Nowhere Girl

I thought you said you wanted to get out of this town too.

Beverley Marsh :

Because I want to run TOWARDS Something, not away.

She's a real nowhere girl
Sitting in her nowhere land
Making all her nowhere plans for nobody

Doesn't have a point of view
Knows not where she's going to
Isn't she a bit like you and me?
 

Nowhere Girl, please listen
You don't know what you're missing
Nowhere Girl, The World is at your command

He's as blind as he can be
Just sees what he wants to see
Nowhere Girl, can you see me at all
 

Nowhere Girl, don't worry
Take your time, don't hurry
Leave it all 'til somebody else
Lends you a hand
Ah, la, la, la, la

Doesn't have a point of view
Knows not where she's going to
Isn't she a bit like you and me?
Nowhere Girl, please listen
You don't know what you're missing
Nowhere Girl, The World is at your command
Ah, la, la, la, la

She's a real nowhere girl
Sitting in her nowhere land

Making all her nowhere plans for nobody
Making all her nowhere plans for nobody
Making all her nowhere plans for nobody

BILL MOYERS: What about the female? I mean, most of the figures in the temple caves arc male. Was this a kind of secret society for males only?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: It wasn’t a secret society, it was that the boys had to go through it. Now, we don’t know exactly what happens with the female in this period, because we have very little evidence to tell us. In primary cultures today, the girl becomes a woman with her first menstruation. It happens to her; I mean, nature does it to her. And so she has undergone the transformation, and what is her initiation? Typically it is to sit in a little hut for a certain number of days, and realize what she is.

BILL MOYERS: How does she do that?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: She sits there. She’s now a woman. And what is a woman? A woman is a vehicle of life, and life has overtaken her. She is a vehicle now of life. A woman’s what it’s all about; the giving of birth and the giving of nourishment. She’s identical with the earth goddess in her powers, and she’s got to realize that about herself. The boy does not have a happening of that kind. He has to be turned into a man, and voluntarily become a servant of something greater than himself. The woman becomes the vehicle of nature; the man becomes the vehicle of the society, the social order and the social purpose.

BILL MOYERS: So what happens when a society no longer embraces powerful mythology?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: What we’ve got on our hands. As I say, if you want to find what it means not to have a society without any rituals, read The New York Times.

BILL MOYERS: And you’d find?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, the news of the day.

BILL MOYERS: Wars…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Young people who don’t know how to behave in a civilized society. Half the…I imagine that 50% of the crime is by young people in their 20s and early 30s that just behave like barbarians.

BILL MOYERS: Society has provided them no rituals by which they become members.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: None. There’s been a reduction, a reduction, a reduction of ritual. Even in the Roman Catholic Church, my God, they’ve translated the Mass out of the ritual language into a language that has a lot of domestic associations. So that, I mean, every time now that I read tile Latin of the Mass, I get that pitch again that it’s supposed to give, a language that throws you out of the field of your domesticity, you know. The altar is turned so that the priest, his back is to you, and with him you address yourself outward like that. Now they’ve turned the altar around, looks like Julia Child giving a demonstration, and it’s all homey and cozy.

BILL MOYERS: And they play a guitar.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: They play a guitar. Listen, they’ve forgotten what the function of a ritual is, is to pitch you out, not to wrap you back in where you have been all the time.

BILL MOYERS: So ritual that once conveyed an inner reality is now merely form, and that’s true in the rituals of society, and the personal rituals of marriage and religion.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, with respect to ritual, it must be kept alive. And so much of our ritual is dead. It’s extremely interesting to read of the primitive, elementary cultures, how the folktales, the myths, they are transforming all the time, in terms of the circumstances of those people. People move from an area where, let’s say the vegetation is the main support, out into the plains. Most of our Plains Indians in the period of the horse-riding Indians, you know, had originally been of the Mississippian culture along the Mississippi in settled dwelling towns, and agriculturally based villages. And then they received tile horse from the Spaniards, and it makes it possible then to venture out on the plains and handle a great hunt of the buffalo herds, you see. And the mythology transforms from vegetation to buffalo. And you can see the structure of the earlier vegetation mythologies under the mythologies of the Dakota Indians and the Pawnee Indians and the Kiowa and so forth.

