Quantum

"The Governor paused and looked reflectively over at Bond. He said : ‘You’re not married, but I think it’s the same with all relationships between A Man and A Woman. 

They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic Humanity exists between the two people. 

When all Kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn’t care if the other is Alive or Dead, then it’s just no good. That particular insult to The Ego – worse, to The Instinct of Self-Preservation – can never be forgiven. I’ve noticed this in hundreds of marriages. I’ve seen flagrant infidelities patched up, I’ve seen crimes and even murder forgiven by the other party, let alone bankruptcy and every other form of social crime. Incurable disease, blindness, disaster – all these can be overcome. 

But never The Death of Common Humanity in one of the partners. I’ve thought about this and I’ve invented a rather high-sounding title for this basic factor in Human Relations. 

I have called it 

‘The Law of The Quantum of Solace.’

Bond said: ‘That’s a splendid name for it. It’s certainly impressive enough. 

And of course I see what you mean, I should say you’re absolutely right. Quantum of Solace – the amount of comfort. 

Yes, I suppose you could say that all Love and Friendship is based in The End on that. Human beings are very insecure. When the other person not only makes you feel insecure but actually seems to want to destroy you, it’s obviously The End. The Quantum of Solace stands at zero. You’ve got to get away to Save Yourself.’

The Governor paused. ‘Pretty extraordinary, really. A Man like Masters, kindly, sensitive, who wouldn’t normally hurt a fly. And here he was performing one of the cruellest actions I can recall in all my experience. It was My Law operating.’ 

The Governor smiled thinly. ‘Whatever her sins, if she had given him that Quantum of Solace he could never have behaved to her as he did. As it was, she had awakened in him a bestial Cruelty – a Cruelty that perhaps lies deeply hidden in all of us and that only a threat to our existence can bring to The Surface. Masters wanted to make the girl suffer, not as much as he had suffered because that was impossible, but as much as he could possibly contrive. And that false gesture with the motor-car and the radio-gramophone was a fiendishly brilliant bit of delayed action to remind her, even when he was gone, how much he hated her, how much he wanted still to hurt her.’ 

Bond said: ‘It must have been a shattering experience. 

It’s extraordinary how much people can hurt each other. 

I’m beginning to feel rather sorry for The Girl. [ You would. I feel sorry for Masters. ]

What happened to her in The End – and to him, for the matter of that?’ 

The Governor got to his feet and looked at his watch. ‘Good heavens, it’s nearly midnight. And I’ve been keeping the staff up all this time,’ he smiled, ‘as well as you.’ 

He walked across to the fireplace and rang a bell. 

A Negro butler appeared. The Governor apologised for keeping him up and told him to lock up and turn the light out. 

Bond was on his feet. 

The Governor turned to him. ‘Come along and I’ll tell you the rest. I’ll walk through the garden with you and see that the sentry lets you out.’ 

They walked slowly through the long rooms and down the broad steps to the garden. It was a beautiful night under a full moon that raced over their heads through the thin high clouds. 

The Governor said: ‘Masters went on in The Service, but somehow he never lived up to his good start. After the Bermuda business something seemed to go out of him. 

Part of him had been killed by the experience. He was a maimed man. Mostly her fault, of course, but I guess that what he did to her lived on with him and perhaps haunted him. 

He was good at his work, but he had somehow lost the human touch and he gradually dried up. Of course he never married again and in the end he got shunted off into the ground nuts scheme, and when that was a failure he retired and went to live in Nigeria – back to the only people in the world who had shown him any kindness – back to where it had all started from. 

Bit tragic, really, when I remember what he was like when we were young.’

Vicariousness

Arthur! 

Ready my knights for battle -- They will 

ride with Their King once more. 

I have lived through 

others far too long. 

Lancelot carried my honor 

and Guenevere my guilt. 

Mordred bore my sins. 

My Knights have 

fought my causes. 

Now, my brother... 

...I shall be King. 

Guards! Knights! Squires! 

Prepare for battle!

It’s Got a Wonderful 

Defence Mechanism —

You Don’t Dare Kill it.

"....and Beauty is just absolutely 

Terrifying to People -- because 

Beauty highlights 

What's Ugly."

“The Universe is quite a shockingly selective, undemocratic place out of apparently infinite space, a relatively tiny proportion occupied by matter of any kind. 

