The monomyth

All myths start with a question and the question is what is essential to life?

Every culture and indeed every human being will find a different answer to this question. The academic Joseph Campbell considered all myths and stories to be comparable to one another expressing universal themes and occurrences. Throughout his academic and literary career he developed the concept of the monomyth, the idea that a single coherent thread runs through all culture and mythology.

Towards the end of his life he described his work in this way “it's main results has been confirmation of thought I have long and faithfully entertained: of the unity of the race of man, not only in its biology but also in its spiritual history, which is everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony religious themes announced, developed and amplified ,turnabout distorted, reasserted ,and today in a grand fortissimo all sections sounding together, irresistibly advancing to some kind of mighty climax, out of which the next great movement will emerge”1.

The mythology is expressed in different ways at different times and within different cultures. There is for instance there is a clear division between the storytelling traditions of hunter gather cultures and those with a more agricultural base. Just as the basis of daily life shifts, so does our internal psychology in response to external circumstance. The daily and annual concerns of different peoples are reflected in their storytelling tradition and in turn our storytelling tradition reflects pressing matters within our own lives.

Carl Jung proposed the idea of the collective unconscious containing all the cultural ideas of the human race passed on throughout the ages this would clearly be a mythology of sorts, this and the works of James Frasier (author of the golden Bough) where a great influence on Campbell and his work can be seen as an extension of theirs. For it is only 19th-century onwards into the present that the mythologies of other more ancient cultures have been taken seriously through a series of anthropological studies, which has now established itself as a true science for the dissection of the commonality of our species in regards to culture and attitude.

James Campbell talked about living with a mythology but what does it mean to live with a mythology? It seemed to Campbell that there were two fundamentally different ways of looking at the world. To either be a theist or an atheist, but what do those two terms mean? A theist believes in a theme be it monotheism (the belief in one God) or multiple deities (as in ancient Nordic and Greek culture) or even pantheism (the idea that consciousness permeates creation). An atheist believes in nothing that cannot be explained in purely rational and concrete terms (as such all creation must be defined by the scientific method).

There is a third position that of the agnostic which is an undefined position due to uncertainty, which could in some way be seen as sitting on the fence. It is not lack of faith that defines the agnostic but rather lack of identification with either point of view. An agnostic pantheist and sure would surely be viewed by radical atheists as the worst kind of fence sitter. It is however a perfectly valid modern stance and one that is indeed representative and reflective of ancient eastern thought in some ways.

Pantheism falls under the description of theism, (though many theists use the term as a vague insult, for not subscribing to a creator god) it does not however attribute creation to a deity. This is the standpoint of many ancient religions of the East including but not limited to Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, and is in some way alien to western concepts of religion. The views of the philosopher Spinoza are also essentially pantheist; Spinoza himself was a great influence on Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein expressed his philosophy this way “the religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism”.

The Gaia philosophy developed by James Lovelock could also be described as pantheist in form, describing how the planet functions in terms of living organism. This has made this scientific theory highly controversial and Lovelock would describe himself as an atheist rather than a pantheist. Although still viewed as a radical theory Lovelock's ideas have been embraced in the book the "commerce of ecology", and documentary film "an inconvenient truth".

The world may seem strange to us as although we are a part of it, it will always seem vast and unknowable where but nillism never makes much sense pantheism seems to fit with scientific theory. .Einstein referred to god often in this writing, but it is quite clear he was speaking from a pantheist prospective “I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God”2.

When the mythological symbols no longer fit with the times they become irrelevant and even archaic, and the traditional forms of worship seem to be going into decline at least in the U.K. Stories must be relevant in order to be assimilated into culture, however it is not realism for practicality alone which creates appeal. Describing a radio interview he once took part in, Joseph Campbell describes how the interviewer makes the opening gambit to describe myth as untrue; the interviewer states” a myth is a lie”. For Campbell mythology points to the heart of the matter in a poetic rather than literal sense, to look for broadly realism in mythology misses the point of the function of mythology which is to inform at a deeper more emotional level.

Mythology is not science it never seeks to describe the world in purely rational terms, rather it creates a landscape that the expression of ideas and emotions. Modern cinema has created a modern mythology in films such as Star Wars, the matrix and avatar. It is interesting that all these films created in our modern secular age touch upon deeply religious themes. Avatar is almost playful in this regard with the title seemed to have a double meaning. It seems to me avatar both refers to our modern computer avatar (our alter ego within cyberspace) and to the Hindu concept of avatarism the concept of the divine within humanity. In the matrix the main character neo is both every man and saviour a reality he struggles with throughout the series. Star Wars is both a galaxy spanning epic and family saga, even the name skywalker seems to refer back to ancient Egyptian myth.

Luke's father is a representation of death, Darth Vader the death father and Luke is tasked with returning balance to the world by restoring his father's humanity. Just as the sun vanquishes the night on rising each morning, so absolution is a recurring theme in ancient myth. As science is been accused of unweaving the rainbow, so mythology has been falsely accused of being mere fairytales or wishful thinking, I would suggest the psychology goes much deeper in that within mythology in order that we find our emotional resonance with the world. Indeed anthropomorphism allows us to identify not merely with other human cultures but with imaginatively with other creatures. Richard Adams the author of Watership Down was a close friend of Joseph Campbell's and it seems to be a natural human instinct to identify with the lives of animals. This is a fact that the cartoon industry and Walt Disney in particular have relied on for over 100 years.

Joseph Campbell's work is concerned with the historical viewpoint expressed in the theme of myth which stands time immemorial exploring themes, always current to humanity. One needn't be of religious inclination to be touched by storytelling in its myriad forms, variations and modes of transmission from fireside tales to blockbuster movies.

Today we are not immune to seismic shifts in our cultural lives; in fact technology seems to exacerbate the process. Not since Gutenberg’s printing press has to be such a sea change in the production and assimilation of ideas as has been heralded in by the invention of the Internet. The Internet has accelerated our culture to such an extent that it is barely recognisable from the culture 30 years before. I would argue film and television will soon be eclipsed by the Internet which has the advantage of being a non-passive medium. User created content has truly allowed Marshall McLuhan's proclamation of the medium being the message to come true. In the old days there was nothing but the mass media to create cultural trends, but today that is clearly no longer the case.

Mythology can also help one deal which life’s most troubling realities .The most immediate experience of bereavement is to be striped of one's rationality. To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune is both deeply personal and universal, as the eternal mystery of death has to be confronted.Jk Rowling’s Harry Potter books tackle death head on and the dementors are symbolic of her own depression following her mother’s death. Mythology is then the story telling tradition of how we come to terms with the world in reality even if the means of doing so are fantastic in the telling.

1 (Primitive mythology the masks of god Joseph Campbell, Arkana)
2(Albert Einstein, The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press)