BILL MOYERS: You’re saying that the environment shapes the story?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: They respond to it. Do you see? But we have a tradition that comes from the first millennium B.C. somewhere else, and we’re handling that. It has not turned over and assimilated the qualities of our culture, and the new things that are possible, and the new vision of the universe. It must be kept alive. The only people that can keep it alive are artists of one kind or another.

BILL MOYERS: Artists?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That artist is…his function is the mythologization of the environment and the world.

BILL MOYERS:: Artists being the poet, the musician, the author, writer.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Exactly, yes. I think we’ve had a couple of greats in the recent times. I think of James Joyce as such a revealer of the mysteries of growing up and becoming a human being. And for me, he and Thomas Mann were my principal gurus, you might say, as I was trying to shape my own life. I think in the visual arts there were two men whose work seemed to me to handle mythological themes in a marvelous way, and one was Paul Klee, and the other Picasso. These two men really knew what they were doing all the way, I think, and had a great versatility in their revelations.

BILL MOYERS: You mean, our artists are the mythmakers of our day?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: The mythmakers in earlier days were the counterparts of our artists.

BILL MOYERS: They drew the paintings on the wall

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: —they performed the rituals.

PROJECTION

JUST THROWING THAT OUT THERE

 

project (v.)

late 15c., "to plan," from Latin proiectus, past participle of proicere "stretch out, throw forth," from pro- "forward" (from PIE root *per- (1) "forward") + combining form of iacere (past participle iactus) "to throw" (from PIE root *ye- "to throw, impel").

 

 

Sense of "to stick out" is from 1718. Meaning "to cast an image on a screen" is recorded from 1865. Psychoanalytical sense, "attribute to another (unconsciously)" is from 1895 (implied in a use of projective). Meaning "convey to others by one's manner" is recorded by 1955. 

 

Related: Projected; projecting.

 

JUST THROWING THAT OUT THERE

 

Imagine A Cave where those inside never see The Outside World.

Instead, they see shadows of That World projected on The Cave Wall.

 

 

But it's Real to them.

 

If you were to show them the world as it actually is, they would reject it as incomprehensible.

Now what if, instead of being in A Cave, you were out in The World, except you couldn't see it.

 

Because you weren't looking.

 

Because you trusted that The World You Saw through The Prism was The Real World.

 

But there's a difference.

 

You see, unlike the allegory of the cave, where the people are real and the shadows are false here other people are the shadows.

Their faces.

Their lives.

This is The Delusion of The Narcissist, who believes that they alone are Real.

 

 

Their feelings are the only feelings that matter because Other People are just Shadows, and Shadows don't feel.

 

Because they're Not Real.

 

But what if everyone lived in caves?

 

Then no one would be real.

Not even you.

 

Unless one day you woke up and left the cave.

How strange the world would look after a lifetime of staring at shadows.

 

[TYPING, PHONES CHIMING.]

 

 

BILL MOYERS: 

When I was growing up, Tales of King Arthur,

Tales of the medieval knights,

Tales of the dragon slayers were very strong in My World.

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Dragons represent greed, really.

 

The European dragon guards things in his cave,

and what he guards are

Heaps of Gold

and

Virgins.

 

And he can’t make use of either of them,

but he just guards.

 

There’s no vitality of experience,

either of The Value of The Gold

or of The Female whom he’s guarding there.

 

Psychologically, the dragon is one’s own binding of oneself to one’s ego,

and you’re captured in your own dragon cage.

 

And the problem of the psychiatrist is to break that dragon, open him up, so that you can have a larger field of relationships.

 

Jung had a patient come to him who felt alone, and she drew a picture of herself as caught in the rocks, from the waist down she was bound in rocks.

 

And this was on a windy shore, and the wind blowing and her hair blowing, and all The Gold, which is The Sign of The Vitality of Life, was locked in The Rocks.

 

And the next picture that he had her draw had followed something he had said to her.

 

Suddenly a lightning flash hit the rocks,

and The Gold came pouring out,

and then she found reflected on rocks round about The Gold.

 

There was no more Gold in the rocks, it was all available on the top.

 

And in the conferences that followed, those patches of gold were identified.

They were her friends.

 

She wasn’t alone,

but she had locked herself in her own little room and life,

but she had friends.

 

Do you see what I mean?

 

This is Killing The Dragon.

 

And you have fears and things, this is the dragon;

that’s exactly what’s that all about.