Of the stars perhaps only one has planets : of the planets only one is at all likely to sustain organic life. 

Of the animals only one species is rational. 

Selection as seen in Nature, and the appalling waste which it involves, appears a horrible and an unjust thing by Human Standards. 

But the selectiveness in The Christian Story is not quite like that. The People who are selected are, in a sense, unfairly selected for a Supreme Honour; but it is also a Supreme Burden. 

The People of Israel come to realise that it is their woes which are Saving The World. 

Even in Human Society, though, one sees how this inequality furnishes an opportunity for every kind of Tyranny and Servility. Yet, on the other hand, one also sees that it furnishes an opportunity for some of the very best things we can think of - Humility, and Kindness, and the immense pleasures of Admiration. 

(I cannot conceive how one would get through the boredom of a world in which you never met anyone more Clever, or more Beautiful, or Stronger than yourself. The very crowds who go after the football celebrities and film-stars know better than to desire that kind of Equality!) 

What The Story of The Incarnation seems to be doing is to flash a new light on A Principle in Nature, and to show for the first time that this Principle of Inequality in Nature is neither Good nor Bad. 

It is a common theme running through both The Goodness and Badness of The Natural World, and I begin to see how it can Survive as A Supreme Beauty in a redeemed universe. 

And with that I have unconsciously passed over to The Third Point. I have said that the selectiveness was not unfair in the way in which we first suspect, because those selected for The Great Honour are also selected for The Great Suffering, and Their Suffering heals Others. 

In the Incarnation we get, of course, this idea of Vicariousness of one person profiting by the earning of another person. In its highest form that is the very centre of Christianity. 

And we also find this same Vicariousness to be a characteristic, or, as the musician would put it, a leit-motif of Nature. 

It is a Law of The Natural Universe that No Being can Exist on its Own Resources. 

Everyone, everything, is hopelessly indebted to Everyone and Everything Else. 

In The Universe, as we now see it, this is the source of many of the greatest horrors: all the horrors of carnivorousness, and the worse horrors of the parasites, those horrible animals that live under the skin of other animals, and so on. 

And yet, suddenly seeing it in the light of The Christian Story, one realizes that vicariousness is not in itself bad; that all these animals, and insects, and horrors are merely that principle of vicariousness twisted in one way. 

For when you think it out, nearly Everything GOOD in Nature also comes from Vicariousness. After all, The Child, both before and after birth, Lives on its Mother, just as The Parasite lives on its Host, the one being A Horror, the other being The Source of almost every natural Goodness in The World. It all depends upon what you do with this principle. 

So that I find in that Third Way also, that what is implied by The Incarnation just fits in exactly with what I have seen in Nature, and (this is the important point) each time it gives it a new twist. 

 

If I accept this supposed missing chapter, The Incarnation, I find it begins to illuminate the whole of the rest of the manuscript. It lights up Nature's pattern of Death and Rebirth; and, secondly, Her Selectiveness; and, thirdly, Her vicariousness. 

 

Now I notice a very odd point. 

 

All other religions in The World, as far as I know them, are either Nature Religions, or anti-Nature Religions. 

 

The Nature Religions are those of the old, simple pagan sort that you know about. You actually got drunk in The Temple of Bacchus. You actually committed fornication in The Temple of Aphrodite. 

 

The more modern form of nature religion would be the religion started, in a sense, by Bergson' (but he repented, and died Christian), and carried on in a more popular form by Mr Bernard Shaw. 

 

The AntiNature Religions are those like Hinduism and Stoicism, where Men say,  

 

`I will starve my flesh. I care not whether I live or die.' 

 

All Natural Things are to be set aside: The aim is Nirvana, apathy, negative spirituality. The nature religions simply affirm my natural desires. The anti-natural religions simply contradict them. 

 

The Nature Religions simply give a new sanction to what I already always thought about The Universe in my moments of rude health and cheerful brutality. 

 

The antinature religions merely repeat what I always thought about it in my moods of lassitude, or delicacy, or compassion.

 

But here is something quite different. 

Here is something telling me - well, what? 

 

Telling me that I must never, like The Stoics, 

say that 'Death Does not Matter. 

 

Nothing is Less Christian than that. 

Death which made Life Himself shed tears at The Grave of Lazarus, and shed Tears of Blood in Gethsemane.", This is an appalling horror; a stinking indignity. 

