A Phony Interview with Mythologist Joseph Campbell

Joseph John Campbell was a Professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. He became especially well-known for his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In it, he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero, an archetype that he thought appeared in various forms in mythologies throughout the world. (The Tollkeeper, by the way, often riffs on the hero archetype concept.) Campbell is also well known for coining the phrase “follow your bliss.” In fact, he was so good at coining phrases, that you can read inspirational Joseph Campbell quotes all over the Internet. The following is a phony baloney interview with Prof. Campbell created by threading together just a small portion of the (seemingly) zillions of Campbell quotes on the Web.

Interviewer: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Mr. Campbell. We were surprised you could make it. I guess the reports of your death were, as they say, greatly exaggerated.

Joseph Campbell: Suddenly you’re ripped into being alive. And life is pain, and life is suffering, and life is horror, but my god you’re alive and it’s spectacular.

I: Okay, well said, thank you for that. Now, you lived a long and productive life…

JC: The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

On the Meaning of Meaninglessness

I: Sure, I guess. But what I wanted to ask is what you’ve learned from all your studies. When you boil it all down, what did you find the meaning of life is?

JC: Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.

I: That sounds kind of existentialist. Maybe even postmodern. I thought your whole idea was that there are stories and myths that cross cultures and have a shared meaning.

JC: Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.

I: Right, but how can there be spiritual potentialities if life has no meaning?

JC: I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.

I: Really? Now that sounds a bit like Epicurus. Or maybe Nietzsche. So you really think life is meaningless?

JC: Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.

I: Wow, so, if being alive is the meaning, does that mean being dead is meaningless?

JC: Life is but a mask worn on the face of death. And what is death, then, but another mask?

On Following Your (Damned) Bliss

I: If life is meaningful but it’s only a mask on the face of death, then doesn’t that mean death is just as meaningful as life? Seems like a conundrum.

JC: Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived. Follow the path that is no path, follow your bliss. Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.

I: Okay, I’m sorry, but I’ve just got to say that sounds like fortune-cookie crap. Do you know how many liberal arts students have graduated with virtually no work skills just because they buy into that “follow your bliss” line?

JC: I think the person who takes a job in order to live – that is to say, for the money – has turned himself into a slave.

I: A slave, really? So, what’s that person supposed to do? Live on dumpster food? Dude, you spent your life in cushy academia. You never even lived in the real world. You’ve got some nerve…

JC: When you follow your bliss, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you.

I: Ah, okay, so you’re saying we should network more to succeed in our blissful pursuits?

JC: If you are on the right path you will find that invisible hands are helping.

I: I’d prefer the hands to be visible, you know, but I get the idea. Note to self: Join LinkedIn. By the way, didn’t you steal that invisible hand thing from Adam Smith?

JC: People forget facts, but they remember stories.

JI: Now you sound like the president. Are you saying you prefer stories to facts?

JC: The warrior’s approach is to say ‘yes’ to life: ‘yes’ to it all.

On Life as Improv

I: ‘Yes’ to it all. Neat. I think that’s a rule of improv, by the way.

JC: Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.

I: Again, an improv basic! I had no idea you were into that stuff. But, you know, some folks hate improv. It’s scary to just get up and wing it moment to moment.

JC: The ultimate dragon is within you, it is your ego clamping you down. The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

I: So, you’re saying we should be bolder, to live with greater courage and whatnot.

JC: The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty ‘yes’ to your adventure. You are the hero of your own story.

On Being a Hero

I: But that sounds kind of narcissistic, doesn’t it? Follow your bliss. Be your own hero.

JC: A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.

I: That seems contradictory. I mean, how can I follow my own bliss while giving my life to something bigger than myself?

JC: Passion will move men beyond themselves, beyond their shortcomings, beyond their failures.

I: Passion, eh? You’re saying that to find my bliss, I’ve got to lose myself in something bigger than my own small life? Sounds like a great adventure. How do I go about it?

JC: Sit in a room and read – and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.

I: Wait, what? That’s your idea of a grand adventure? Reading a bunch of books?

JC: Every hero must have the courage to be alone, to take the journey for himself.

I: Seems like being alone is the opposite of seeking adventure.

JC: All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.

On the Dark Night of the Soul

I: I get it: adventures are ultimately internal. That begs a question. How do we find our adventure? What sets us on the right path, aside from “bliss,” of course.

JC: Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation.

I: You mean when we are down and out? Fallen on hard times?

JC: If you are falling, dive.