 

At least The European dragon;

The Chinese dragon is different.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

What is it?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It represents The Vitality of The Swamps

and The Dragon comes out beating his belly and saying 

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

 

You know, that’s another kind of dragon.

 

And he’s The One That Yields The Bounty and The Waters and all that kind of thing. 

He’s The Great Glorious Thing. 

 

But this is The Negative One that cuts you down.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

So what you’re saying is, if there are not dragons out there,

and there may not be at any one moment.

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The real dragon is in you.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

And what is that real dragon?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

That’s your ego, holding you in.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

What’s my ego?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

What I want, what I believe, what I can do, what I think I love, and all that. 

 

What I regard as the aim of my life and so forth. 

 

It might be too small. 

 

It might be that which pins you down. 

 

And if it’s simply that of doing what the environment tells you to do,

it certainly is pinning you down.

And so the environment is your dragon, as it reflects within yourself.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

How do I slay…

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

How do you?

 

BILL MOYERS: 

Slay that dragon in me? 

What’s the journey I have to make, you have to make, each of us has to make? 

You talk about something called the soul’s high adventure.

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

My general formula for my students is, follow your bliss,

I mean, find where it is, and don’t be afraid to follow it.

 

BILL MOYERS:

Can my bliss be my life’s love, or my life’s work?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, it will be your life.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

Is it my work or my life?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, if the work that you’re doing is the work that you chose to do because you are enjoying it, that’s it. 

 

But if you think,

“Oh, gee, I couldn’t do that,”

you know, that’s your dragon blocking you in. 

 

“Oh, no, I couldn’t be a writer, oh, no,

I couldn’t do what so-and-so is doing.”

 

BILL MOYERS: 

Unlike the classical heroes,

we’re not going on our journey to Save The World,

but to save ourselves.

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

And in doing that, you Save The World.

I mean, you do. 

 

The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there’s no doubt about it. 

 

The World is a Wasteland. 

 

People have the notion of saving the world by shifting it around and changing the rules and so forth.

 

No, any world is a living world if it’s alive, and the thing is to bring it to life.

 

And the way to bring it to life is to find in your own case where your life is, and be alive yourself, it seems to me.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

But you say I have to take that journey and go down there and slay those dragons. 

Do I have to go alone?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

If you have someone who can help you, that’s fine, too.

But ultimately the last trick has to be done by you.

 

BILL MOYERS:

In all of these journeys of mythology, there’s a place everyone wishes to find. What is it? The Buddhists talk of nirvana; Jesus talks of peace. There’s a place of rest and repose. Is that typical of the hero’s journey, that there’s a place to find?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL:

That’s a place in yourself of rest.

 

Now this I know a little bit about from athletics.

The athlete who is in championship form has a quiet place in himself. And it’s out of that that his action comes.

 

If he’s all in the action field, he’s not performing properly. There’s a center out of which you act.

 

And Jean, my wife, a dancer, tells me that in dance this is true, too, there’s the center that has to be known and held. There it’s quite physically recognized by the person. But unless this center has been found, you’re torn apart, tension comes.

Now, the Buddha’s word is nirvana; nirvana is a psychological slate of mind. It’s not a place, like heaven, it’s not something that’s not here; it is here, in the middle of the turmoil, what’s called samsara, the whirlpool of life conditions. That nirvana is what, is the condition that comes when you are not compelled by desire or by fear, or by social commitments, when you hold your center and act out of there.

 

BILL MOYERS:

And like all Heroes, The Buddha doesn’t show you The Truth, The Illumination;

He shows you The Way to It.

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL:

The Way.

But it’s got to be Your Way, too.

I mean, how should I get rid of Fear?

The Buddha can’t tell me how I’m going to do it. There are exercises that different teachers will give you, but they may not work for you. And all a teacher can do is give you a clue of the direction. He’s like a lighthouse that says there are rocks over here, and steer clear.

 

 

 

Confronting Fear is The Destiny of a Jedi

Now everybody from the 616

Put your motherfuckin' hands up

and follow me - 

Everybody from the 616

Put your motherfuckin' hands up –

Look, look : –

Now while he stands tough,

Notice that This Man

did not have his hands up –

This Last Order's got you gassed up

Who's afraid of The Big Bad Wolf?