 

(You remember Thomas Browne's splendid remark: `I am not so much afraid of Death, as ashamed of it.')  

 

And yet, somehow or other, infinitely Good. Christianity does not simply affirm or simply deny The Horror of Death; it tells me something quite new about it. 

Again, it does not, like Nietzsche, simply confirm My Desire to Be Stronger, or Cleverer than Other People. 

 

On The Other Hand, it does not allow me to say, 

`Oh, Lord, won't there be A Day when Everyone will be as Good as Everyone Else?' 

In the same way, about vicariousness. 

 

It will not, in any way, allow me to be An Exploiter, 

to Act as A Parasite on Other People; 

Yet it Will Not allow Me 

any Dream of 

Living on My Own. 

 

It will Teach Me to Accept with Glad Humility 

the enormous Sacrifice that 

Others Make for Me, 

as well as to Make Sacrifices for others.

That is why I think this Grand Miracle is The Missing Chapter in this novel, the chapter on which the whole plot turns; that is why I believe that God really has dived down into The Bottom of Creation, and has come up bringing the whole Redeemed Nature on His Shoulder. The Miracles that have already happened are, of course, as Scripture so often says, the first fruits of that cosmic summer which is presently coming on.

Christ Has Risen, and so We Shall Rise. 

 

St Peter for a few seconds Walked on The Waters and the day will come 

when there will be 

a re-made universe, infinitely obedient to  

The Will of Glorified and Obedient Men, 

when we can do All Things, 

when we shall be Those Gods that 

We are Described as Being in Scripture. 

 

To Be Sure, it feels Wintry enough still : 

but often in the very early Spring it feels like that. 

 

Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale. 

 

A man really ought to say, `The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago' in the same spirit in which he says, `I saw a crocus yesterday.' 

Be cause we know What is Coming behind The Crocus. 

The Spring cames slowly down this way; but the great thing is that The Corner has been turned. 

 

There is, of course, this difference, that in the natural Spring, The Crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not. We can. 

 

We have The Power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on into those `high mid-summer pomps' in which Our Leader, The Son of Man, already dwells, and to which He is calling Us. It remains with us to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.

MOSET: 

What do we know so far? 


EMH: 

The lifeform has taken control of her body 

at the autonomic level, 

drawing proteins from her tissues, 

white blood cells from her arteries. 


MOSET: 

Which can be interpreted in several ways. 


EMH: 

A form of attack? 


MOSET: 

I find it odd that a species would evolve an attack mechanism that would leave it so vulnerable. 

Why not do it's damage and retreat? 


EMH: 

A parasite, perhaps? 


MOSET: 

Yes, I think so, but not any ordinary variety. 

It's unlikely it could sustain itself like this over the long term. 


EMH: 

Its own systems are damaged. 

It's doing this as a stopgap measure, to keep itself alive. 


MOSET: 

So the patient's heart, lungs, kidneys, 

they're all augmenting the alien's damaged system. 


EMH: 

It's using B'Elanna 

as a life preserver. 


MOSET: 

But if it needs her to Survive, 

it's not about to let go without a fight.

 


EMH: 

I'd like to think that's a fight 

you and I can win. 

MOYERS: Why “A Gathering of Men?” I mean, that’s really rare, isn’t it, to have a workshop for men only?

BLY: Maybe 20 years ago it would have been rare, but lately the men in various parts of the country have begun to gather. I think that it isn’t a reaction to the women’s movement, really. I think the grief that leads to the men’s movement began maybe 140 years ago, when the Industrial Revolution began, which sends the father out of the house to work.

MOYERS: What impact did that have?

BLY: Well, we receive something from our father by standing close to him.

MOYERS: Physically.

BLY: When we stand physically close to our father, something moves over that can’t be described in material terms, that gives the son a certain confidence, an awareness, a knowledge of what it is to be male, what a man is. And in the ancient times you were always with your father; he taught you how to do things, he taught you how to farm, he taught you whatever it is that he did. You learned from him. But you had this sense of being of receiving a food from him.

MOYERS: Food.

BLY: A Food. From Your Father’s body. Now, when the father went out of the house in the Industrial Revolution, that food ended, and I think the average American father now spends ten minutes a day with a son — I think that’s what The Minneapolis Tribune had — and half of that time is spent in, “Clean up your room!” You know, that’s a favorite phrase of mine, I know it well.

