One of the wisest books I’ve read — not just lately, but period — is Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth (written with Bill Moyers). The copyright date is 1988, but the insights in this book speak to us, right now, today.
Consider the following quote in light of the atrocities committed by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib:
“…[I]t is obscene to judge people in terms of civil law for performances that they rendered in time of war. They were not acting as individuals, they were acting as agents of someting above them and to which they had by dedication given themselves. To judge them as though they were individual human beings is totally improper.” (p. 15)
And on the Religious Right’s struggle to turn back the clock and preserve “traditional values” by denying gay people marriage:
“[Religious conservatives … calling for the old time religion are] making a terrible mistake. They are going back to something vestigial, that doesn’t serve life … Myths offer life models, but the models have to be appropriate to the time in which you are living, and our time has changed so fast that what was proper fifty years ago is not proper today. The virtues of the past are the vices of today. And many of what were thought to be the vices of the past are the necessities of today.
“The moral order has to catch up with the moral necessities of actual life in time, here and now. The old-time religion belongs to another age, another people, another set of human values, another universe. By going back, you throw yourself out of synch with history.”
Campbell uttered these insights almost fifteen years ago. Especially given current events, his words have the ring of prophecy. The Power of Myth should be required reading for anyone curious about the larger meaning of events and the direction of our country.
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