[MD] Mythos- the fresh maker

[david buchanan]

Ron said to dmb:
To clarify mythos: a pattern of beliefs expressing often symbolically the characteristic or prevalent attitudes in a group or culture. -- Merriam-Webster

Speaking of mythos and addressing the comment I had made regarding the hero's journey in the paper, "the Jung and the restless" I had seen a connection with the concept and analogy of 360 degree enlightenment that rolls out quite simply in this manner: leaving the mythos (orpheus entering the world of the dead) as roughly consistent with 180 degree enlightenment then the return back into the mythos ( the hero returning with a boon to society-ala Campbell) as roughly consistent with the notion of the 360 degree enlightenment. I was wondering if you noted the connection also and were hinting at it as strengthening the explanation Paul Turner had offered.



dmb says:

Oh, I see. I wasn't thinking of Paul's paper at the time but there certainly is a connection between the hero's journey and the full circle of enlightenment and it's just as you describe it, especially when the hero is somebody like Buddha or Christ. 

The symbolic, mythic form of this idea is just as true as the more geometric or philosophic explanations and they both express the same idea. As Pirsig points out, the intellectual descriptions are not superior because they are more true but because they are more dynamic, more open to change and evolution. And it's not that we have to choose one or the other, of course, because comparative mythology necessarily includes both forms of expression. 

Now Imagine what happens when the hero ventures out of the mythos but fails to complete the cycle and never comes back. Poor Dorothy. She'll be stuck in the land of OZ forever. Poor Orpheus. He'll be hanging out with the dead in the dark forever. Poor Bodhi, he'll never stop sitting under that Buddha Tree. I think we should take the MOQ as a form of philosophical mysticism, as an intellectual expression of this same perennial philosophy, and traveling only 180 degrees of the circle is equally tragic. To see the world of evolving values as a prison of illusions is very much like being stuck in the dead land of Oz. Poor Marsha, she likes it there. She'll never come back.