Science, Math - and Myth! Why Not?

20 February 2004

I am a mythologist, or trying to become one. With degrees in literature and psychology from three schools, I fell in love with stories from the get-go, but knew there was something lurking beneath the plots that I wasn't getting at. Fairy tales fascinated me as a child. I would find ways to fake the flu so that I could stay in bed, knowing that my mother, an avid reader, would go to the public library and pick out 10-12 books for me to read. In bed, hidden under the covers with a flashlight and my little clock radio, I would read and listen to Nat King Cole, the Maguire Sisters and dream the day or days away.

But in 1988 I watched on PBS with millions of others the interviews with Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell taped at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch. In this series, The Power of Myth, of animated conversations, peppered with mythic images and stories, we as a nation learned of the purpose, the power and the privilege a people's mythology has on their sense of values, justice, laws, customs, even rituals as popular as the recent Super Bowl contest or the World Series in baseball. Even the terms "super" and "world" call up something mythic in our collective imagination.

In the series of talks, Joseph Campbell, whose 100^th anniversary of his birth is March 26^th (1904-1987), spelled out for us the important presence of a people's mythology. Unfortunately, he died of cancer before the series aired. Campbell believed that myths served as organizing principles for both individuals, tribes, cultures, civilizations. Knowing one's myth was as important in his mind as knowing one's name, one's ancestry, one's blood type; it gave one a context in a world that often left one feeling place-less.

Today, as I continue to prepare and teach a course on Joseph Campbell's major works to my adult students, I recognize more fully how hungry are we individually and as a nation for mythic, not fast or frozen, food. Witness the tremendous success of the recent Harry Potter films, or Whale Rider, or the spectacular success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Reflect back for a moment to the Star Wars series, which George Lucas credited Joseph Campbell's work with inspiring and helping him to organize, create and bring to the popular screen, where many forms of the hero interact. Even Finding Nemo carries a large mythic freight underwater.

All myths, Campbell believed, are metaphors for actions and events in our interior life that can assist each person to become more aware of their own life's meaning. "Follow Your Bliss" reached bumper sticker status. But he was no sentimentalist; he believed following one's bliss created its own unique assortment of blisters. Journeying towards one's destiny is not a stroll in the park. His heroes were Buffalo Bill Cody and Native American plains Indians in his youth, Leonardo da Vinci in his college years. His writings helped immeasurably in breaking down a false dichotomy between myth (a lie!) and fact (a truth!). Myths, he believed, revealed a deeper style of truth not available to fact.

So my own desire takes hold here: in addition to science and math requirements, which exercise intellect and reason, I propose a basic course or two on mythology using Campbell's work as a primer. Better. Offer it as an elective on the secondary level. If the hunger for myth is anything like my adult students,' who feel deeply nourished by myths, then there will be no shortage of students signing up. Studying mythology, reading myths like Narcissus and Echo or Psyche and Eros, taps deeper dimensions of my students' lives. That they have raised families, changed careers, suffered deaths of loved ones, wonder what their lives are adding up to and what direction they are heading in--all this becomes rich material that the myths evoke and ask us to think of differently, from an imaginal rather than a rational point of view. I have learned that people needed to be educated by stories as much if not more, than by facts and information.

Joseph Campbell is a national treasure and still underrated. Like his own definition of the hero, he broke from tradition, entered the forest alone, following his own bliss, and returned with the boon of world mythologies to enrich all people. A national holiday? Too much. National recognition in this centenary year of his birth? Way overdo.

Joseph Campbell: may the force continue to be with you.

Dennis Patrick Slattery teaches in the Mythological Studies Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California.