One, two, three and to the four

One Pac, two Pac, three Pac, four

Four Pac, three Pac, two Pac, one

You're Pac, he's Pac,

you're Pac none

This guy's no motherfuckin' Ruler over Thee,

I know every last thing

he's got to say against me –

I AM White;

I AM a Junkyard Savage Scavenger;

I DO live in Shipwrecked Star Destroyer on my own;

My Step-Uncle, Master Luke IS an Uncle Tom;

I DO got a dumb friend, 

Dude look like a Dawg,

Who I thought that I had accidentally shot-down, clear, out of Out of The Blue,

after I had gone + gotten way too  mad,

And smote the their ship clear, clean out of the skies with The Force of a Thunderbolt.

I DID get jumped by all six Knights of Ren,

And my Family of Origin DID sell me to a Junkyard trader for fuck-you drinking money —

I'm STILL standing Here screaming

''Fuck Tha Empire!”

The Foolish and The Ridiculous Demand Respect – And They are Insisting on Their Rights

OO'S THAT GUT-LORD MARCHIN'...?

YOU SHOULD CUT-DOWN ON YER PORK-LIFE, MATE, GET SOME EXERCISE..!!

IT'S NOT ABOUT YER VORSPRUNGZ-DIRK TECHNIQUE, Y'KNOW...

THE IMPOSSIBILITY PROBLEM

As a culture we have entered an area which is now mined with impossibility problems. From some of the most famous women on the planet we have heard the demand that women have the right to be sexy without being sexualized. Some of the most prominent cultural figures in the world have shown us that to oppose racism we must become a bit racist. Now a whole set of similar impossibilities are being demanded in an equally non-conciliatory manner. 

There was a fine example on the BBC’s This Week in October 2017 when an artist and writer going by the mononym ‘Scottee’ appeared on the programme to discuss a short political film he had made. As a self-described ‘big fat queer fem’ he complained that he was a ‘victim of masculinity in a way because of the aggressions I put up with on a day-to-day basis’. Although he had no answers to this problem, he insisted that ‘queer, trans, non-binary people’ shouldn’t have to be the ones who have to disable “toxic masculinity”’. It has to come from within, he argued. Men ‘have got to acknowledge their privilege, and I want them to hand over power, and also I want them to hand over some platform. I’m really up for like trying a matriarchy. We’ve done patriarchy for a long time. Hasn’t really worked.’

Avoiding the Nuclear Presumption of ‘hasn’t really worked’ for a moment, there was one even larger fact staring any viewer in the face. 

This was that one of the main complaints that this flamboyantly dressed self-declared ‘big fat queer fem’ had made about the society he lived in was that he found himself so often ridiculed.

So here is another paradoxical, impossible demand. 

A person who chooses to be ridiculous without being ridiculed.

Other impossible demands can be found everywhere  – such as the one that was on display at Evergreen State College and Yale University and was highlighted by Mark Lilla on the panel at Rutgers (where the audience member insisted to Kmele Foster that he ‘didn’t need no facts’). 

On that occasion Lilla provided an insight into one of the other central conundrums of our time. He said, ‘You cannot tell people simultaneously “You must understand me” and “You cannot understand me”.’ 

Evidently a whole lot of people can make those demands simultaneously. But they shouldn’t, and if they do then they should realize that their contradictory demands cannot be granted. 

Then of course there is the question of how the hierarchy of oppression is meant to be ordered, prioritized and then sorted out. 

Laith Ashley is one of the most prominent transgender models in the world today. The female-to-male transsexual has received prominent coverage and done prestigious fashion shoots for leading brands and magazines. In a 2016 television interview he was asked by Channel 4’s Cathy Newman if in the two years he had been transitioning from a woman to a man he had encountered any discrimination. Ashley said that in fact he had not, but then alleviated his interviewer’s disappointment by adding that transgender activists and others he knew from transgender rights movements had ‘told’ him that he had in fact gained some male privilege. 

As he said, breaking it down for the viewers, ‘I have gained some male privilege. And although I am a person of colour I am fair skinned and I adhere to society’s standard of aesthetic beauty in a sense. And for that reason I have not necessarily faced much discrimination.’

So he had taken a couple of steps further into the hierarchy by becoming a man, had taken a couple of steps back by being a person of colour, but a step forward by being a light-skinned person of colour. And then he had hit the negative of being attractive. 

How can anyone work out where they are meant to be in the oppressor/oppressed stakes when they have so many competing privileges in their biography? 

