Lecture I.4.5 - Personal Myth [New!]

Now what do you have in your life for which you would sacrifice your life…? What is the great thing? What makes you do what you do, what is the call of your life to you? Do you have it? In the old traditions this was given to people and it held whole culture worlds together. Every great civilization has grown out of a mythic base. In our day there is great confusion and we’re thrown back on ourselves. We have to find that thing which in truth works for us this way. —Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell discusses what it means to live with a personal myth and what it means to live without one. In the past, every great culture grew out of a mythic base. Each had a vibrant mythology, expressive rituals, and potent symbols that infused meaning into such experiences as death and loss, pain and sorrow, fear and desire. That is not, unfortunately, the situation today.

Running time: approx. 60 minutes