So the Industrial Revolution did not harm the mother and daughter relationship as much as it did the father and son, because the mother and daughter still stand close to each other and have stood close to each other. Maybe that’ll change now when the mother is being sent out to work also, but the daughters then receive some knowledge of what it is to be a woman, or if you prefer to call it the women’s the female mode of feeling. They receive knowledge of the female mode of feeling. And the mother gets that from her grandmother, who got it from her great grandmother, who gets it from her great grandmother, it goes all the way down.

After the Industrial Revolution, the male does not receive any knowledge from His Father of what the male mode of feeling is, and the old male initiators that used to work are not working anymore.

MOYERS: What do you mean, male initiators?

BLY: Well, the you know, in the traditional times, you were not initiated by your father, because there’s too much tension between you and your father. You are initiated by older, unrelated males, is the word that’s used, older unrelated men. They may be friends of your father. They could even be uncles or grandfathers. But they are the ones who used to do it. Then they disappear. Then it falls on the father to do. Then the father is off at the office. You see the picture?

MOYERS: Yeah. In fact, in some of the traditional cultures, a night arrives, and a group of men show up at a boy’s house, and they take him away from the home and they don’t bring him back, then, for several days. And then when he comes back, he has ashes on his face.

BLY: Yeah. In New Guinea, where they still do it today, the men come in with spears to get the boys. The boys know nothing about the men’s world. They live with their mother completely. They say, you know, “Mama, Mama, save us from these men that are coming here.” Now, all over New Guinea, the women accept and the men accept one thing. A boy cannot be made into a man without the active intervention of the older men.

Now, when they all accept that, then the women’s job is to be participants in this drama. So the men come and take the boys away, and the boys are saying, “Save me, Mommy,” you know. Then they go across, and the men have built a tent on this island they have a built a house for the boys’ initiation hut. Then they take them across the bridge, and three or four of the women, whose boys these are, get their spears and meet them on the bridge. And the old men have their spears. And the boys are saying, “Save me, Mama, save me, these are horrible men, they’re taking me away,” you know, and they fight and everything. And then the women are driven back. Then the women all go back and have coffee and say, “How’d I do? How’d I look?”

So that wonderful participation in it, the women are not doing the initiating, they’re participating, and then, as you said, then he’ll stay with the men for a year, maybe. Then they will explain to him something has to die to be born, and what will have to die is the boy. This is what isn’t happening to the men in this culture.

I Can Live With It

Now, since The Real Test for any choice is having to make the same choice again, 

knowing full well what it might cost.... 

I guess I feel pretty good about that choice,

’cause here I am –

At it again.

Syd :

David.

What did you do? 

David? 

LEGION :

It's Me. I didn't want to scare you.

Syd :

I'm not afraid.

LEGION :

For the record, I wasn't bothering anybody.

We just wanted to be left alone.

To find peace.

Syd :

"We".

LEGION :

My People.

Syd :

Your Commune.

You're talking about Your Commune, 

where you seduce teenage girls 

with Daddy Issues.

LEGION :

You jealous? 

I mean, "No, that's not What I Do."

It's about Love.

I help people, open their minds.

I teach them how to care about each other.

You know? Flaws and all.

'Cause people make mistakes.

We make mistakes.

We do things we can't take back, and then we stop loving ourselves.

And if we can't love ourselves --

Syd :

Oh, is that The Problem? 

You stopped Loving Yourself? 

LEGION :

Baby, I am so sorry.

Syd :

No.

LEGION :

I am.

Syd :

"I, I, I".

You have no idea what it's like to be Me.

My Problems, My Life.

You the mind reader.

You Don't See Me.

You never really did.

HE TURNS ON THE LOVE-VISION

Syd :

Don't-don't don't do that! 

LEGION :

Sorry.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

I'm just trying to tell you, 

Trying to Show You, 

You are All I See.

It's called Love.

Syd :

Have you ever heard The Saying, 

"Men are afraid women will laugh at them; 

women are afraid men will kill them"? 

LEGION :

No! That's awful!

Syd :

You need to turn yourself in.

So you can Treat Me? Or Kill Me? 

Like you did yesterday, twice? 

I saw. She showed me.

The Time Traveler.

She Saved Me from You.

Syd, how could you do that? 

Without a word.

We....

Syd :

Don't say "Love each other".

LEGION :

Lenny said not to come, 

but I had to know.

I had to know.