No wonder Ashley looked concerned and self-effacing when going through this list. This is enough constant self-analysis to knock anybody’s confidence. But a version of that impossible self-analysis is being suggested for many people today, when in fact there is no way of knowing how to perform this task fairly on another person let alone on yourself. What is the point of an exercise that CANNOT be Done? 

And where to next? One of the pleasures in recent years has been watching people who think they are being a good liberal boundary keeper discover that one of their feet has nicked one of the tripwires. One Saturday evening in 2018 Vox’s David Roberts was spending his time happily auditioning for the committee for public virtue on Twitter. In one tweet he wrote, ‘Sometimes I think about America’s sedentary, heart-diseased, fast-food gobbling, car-addicted suburbanites, sitting watching TV in their suburban castles, casually passing judgement on refugees who have walked 1000s of miles to escape oppression, and . . . well, it makes me mad.’ As he sent it off he must have thought ‘Sounds good. Attack Americans, defend migrants, what could go wrong?’ A more cautious member of the new media might have wondered whether it was wise to sound quite so disdainful of people who live in the suburbs. But in fact it was not Roberts’s suburbo-phobia that caused him to spend the rest of his Saturday evening frantically trying to save his career in dozens of remedy tweets. The thing that caused an instant backlash from the very crowd he was hoping to impress was that he had been ‘fat-shaming’ and this was ‘problematic’. 

By his 17th tweet attempting to mop up his crime Roberts was reduced to begging: ‘Fat-shaming is real, it’s everywhere, it’s unjust & unkind, and I want no part of it.’ Soon he was apologizing sincerely for only being ‘half woke’, and blaming his upbringing.

The potential for claims of offence, allegations of shaming and new positions in the grievance hierarchy based on ever-evolving criteria could go on indefinitely. But how would they be arranged? Is a fat white person equal to a skinny person of colour? Or are there different scales of oppression which everyone should know even if no one has explained the rules because the rules are made not by rational people but by mob stampedes. 

Perhaps rather than derange ourselves by working out a puzzle that cannot be solved, we should instead try to find ways out of This Impossible Maze.

Where's your head at
Where's your head at (Where your head at)
Where's your head at (Where your head at)
Drozze it
Okay are you ready, I'm ready
Don't let the walls cave in on you
We can live on, live on without you
Don't let the walls cave in on you
We can live on, live on without you
Don't let the walls cave in on you
You get what you give that much is true
Don't let the walls cave in on you
You turn the world away from you
Where's your head at (Where your head at)
Where's your head at (Where your head at)
Wasn't that?Okay are you ready, I'm ready
You have now found yourself trapped in the incomprehensible maze
Where's your head at, you'll know how to be
Where's your head at, you don't make it easy on yourself
Where's your head at, what you give is what you get, is what you get
Where's your head at (Where's your head at)
Where's your head at (Where's your head at (Okay are you ready, I'm ready)
Don't let the walls cave in on you
We can live on, live on without you
Don't let the walls cave in on you
We can live on, live on without you
Don't let the walls cave in on you
We can live on, live on without you
Don't let the walls cave in on you
We can live on, live on without you
Where's your head at, Where's your head at
We can live on, live on without you
We can live on, live on without you
We can live on, live on without you
We can live on, live on without you

01

BILL MOYERS: 

When I was growing up, Tales of King Arthur,

Tales of the medieval knights,

Tales of the dragon slayers were very strong in My World.

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Dragons represent GREED, really.

 

The European Dragon guards things 

in His Cave, and What He Guards are

Heaps of Gold

and

Virgins.

 

And he can’t make use of either of them,

but he just guards.

 

There’s no Vitality of Experience,

either of The Value of The Gold

or of The Female whom he’s guarding there.

 

Psychologically, The Dragon is one’s own binding of oneself to one’s ego,

and you’re captured in your own dragon cage.

 

And the problem of the psychiatrist is to break that dragon, open him up, so that you can have a larger field of relationships.

 

Jung had a patient come to him who felt alone, and she drew a picture of herself as caught in the rocks, from the waist down she was bound in rocks.

 

And this was on a windy shore, and the wind blowing and her hair blowing, and all The Gold, which is The Sign of The Vitality of Life, was locked in The Rocks.

 

And the next picture that he had her draw had followed something he had said to her.