I: That sounds like a pretty tough path to bliss, Professor Campbell.

JC: If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.

I: Oh, joy. Everybody’s got to blaze their own darkened path! Couldn’t we all just go on a fabulous cruise together and enjoy ourselves? Seems like there’s already enough suffering in the world.

JC: Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain. There is perhaps nothing worse than reaching the top of the ladder and discovering that you’re on the wrong wall.

I: I guess that’s the stuff of mid-life crises….wrong ladder and all that.

JC: We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about. Regrets are illuminations come too late.

I: That pretty profound but also pretty depressing. Illuminations come too late…

JC: Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.

I: That makes you sound like a big believer in free will. Are you?

JC: The fates lead him who will; him who won’t, they drag.

I: Not sure if that’s a yes or a no…

JC: If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.

On the Meaning of Dance

I: You sure are hard to pin down philosophically but are consistent on all this bliss stuff. Is that what you taught your students?

JC:  The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves.

I: Not any more. The job is to teach the test. It’s so dismal. You would hate it. By the way, you married one of your former students, dancer-choreographer Jean Erdman. What did you learn from her?

JC: You don’t ask what a dance means. You enjoy it. You don’t ask what the world means. You enjoy it. You don’t ask what you mean. You enjoy it.

On Which Religion Is Best

I: I bet you’re a fan of Shiva, whose dance both creates and destroys the world. You’ve studied many religions. Any recommendations?

JC: In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of gods. Choose yours. Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.

I: So it’s all back to me, again? Isn’t there one true faith, as they say?

JC: All religions are true but none are literal.

I: Dude, you’re so slippery! Everything’s choose-your-own-adventure with you.

JC: No one in the world was ever you before, with your particular gifts and abilities and possibilities.

I: Now that sounds like feel-good crap. You don’t really believe that, do you?

JC:  If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.

I: I guess that’s a yes. It must be nice to have it all figured out.

JC: He who thinks he knows, doesn’t know. He who knows that he doesn’t know, knows.

I: But then if you know that you don’t know, isn’t that thinking that you do know? Those are just basic rules of logic.

JC: You can’t have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules.

On Whether the Artist Is a Hero…or Vice Versa

I: Hmm, creativity trumps logic, does it? So, in your estimation, what, exactly, is the function of an artist?

JC: The function of artists is “the mythologization of the world.”

I: So, the artist’s job is to impart a mythical quality to her or his work. I guess that means that the artist is a hero, or maybe the hero is an artist. Does that mean that the path of the hero always leads to something new?

JC: There is what I would call the hero journey, the night sea journey, the hero quest, where the individual is going to bring forth in his life something that was never beheld before.

I: Then, I guess the hero’s art is really his or her own life, assuming the hero is brave enough to break their routine and risk the bliss-following gambit of you preach so hard.

JC: Breaking out is following your bliss pattern, quitting the old place, starting your hero journey, following your bliss. You throw off yesterday as the snake sheds its skin.

On Shit Happening

I: But let’s great real, Professor. Shit happens. Big plans can go belly up. People fall ill. I’ve seen it. What do you say to that?

JC: Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.

I: Sounds like Nietzsche’s “that which does not kill me makes me stronger” stuff. But look how that guy ended up!

JC: You’ve got to find the force inside you.

I: Okay, Obi-Wan. Look, some people have horrible things happen to them, one after another, like they’re cursed.

JC: Respect your curses, for they are the instruments of your destiny. Whatever the hell happens, say, ‘This is what I need.’

I: How is that different from when somebody glibly says, “Don’t worry. Everything always ends up for the best”? Just because somebody suffers, it doesn’t make them a hero. Nor does it mean they’re going to wind up slaying the dragon. So what, exactly, is the point?

JC: The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.

On Life, Movies and the Holy Grail

I: Wow, we just jumped from Nietzsche to Lao-Tzu. But, seriously, you don’t think life is just one big hero quest, do you?

JC: Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.

I: Sounds like a Sartre play, but it’s nice to find that even you get annoyed by existence sometimes. Maybe that’s why you’re always mythologizing, trying to put down a layer of meaning over chaos. Okay, one last question. If life is a hero quest, then what’s the Holy Grail? And please don’t say it is literally the Holy Grail.

JC: The key to the Grail is compassion, ‘suffering with,’ feeling another’s sorrow as if it were your own. The one who finds the dynamo of compassion is the one who’s found the Grail.

I: Let’s end on that note. You, sir, remain an inspiration to millions. Thanks for being with us, if only in spirit.

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