I am a Good Person.

I Deserve Love.

I Deserve love.

Syd :

You Deserve Love? 

LEGION :

I know, but --

Syd :

You did bad things to me.

You drugged me and had sex with me.

LEGION :

What if I could change that? 

The Timeline.

Syd :

You would still be 

The Man Who Tricked Me.

Who took advantage of me.

I just wouldn't know.

LEGION :

No, no, I-I mean before.

Go back before.

You pick the time --

Syd :

It doesn't matter What You Did.

It's Who You Are, David.

And all of this, your undoing project, 

it's just another trick.

LEGION :

Well, fine.

Then- then let me go.

Disappear.

I won't bother you.

I won't bother anybody.

Syd :

I can't.

LEGION :

Why? If you hate me so much.

Syd :

Because You End The World.

*”DID YOU THINK YOU’D GET AWAY WITH IT....? 

DID YOU THINK •I• WOULDN’T KNOW...?”*

And of course, that is indeed *precisely* what The Shadow (the Jungian-Tibetan Pulp Superhero, The Shadow) *does* say whenever he manifests, in order to drive Evil Men out of their minds and make them utterly destroy themselves

Immediately after he restates for the second time “I *Can* Live with It.” and tries to assume a “relaxed” pose on his couch, the fact of his crossing his legs puts me in mind of The Hanged Man of the Tarot, denoting one with the gift of prophecy and foresight, engaged in an act of self-sacrifice and voluntary suffering for the Greater Good of his tribe and the community.

This is not a natural or comfortable way for a man to sit, and it speaks to  his vulnerability and continuing discomfort.

SISKO: 

At oh eight hundred hours, station time, The Romulan Empire formally declared war against the Dominion. 

They have already struck fifteen bases along the Cardassian border. 

So, this is a huge victory for The Good Guys. 

This may even be the turning point of the entire war. 

There's even a 'Welcome to the Fight' party tonight in the wardroom. 

So I lied, I cheated, I bribed men to cover the crimes of other men. 

I am an accessory to murder. 

But most damning thing of all, 

I think I can live with it. 

And if I had to do it all over again, I would.

Garak was right about one thing. A Guilty Conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant, so –

I will learn to live with it. 

Because I can live with it. 

I can live with it. 

Computer, erase that entire personal log.

Like an Animal with its Heart on The Outside

Love isn’t Something That Weak People Do.

pathetic (adj.)

1590s, "affecting the emotions, exciting the passions," from Middle French pathétique "moving, stirring, affecting" (16c.), from Late Latin patheticus, from Greek pathetikos "subject to feeling, sensitive, capable of emotion," from pathetos "liable to suffer," verbal adjective of pathein "to suffer" (from PIE root *kwent(h)- "to suffer"). 

Related: Pathetical (1570s); pathetically. Pathetic fallacy (1856, first used by Ruskin) is the attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects.

SYDNEY BARRETT :

You're talking about Mental Illness.

GABRIELLE HALLER,

Mother of LEGION :

Such a clinical name for something so raw.

Like an animal with its Heart on The Outside.

I Could Not Have Let That Young Man Go

“Say, for instance… most of us here are mostly pretty counter-culture types – y’know, we like our drugs, we like this and that; we like breaking a few rules. 

But we don’t like The Police, in general. 

Who here loves The Police? Hands up.

Nice one! Coz I’m gonna teach you to LOVE The Police.....”

“ARE WE DOING TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE?” 

Wonder Woman asked, cradling a dying bird in a dust-bowl landscape. 

“WHEN DOES INTERVENTION BECOME DOMINATION?”

“I CAN ONLY TELL YOU WHAT I BELIEVE, DIANA,” 

Superman replied. 

“HUMANKIND HAS TO BE ALLOWED TO CLIMB TO ITS OWN DESTINY. 

WE CAN’T CARRY THEM THERE.”

Then the Flash countered with: 

“BUT THAT’S WHAT SHE’S SAYING. 

WHAT’S THE POINT? 

WHY SHOULD THEY NEED US AT ALL?”

“TO CATCH THEM IF THEY FALL,” 

said Superman, gazing nobly at the sky. 

Issue no. 1 of the relaunched Justice League of America in 1987 had depicted its characters from an overhead perspective, giving the reader an elevated position that allowed us to look down on a newly humanized and relatable group of individuals.