 

Suddenly a lightning flash hit the rocks,

and The Gold came pouring out,

and then she found reflected on rocks round about The Gold.

 

There was no more Gold in the rocks, it was all available on the top.

 

And in the conferences that followed, those patches of gold were identified.

They were her friends.

 

She wasn’t alone,

but she had locked herself in her own little room and life,

but she had friends.

 

Do you see what I mean?

 

This is Killing The Dragon.

 

And you have fears and things, this is the dragon;

that’s exactly what’s that all about.

 

At least The European dragon;

The Chinese dragon is different.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

What is it?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It represents The Vitality of The Swamps

and The Dragon comes out beating his belly and saying 

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

 

You know, that’s another kind of dragon.

 

And he’s The One That Yields The Bounty and The Waters and all that kind of thing. 

He’s The Great Glorious Thing. 

 

But this is The Negative One that cuts you down.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

So what you’re saying is, if there are not dragons out there,

and there may not be at any one moment.

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The real dragon is in you.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

And what is that real dragon?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

That’s your ego, holding you in.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

What’s my ego?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

What I want, what I believe, what I can do, what I think I love, and all that. 

 

What I regard as the aim of my life and so forth. 

 

It might be too small. 

 

It might be that which pins you down. 

 

And if it’s simply that of doing what the environment tells you to do,

it certainly is pinning you down.

And so the environment is your dragon, as it reflects within yourself.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

How do I slay…

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

How do you?

 

BILL MOYERS: 

Slay that dragon in me? 

What’s the journey I have to make, you have to make, each of us has to make? 

You talk about something called the soul’s high adventure.

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

My general formula for my students is, follow your bliss,

I mean, find where it is, and don’t be afraid to follow it.

 

BILL MOYERS:

Can my bliss be my life’s love, or my life’s work?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, it will be your life.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

Is it my work or my life?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, if the work that you’re doing is the work that you chose to do because you are enjoying it, that’s it. 

 

But if you think,

“Oh, gee, I couldn’t do that,”

you know, that’s your dragon blocking you in. 

 

“Oh, no, I couldn’t be a writer, oh, no,

I couldn’t do what so-and-so is doing.”

 

BILL MOYERS: 

Unlike the classical heroes,

we’re not going on our journey to Save The World,

but to save ourselves.

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

And in doing that, you Save The World.

I mean, you do. 

 

The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there’s no doubt about it. 

 

The World is a Wasteland. 

 

People have the notion of saving the world by shifting it around and changing the rules and so forth.

 

No, any world is a living world if it’s alive, and the thing is to bring it to life.

 

And the way to bring it to life is to find in your own case where your life is, and be alive yourself, it seems to me.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

But you say I have to take that journey and go down there and slay those dragons. 

Do I have to go alone?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

If you have someone who can help you, that’s fine, too.

But ultimately the last trick has to be done by you.

 

BILL MOYERS:

In all of these journeys of mythology, there’s a place everyone wishes to find. What is it? The Buddhists talk of nirvana; Jesus talks of peace. There’s a place of rest and repose. Is that typical of the hero’s journey, that there’s a place to find?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL:

That’s a place in yourself of rest.

 

Now this I know a little bit about from athletics.

The athlete who is in championship form has a quiet place in himself. And it’s out of that that his action comes.

 

If he’s all in the action field, he’s not performing properly. There’s a center out of which you act.

 

And Jean, my wife, a dancer, tells me that in dance this is true, too, there’s the center that has to be known and held. There it’s quite physically recognized by the person. But unless this center has been found, you’re torn apart, tension comes.

Now, the Buddha’s word is nirvana; nirvana is a psychological slate of mind. It’s not a place, like heaven, it’s not something that’s not here; it is here, in the middle of the turmoil, what’s called samsara, the whirlpool of life conditions. That nirvana is what, is the condition that comes when you are not compelled by desire or by fear, or by social commitments, when you hold your center and act out of there.

 

BILL MOYERS:

And like all Heroes, The Buddha doesn’t show you The Truth, The Illumination;

He shows you The Way to It.

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL:

The Way.

But it’s got to be Your Way, too.

I mean, how should I get rid of Fear?

The Buddha can’t tell me how I’m going to do it. There are exercises that different teachers will give you, but they may not work for you. And all a teacher can do is give you a clue of the direction. He’s like a lighthouse that says there are rocks over here, and steer clear.