Pottery Shards

Chasing a tangent of a conversation this morning, I dug out my dusty copy of The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell  with Bill Moyers.  I spotted something I'd highlighted years ago. Moyers noted that Campbell saw judges in mythological terms. They wear black robes instead of suits.  Why? 

Campbell believed religion and culture and language transmit myths to us, even though we usually don't realize it. Those bits of myth "line the walls of our interior systems of belief, like shards of broken pottery in an archaeological site." But those broken shards aren't just junk. Campbell believed they could be energized through ritual, as for instance in the rituals of a courtroom.

"For the law to hold authority beyond mere coercion, the power of the judge must be ritualized, mythologized.  So must much of life today...from religion and war to love and death."

Campbell died in 1987.  I wonder what he'd make of things today; the greed, partisanship, and deepening poverty in the U.S. and much of the world. 

Love is ritualized in marriage. But half those marriages end in divorce. 

How about death?  We have rituals, but compared to what's practiced in much of the world they aren't much.  Ours take a few hours and we pay contractors to do most of the work.  Compared to the way our great-grandparents buried their dead, we've pretty much skipped out on the whole thing. 

War?  Well, the US is at war right now.  But most of us don't give a rat's ass. Most of us don't know anyone who has anything to do with that.  Our wars are handled by a small underclass who ultimately get thrown under the bus when they're done fighting. 

Religion?  Our religions have become mostly politics. 

Does the law have any power today beyond coercion?  You tell me, but it doesn't seem like it. Our behavior, especially at the top of the pile, seems limited only by what we think we can get away with. 

I'm just making observations.  I have no prescription in mind.  Maybe there isn't any for a culture amputated from its own roots and left to find meaning or purpose in nothing more than digital networking and credit ratings.  Our ancestors left the trees so we could invent Facebook.  Great...