At my request, Howard Porter drew our first cover shot of the JLA from below, endowing them with the majesty of towering statues on Mount Olympus, putting readers at the level of children gazing up at adults. JLA was a superhero title kids could read to feel grown-up and adults could read to feel young again.”

“Just beyond the railing that keeps cars from rolling over, a Young Man actually clearly about to jump and preparing himself to jump. 

The Police car stopped. 

The Policeman on the right jumps out to grab The Boy, and grabs him just as he jumped and was himself being pulled over, and would have gone over if The Second Cop hadn’t gotten around, grabbed him and pull the two of them back. 

And The Policeman was asked, 

“Why didn’t you let go? 

I mean, you would have lost your life?” 

And you see what had happened to that man, 

this is what’s known as one pointed meditation 

Everything Else in His Life dropped off. 

His Duty to His Family

His Duty to His Job

His Duty to His Own Career

All of his Wishes and Hopes for Life, 

just disappeared and he was about to go. 

And his answer was, 

“I couldn’t let go.

If I had let that Young Man go, 

I could not have lived another Day of My Life.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The God of Death is The Lord of Sex at the same time.

BILL MOYERS: 

What do you mean?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It’s a marvelous thing. 

One after another, you can see these gods Ghede, The Death God of the Haitian voodoo, is also The Sex God. 

Wotan had one eye covered and the other uncovered, do you see, and at the same time was The Lord of Life.

Osiris, The Lord of Death and The Lord of The Generation of Life. 

It’s a basic theme: That Which Dies is Born. 

You have to have Death in order to have Life.

Now, this is the origin thought really of the head hunt, in Southeast Asia and particularly in the Indonesian zone. 

The head hunt, right up to now, has been a sacred act, 

it’s a sacred killing: 

Unless there is Death, there cannot be Birth, and a Young Man, before he can be permitted to Marry and Become a Father, must have gone forth and had his kill.

BILL MOYERS: 

What does that say to you?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, that every generation has to die in order that the next generation should come. 

As soon as you beget or give birth to a child, you are the dead one; the child is the new life and you are simply the protector of that new life.

BILL MOYERS: 

Your time has come and you know it.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yeah, well, that’s why there is this deep psychological association of begetting and dying.

BILL MOYERS: 

Isn’t there some relationship between what you’re saying and this fact, 

that a father will give his life for his son, 

a mother will give her life for her child?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

There’s a wonderful paper. 

I don’t whether you knew it that I would love to talk to this point there’s a wonderful paper by Schopenhauer, who’s one of my three favorite philosophers, called 

“The Foundation of Morality.”

There he asks exactly the question that you’ve asked. 

How is it that a human being can so participate in the peril or pain of another, that without thought, spontaneously, he sacrifices his own life to the other? 

How can this happen? 

That what we normally think of as the first law of nature, namely self-preservation, is suddenly dissolved, there’s a breakthrough.

In Hawaii, some four or five years ago, there was an extraordinary adventure that represents this problem. 

There’s a place there called the Pali, where the winds from the north, the trade winds from the north, come breaking through a great ridge of rocks and of mountain, and they come through with a great blast of wind. 

The people like to go up there to get their hair blown around and so forth, or to commit suicide, you know, like jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Well, a police car was on its way up early, a little road that used to go up there, and they saw just beyond the railing that keeps cars from rolling over, a young man actually clearly about to jump and prepare himself to jump. 

The police car stopped. 

The policeman on the right jumps out to grab the boy, and grabs him just as he jumped and was himself being pulled over, and would have gone over if the second cop hadn’t gotten around, grabbed him and pull the two of them back. 

There was a long description of this, it was a marvelous thing, in the newspapers at that time.

And the policeman was asked, “Why didn’t you let go? I mean, you would have lost your life?” 

And you see what had happened to that man, this is what’s known as one pointed meditation everything else in his life dropped off. His duty to his family, his duty to his job, his duty to his own career, all of his wishes and hopes for life, just disappeared and he was about to go. And his answer was, “I couldn’t let go. If I had,” and I’m quoting almost word for word, “if I’d let that young man go, I could not have lived another day of my life.”

How come? 

Schopenhauer’s answer is, this is the breakthrough of a metaphysical realization that you and the other are one. 

And that the separateness is only an effect of the temporal forms of sensibility of time and space. 

And a true reality is in that unity with all life. 

