Shaahayda Rizvi
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#4477
Hello Dr. Noralnd Tellez,
“That was Campbell’s point in my article. For “love and passion” give expression to a fundamental property of life which is better expressed by the twinship of death drive and sexuality. ”
Or as Wilde expressed,
” Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!” (The Ballad of Reading Goal)Hello Dear Stephen,
Thank you for the clarification on the fake Joseph Campbell quote: “Where there is crime, there is life, and where there is life, there is crime.” It’s definitely not something that Joe would say, I feel like an idiot, but glad we have a database now, and a learned community that can correct these mistakes. I think I came across this somewhere in early 2004, on the internet. And, now I can not find it to quote from again!! Ha ha.
Shaheda
Hello Dear Professor Norland Tellez,
I apologize for the delay in my response, it was not because of my lack of enthusiasm in the topic, on the contrary, your introduction of Renee Girard and his thesis on “Scapegoating” has only stirred my interest .
As you wrote that “Jung seems to recognize that ideology has its social usefulness precisely in the institution of the scapegoating system, the system of sacrificial victimization upon which the experience of the archaic sacred rests. Both Freud and Girard point to the archetypal situation of the “primal murder” upon which human civilization is based.”
I listened attentively to the videos and his chats with Kennedy and Prof from the University of Montreal. Yes, Girard says something identical to what Jung said, that is, ‘culture begins when people unite against a single victim…. all against one” In this case my example of Oscar Wilde is indeed more than apt. Oscar Wilde was scapegoated for the cultural changes within the society.
In his poem, “The Ballad of Reading Goal”, Wilde expresses the same thoughts as Girard, viz., that ‘ culture begins when people unite against a single victim..’:
And never a human voice comes near
To speak a gentle word:
And the eye that watches through the door
Is pitiless and hard:
And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
With soul and body marred.”How every single person that comes in contact with the convict, treats him as all others do.
“They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
And gave him to the flies;
They mocked the swollen purple throat
And the stark and staring eyes:
And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
In which their convict lies.The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
By his dishonored grave:”Let’s just take a minute to think of “Saddam Hussein”. Army Generals and the media all agreed that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Kaddafi’s fate was very similar.
Yes indeed very true, “The sacrifice serves to protect the entire community from its own violence; it prompts the entire community to choose victims outside itself.” Here I am thinking of scapegoating ‘immigrants’ or ‘blacks’ in predominantly white communities. It might not be racism or anti-immigrant hysteria, but this basic human instinct of ‘scapegoating’.
Now, I’ll move onto his other videos and discuss them, as time allows. One thing, though, on his theory of “imitation”, I seem not to see his point, especially on ‘love’.
Thank you again for this amazing piece.
Shaheda
#4472
Hello Dr. Norland Tellez,
This is a spellbinding piece, and your invaluable references are much appreciated. Jung writes, “The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive. ” Question for you:
Could “only that which can destroy itself” include other than love and passion?
What comes to my mind is Joe Campbell’s statement, “Where there is crime, there is life, and where there is life, there is crime.” Hope Joe Campbell really said this, as I do recall reading it somewhere. Could not locate it on the database of Joseph Campbell’s Quotes.
Thank you for another amazing reference that of Rene Girard’s “Death and Sacrificial Slaughter. “I am reading this for the first time, and trying to figure this out. Is he saying that Death Penalty is OK? That it’s a sacrificial ritual? Some rudimentary searches led me to his bio and commentary on his recent works, and that, “….his books and articles have addressed topics in literary criticism, anthropology, and religion. His books, including Violence and the Sacred, The Scapegoat, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, and I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, have presented an ambitious theory that purports to explain why violence is a key element in the formation and maintenance of human culture.” His theory seems to link Joe Campbell’s idea too, that of, “Where there is crime, there is life, and where there is life, there is crime.”
I am eagerly looking forward to your explorations into Campbell’s Primitive Mythology, and connecting this theme to Death and the Sacred.
Thank you again for this awesome illuminating piece.
Shaheda
#4447
Hello Stephen,
Thank you for your reminder emails that brought me back to this profound topic of which I know very little but would love to explore.
