I picked up an old notebook this evening and paged through it for some mild amusement. That wasn't my initial intent but it was still nice. Who doesn't like to laugh at themselves? Those people are too serious and are undoubtedly unhappy. If that's the life you'd like to lead, go on with your bad self. I just don't have any time for those folks. I really like to laugh at myself, in case you couldn't tell. You're always with you and if you can make yourself laugh, well then you can literally laugh whenever you want. Ignore the fact that people think you're crazy and that's a recipe for a happy life.
When I read a lot, obviously, I have less time to write. At the same time, my mind starts to fill up with thoughts. I try and get these down while I remember them and turn them into something worthwhile in the form of missives and mysterious one liners. Reading through them is like looking at an electron. One minute you have a good idea of what you're looking at but can't tell where it's coming from and the next you understand it but you can't quite make out what it is.
The beginning is as good a place to start as any, and the first fella up to the plate is Joseph Campbell. I assume I meant The Hero with a Thousand Faces, or at least the general ideas held therein. There's other stuff he wrote or was involved with but I know I was not reading any of his stuff when I wrote that down. That's kind of how he rolls. Joseph Campbell, or his ideas, tend to pop up anywhere or everywhere. Basically, it's the death and rebirth with knowledge cycle that a lot of myths tend to include. The very first time I came across this guy was in an Intro to Western Civilization or some such class way back in freshman year. That's literally half a life ago now, or very nearly. Unless you think I'm younger, then I obviously went to school early and especially didn't repeat preschool because I refused to socialize.
So it was my main Sumerian homeboy, Enkidu, that made me realize a lot of these old thyme-y myths were a little bit similar. Gilgamesh, Enkidu's other homeboy, gets in trouble and there's a bunch of shit that goes down but basically Enkidu dies and comes back with all kinds of cool trivia. Except it's like "hero receives aid from supernatural" and all kinds of stuff I'll get into shortly. I actually summarized it the other day quoting Kurt Vonnegut: "Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it."
Clearly, that's over simplifying the idea but I appreciate the drama there. I'm actually just going to do a quote thing here so as to further simplify explaining Joseph Campbell's connection to my notebooks. So, you have to look at it very generalized but it's a common theme in a lot of myths we've had, through different cultures and across time.
Campbell himself summarizes it like this: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."
But there's an added element that seems to connect a lot of the stories together because, clearly, that's very generalized. I mean, Vonnegut said almost the same thing, just a bit more trivialized. And Joseph Campbell is talking about myths like Jesus and the Buddha and literally every religious figure ever in his books. However, this is kind of where it gets a bit deep but I'm only gonna quote from the Wikipedia article so as to keep it as shallowly deep as possible.
"As a strong believer in the psychic unity of mankind and its poetic expression through mythology, Campbell made use of the concept to express the idea that the whole of the human race can be seen as engaged in the effort of making the world "transparent to transcendence" by showing that underneath the world of phenomena lies an eternal source which is constantly pouring its energies into this world of time, suffering, and ultimately death. To achieve this task one needs to speak about things that existed before and beyond words, a seemingly impossible task, the solution to which lies in the metaphors found in myths. These metaphors are statements that point beyond themselves into the transcendent. The 'Hero's Journey' was the story of the man or woman who, through great suffering, reached an experience of the eternal source and returned with gifts powerful enough to set their society free.
As this story spread through space and evolved through time, it was broken down into various local forms (masks), depending on the social structures and environmental pressures that existed for the culture that interpreted it. The basic structure, however, has remained relatively unchanged and can be classified using the various stages of a hero's adventure through the story, stages such as the 'Call to Adventure', 'Receiving Supernatural Aid', 'Meeting with the Goddess/Atonement with the Father', and 'Return'. These stages, as well as the symbols one encounters throughout the story, provide the necessary metaphors to express the spiritual truths the story is trying to convey. Metaphors for Campbell, in contrast with similes which make use of the word like, pretend to a literal interpretation of what they are referring to, as in the sentence "Jesus is the Son of God" rather than "the relationship of man to God is like that of a son to a father"."
So, basically, the summary of the what is the cheap and short version earlier but the why is above and it's more or less a pursuit of that which is unknown. We need these stories as a reassurance that there is something else beyond this life but it's not really important if you stop and think. It's reassuring to know that Enkidu was able to head to the underworld to retrieve his homeboy's lost drum set (for real maybe) and come back (kind of) and tell Gilgamesh all about the cool shit he saw and impress him with his trivia skills.
The ancient Sumerians thought, "Hey, that one king had a friend that went to the underworld after he died so it's probably cool." Gilgamesh was the king, I don't think I mentioned it. Most of these mythical stories have different details (some do not at all, though) but the spirit remains the same, if you trivialize it enough.
That comes naturally to humans though, trivializing things. Well, trying to simplify them. Joseph Campbell was basically accused of the same thing with his works. He simplified folks' myths enough that they felt trivialized and got offended. Seems like a natural reaction when you try and simplify something or someone that is literally being worshiped. Simple stuff makes it easier to survive but I guess it makes it harder for some to really live.
If you look at it for what it is, it's quite beautiful. Some guy tries to understand religious folks so he goes on a hunt for the that light bulb moment where he finally gets it. Then when he lights up, he shares it and lots of folks say "Hey man, you just don't get it." Then again, that too was an oversimplification.
Sometimes we just have to oversimplify something in order to understand it, maybe? I do it a lot with the hope of understanding and in the act of understanding but it's always dangerously close to trivializing, especially since I like to laugh so much. Here's the broken down thought for the day that I want to take away with me so I'm going to write it down here: Don't trivialize other people's experiences even if you have to simplify them a lot.
A wise woman told me that one time not too long ago and it's stuck with me. I editorialized it a bit and here we are.
No comments:
Post a Comment