It is a metaphysical truth that becomes spontaneously realized, because it’s the real truth of your life. 

Now, you might say the hero is the one who has given his physical life, you might say, to some order of realization of that truth. 

It may appear that I’m one with my tribe, or I’m one with people of a certain kind, or I’m one with life. 

This is not a concept; this is a realization, do you see what I mean?

BILL MOYERS: 

No, explain it.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

And the concepts of love your neighbor and all are to put you in tune with that fact, but whether you love your neighbor or not, bing, the thing grabs you and you do this thing. 

You don’t even know who it is. 

That policeman didn’t know who that young man was. 

And Schopenhauer says in small ways you can see this happening every day all the time. 

This is a theme that can be seen moving life in the world, people doing nice things for each other.

BILL MOYERS: 

What do you think has happened to this mythic idea of the hero in our culture today?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It comes up in an experience. 

I think, I remember during the Vietnam war, seeing on the television the young men in helicopters going out to rescue one of their companions at great risk to themselves. 

They didn’t have to rescue that young man; that’s the same thing working. 

It puts them in touch with the experience of being alive. 

Going to the office every day, you don’t get that experience, but suddenly you’re ripped out into being alive. 

And life is pain and life is suffering and life is horror, but by God, you’re alive and it’s spectacular. And this is a case of being alive, rescuing that young man.

BILL MOYERS: 

But I also know a man who said once, after years of standing on the platform of the subway, 

“I die a little bit down there every day, but I know I’m doing so for my family.” 

There are small acts of heroism that occur without regard to the nobility or the notoriety that you attract for it.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

That’s right, that’s right.

BILL MOYERS: 

And the mother does it by the isolation she endures in behalf of the family, of raising…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Motherhood is a sacrifice. 

On our veranda in Hawaii, there are little birds that come that Jean likes to feed. 

And each year there have been one or two mothers, mother birds. 

And if you’ve ever seen a mother bird plagued by her progeny for food, that the mother should regurgitate their meal to them, and the two of them, or five of them in one case, flopping all over this poor little mother, they bigger than she in some cases, you just think, well, this is the symbol of motherhood. 

This is just giving of your substance, every thing, to this progeny.

There should be it in marriage. 

A marriage is a relationship. 

When you make a sacrifice in marriage, you’re not sacrificing to The Other, you’re sacrificing to The Eelationship. 

And this is symbolised, for example, in that Chinese image of the tai chi, the tao, you know, with the dark and the light interacting, it’s a well-known sign. 

That is the relationship of yang and yin, male and female, which is what a marriage is. 

And that’s what you are, you’re no longer This, 

you’re The Relationship. 

And so marriage, I would say, 

is not a love affair, it’s An Ordeal.

BILL MOYERS: 

An ordeal?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The ordeal is sacrifice of ego to the relationship, of a two-ness which now becomes the one.

BILL MOYERS: 

One not only biologically but spiritually, 

and primarily spiritually.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Primarily spiritually.

BILL MOYERS: 

But the necessary function of marriage, in order to create our own images and perpetuate ourselves in children, but it’s not the primary one, as you say.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

No, that’s really just the elementary aspect of marriage. 

There are two completely different stages of marriage. 

First is the youthful marriage, following the wonderful impulse, you know, that nature has given us, in the interplay of the sexes biologically. 

And in the reproduction of children. 

But there comes a time when the child graduates from the family, and the family is left. 

I’ve been amazed at the number of my friends who in their forties or fifties go apart, who have had a perfectly decent life together with the child, but they interpreted their union in terms of relationship through the child. 

They did not interpret it in terms of their own personal relationship to each other.

BILL MOYERS: 

Utterly incompatible with the idea of 'Doing One’s Own Thing'?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It’s not one’s own thing, you see. 

It is in a sense one’s own thing, 

but the one isn’t just you, it’s the two together. 

And that’s a purely mythological image, of the sacrifice of the visible entity for a transcendent unit, cracking eggs to make an omelet, you know? 

And by marrying The Right Person, 

we reconstruct the image of the incarnate god, 

and that’s what marriage is.

BILL MOYERS: 

The right person. How does one choose the right person?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Your heart tells you; it ought to.

BILL MOYERS: 

Your inner being.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

That’s the mystery.

BILL MOYERS: 

You recognize your other self.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, I don’t know, but there’s a flash that comes and something in you knows that this is the one.