As I came across the following lines, ” As Jung himself put it, “The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive.” (CW12:¶93) Hence the tendency shared by each of these primordial impulses to “become terrific, horrifying, and destructive,” as Campbell observed in Inner Reaches (xv).” Like you, my thoughts went right to ” Kirtimukha” while reading Dr. Norland’s essay where he explores the ultimate identity between love and the death drive, and that which can destroy itself is truly alive. And later I looked at the lives of those who loved and suffered for that love in recent times — Oscar Wilde’s name is second to none in searching for that ” paradoxical and irrepressible sexual energy of Love, the self-generating and self-consuming power of life, bubbling up to human consciousness in the metaphysical boiler of the death drive (todestrieb)”.
Shaheda
#4431
Hello Dr. Norland Tollez,
You wrote, “it was Jacques Lacan who settled the theoretical ground of the Freudian vision by clarifying the ultimate identity between Love and the death drive. They are two sides of the same metaphysical coin as the singular force embodying a mortal sense of transcendence.”
The above lines remind me of Oscar Wilde’s love for Alfred Douglas. The kind of love that in Victorian England was not just forbidden but carried grotesque punishment and incalculable injustice – death by any other name.
In a court room trial, where the once revered literary genius said not a word in his defense, chiefly because he was not permitted to speak. Yes, he did say, this: “And I? May I say nothing, my lord? ” With these words, Oscar Wilde’s courtroom trials came to a close.”
“This blind indestructible insistence of the libido is what Freud called ‘death drive,’ and one should bear in mind that ‘death drive’ is, paradoxically, the Freudian name for its very opposite, for the way immortality appears within psychoanalysis.” (62) With this apt description of the passion of the infinite, we come to rest here, in the grip of our creative daimon, where a state of ceaseless productivity provides the ground for a transcendent vision.”
Indeed, driven by his relentless desire to create, Wilde’s soul was not at rest until he found his proper rest in “De Produndis”, his ode to love – his song to the very man because of whom he was sentenced to two years in prison with hard labor for the crime of “gross indecency” with other men.
Inside the prison walls, his writings, took a different turn, from pleasing the English upper classes, he began writing for prison reforms, judicial reforms, and displayed his imaginative and verbal brilliance in the “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”. He now wrote for eternity.
Hello Nandu,
You provide a rich history of nearly many decades of India’s conquests, notably the Brits and the Mughals. The essay reflects your intimate grounding in India’s typologies and periodization. It also corrects the thinking that only the upper class Hindus are to blame when it’s a predominant culture of many groups, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsees? Yes Parsees too, as I recently read, “Tatas inexplicably pulled their sponsorship of Britain’s famous Hay Literary Festival after bankrolling it for five years to the tune of nearly £1 million.”
You wrote,
“The Britishers, then the Congress and now the BJP exploit the divisions within the society, making one group hate the other, based on false narratives. We need to remove these false divisions and make people see reality. In India, the only division is between the privileged and the underprivileged.”
My question is, Is that not the division in most places, that is, the division between the privileged and the underprivileged? And in India, the privileged class mixed in with politicians have almost taken over the free press. Perhaps, a little bit of academic freedom, supported by new legislation and reforms, might help in removing the “false narratives“?
I am reminded of the 2016 incident when Roy’s political writing landed her in trouble in India after student protests broke out in universities across the country following the hanging of a Kashmiri separatist whom Roy had praised. She left Delhi for London — of course, as one who is privileged she could do it. But it also suppressed the voice that expressed the wrongdoings of the Modi government. “Roy describes her nonfiction as “urgent interventions”, but ever since Modi came to power she is mostly drawn to writing fiction.”
Fictional writing too could help dispel the false narratives, but India’s ruling Junta is not taking this bitter pill.
Looking forward to your reply.
Shaheda
#4441
Hello Nandu,
I enjoyed reading your article. Great background. No disagreement with the background. That caste prejudices exist in many other places besides higher caste Hindus (Brahmins) – No disagreement with your conclusion. I accept all three:
1.Accept the fact that Hinduism is not all Brahmin propaganda. It has got all of India in it. What has happened is that the Vedic religion has appropriated and standardised it. We must oppose this standardardisation and decentralise our culture.
2. Caste and patriarchy are not just Savarna things. Each caste oppresses the castes below them. And almost all communities oppress their women. There is no easy, one-stop solution to this – this imbroglio has to be unravelled one knot at a time. Education holds the key.
3. Islamic fundamentalism is as dangerous as Hindu fundamentalism. There should be no compromise (not even political soft-pedalling) when faced with it.
