From An Ideology To A Cult

As a huge fan of the mythologist Joseph Campbell, I was really excited when I found out that a documentary film about his ideas are playing in selected cinemas in the US. When I was watching the trailer (below), I suddenly realized how close this admiration of Joseph Campbell has been turning into a cult of its own.

Having said that, I still recommend you his book, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" and I still admire his works. However, like any other great books, revolutionary ideas and personalities of the past, the process of turning these into cults - ie. blind devotion to ideas, beliefs and rigid observation of rituals - always begin with widespread misreading of those originally reasonable ideas, through secondary interpretation (interpret the interpretation, or, comments on the commentaries).

When a cult is established, its followers usually never bother to read the primary source - the original work - where the first definition of terms and ideas are established by the author. For example, in Campbell's case,  if you only watch the film, read my comments of his work and just quotes from his books, I don't think you can fully grasp his ideas yet. You might even imagine this to be just another new-age self-help scheme - like "The Secret" - only with a different tagline: "Follow your bliss", and I don't blame you for that. Some might even fall into such scheme.

Ironically, the genius of Joseph Campbell was in his realization that all myths, folklores, and religions simply point toward the attempt to understand human existence and making sense of daily life, and the literal or historical truths behind these are irrelevant. Far from trying to establish a new form of myth, his focus was more on the study of the established ones. Of course, his thoughts were not formed out of vacuum, as they often refer to findings in psychoanalysis, especially of Carl Jung.

Now if you have read this far, let me reward you with a token of appreciation, because I know not many people would do so. The trailer below is for the documentary film I mentioned above, called "Finding Joe". It's up to you to watch it, read the book, or do something else, useful or otherwise. Follow your bliss!

Finding Joe - Trailer V.7 from pat solomon on Vimeo.