.