How do you propose to implement these policies, that is, of decentralisation, education and opposing Islamic and Hindu fundamentalism?
I’d argue that Law is the key. As Joe Campbell said, “ …In America we have people from all kinds of backgrounds, all in a cluster, together, and consequently law has become very important in this country. Lawyers and law are what hold us together. There is no ethos.”[1] Similarly in India, there is immense plurality in backgrounds, religions, ethnicity, languages, customs, and traditions. There is no ethos. But the big problem is promulgating the laws and then overseeing the law enforcement in India.
Questions I ask are: 1) What sort of laws? 2) Who should enforce 3) How to enforce 4) Who should oversee the law enforcement.
[1] Campbell, J., & Moyers, B. D. (2005). Joseph Campbell and the power of myth with Bill Moyers. New York, NY: Mystic Fire Video.#4407
Hello Nandu,
I am looking forward to your post. Remember, there might be some delays, if you post via a link. As Stephen mentioned in his message that for security reasons, posts with links are not immediately logged but require manual intervention and approval.
Reply to #4435 and #4436
Hello Stephen and Mars,
Thank you for your response on links that cause delays — that for security reasons it’s handled manually, and even hyperlinks are needing approval. I am all for security then.
Mars, agree with you, “The less distraction by outward links, the better the discussion keeps on the initial track.” As a general rule, I would not run into this problem because my posts might be just a page and a half. The delay occurred only on posts in “Share you work corner”.
Thanks
Shaheda
Joseph Campbell Quote:
Every act has both good and evil results. Every act in life yields pairs of opposites in its results. The best we can do is lean toward the light, toward the harmonious relationships that come from compassion with suffering, from understanding the other person.”
― Joseph Campbell (Power of Myth)From ― Joseph Campbell, The Mythic Dimension – Comparative Mythology
“It is not easy for students to realize that to ask, as they often do, whether God exists and is merciful, just, good, or wrathful, is simply to project anthropomorphic concepts into a sphere to which they do not pertain. As the Upaniṣads declare: ‘There, words do not reach.’ Such queries fall short of the question. And yet—as the student must also understand—although that mystery is regarded in the Orient as transcendent of all thought and naming, it is also to be recognized as the reality of one’s own being and mystery. That which is transcendent is also immanent. And the ultimate function of Oriental myths, philosophies, and social forms, therefore, is to guide the individual to an actual experience of his identity with that; tat tvam asi (‘Thou art that’) is the ultimate word in this connection.
And again, from POM:
“We typically live in a world of duality: good and bad, true and untrue, but mythology shows us that there’s an underlying union between the polarities, a Yin and Yang where there is always some good in bad and vice versa. There is no black and white.
The denial of mythology, and the absence of transcendent religious experiences, is what Campbell thinks has turned young people to drugs.”
Quote:
“A constant image [in myths] is that of the conflict of the eagle and the serpent. The serpent bound to the earth, the eagle in spiritual flight – isn’t that conflict something we all experience? And then, when the two amalgamate, we get a wonderful dragon, a serpent with wings.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of MythExamples of duality and how to deal with the good and bad:
Perhaps, in “Myths to Live By”.. “If a hijacker wants to board your plane, you are not going to say, come right in…”
Hello Kenneth,
So this is from the Power of Myth:
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Whenever one moves out of the transcendent, one comes into a field of opposites. These two pairs of opposites come forth as male and female from the two sides. What has eaten of the tree of the knowledge, not only of good and evil, but of male and female, of right and wrong, of this and that, and light and dark. Everything in the field of time is dual, past and future, dead and alive. All this, being and nonbeing, is, isn’t.
BILL MOYERS: And what’s the significance of them being beside the mask of God, the mask of eternity? What is this sculpture saying to us?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: The mask represents the middle, and the two represent the two opposites, and they always come in pairs. And put your mind in the middle; most of us put our minds on the side of the good against what we think of as evil. It was Heraclitus, I think, who said, “For God all things are good and right and just, but for man some things are right and others are not.” You’re in the field of time when you’re man, and one of the problems of life is to life in the realization of both terms. That is to say, I know the center and I know that good and evil are simply temporal apparitions.
BILL MOYERS: Well, are some myths more or less true than others?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: They’re true in different senses, do you see? Here’s a whole mythology based on the insight that transcends duality. Ours is a mythology that’s based on the insight of duality
