{"id":10418,"date":"2015-03-18T06:45:33","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T13:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=10418"},"modified":"2015-03-16T10:47:12","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T17:47:12","slug":"lit-matters-joseph-campbell-and-the-rapture-of-being-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2015\/03\/18\/lit-matters-joseph-campbell-and-the-rapture-of-being-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"Lit Matters<\/em>: Joseph Campbell and the rapture of being alive"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_20140602_035445\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe privilege of a lifetime is being who you are,\u201d said Joseph Campbell, an American philosopher, lecturer, and writer best known for his work in comparative mythology.<\/p>\n

Campbell\u2019s books about mythology, like The Hero with a Thousand Faces <\/i>and The Masks of God,<\/i> have had a large popular influence on artists, writers, philosophers, and even Hollywood. The original Star Wars Trilogy<\/i> was inspired by Campbell\u2019s thoughts on the heroic archetype and the mythic motif of a journey or quest.<\/p>\n

As a comparative mythologist, Campbell looked for answers to humanity\u2019s enduring questions in the stories told all over the world and throughout time. By finding the common threads woven through the myths of vastly different cultures, Campbell found human answers to tough questions like \u201cwhat does it mean to love?\u201d and \u201cwhy do we die?\u201d<\/p>\n

He believed that we reveal ourselves by the stories we tell and that by listening closely to the stories of others we can better know ourselves.<\/p>\n

Campbell\u2019s most famous piece of advice was \u201cfollow your bliss.\u201d By doing what we are most passionate about, we express our most authentic selves and are better citizens of the world. This isn\u2019t a call to embrace hedonism, however, as often the journey that fills us with passion is a difficult path.<\/p>\n

But, ultimately, Campbell didn\u2019t believe that spending one\u2019s life looking for hard-fast meaning was a good use of our time here on earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople say that what we\u2019re all seeking is a meaning for life,\u201d he explained. \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s what we\u2019re really seeking. I think that what we\u2019re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joseph Campbell must-read:<\/b>
\nThe Power of Myth<\/i>
\n(Lansdowne\/Interurban code: BL 304 C36)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe privilege of a lifetime is being who you are,\u201d said Joseph Campbell, an American philosopher, lecturer, and writer best known for his work in comparative mythology. Campbell\u2019s books about mythology, like The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Masks of God, have had a large popular influence on artists, writers, philosophers, and even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-march-18-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10420,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10418\/revisions\/10420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}