In this four day two hour class we will watch four one hour segments of the Bill Moyers interview of Joseph Campell called The Power of Myth. After each segment we will have a round table salon to discuss the concepts in the film on how they can improve our own lives and our communities. Titles of the segments will include "The Hero's Adventure,", "The Message of the Myth,", "Sacrifice and Bliss,"and "Love and the Goddess".

Campbell Biographical sketch (from Wikipedia):

Joseph Campbell was so fascinated by the notion that all the myths, spiritual systems and organized religions were the same he hoped one day all the earth would unite under one. He voiced concern about global instability and wished to see all humankind unite. Of course this again raises criticism, as who’s to say whose religion, or using Campbellian terminology 'connotation,' would be chosen. But to Campbell this wouldn’t matter as he saw all as of equal, with no preference at least in regard to which one is more 'right' than the other.
Heroes play a crucial role in his comparative study. In 1949 he published The Hero With A Thousand Faces which set out the idea of the monomyth, a shortened version of all the archetypal patterns Campbell recognized. It should note that most myths only contain a few but not all of these while at least two franchise-films, (Star Wars and The Matrix) exemplified all of Campbell’s archetypal patterns in the order he presented. Heroes were important to him because heroes are important for societies and often blend in with the mythology of a society. Campbell recognized societies must have heroes to incarnate the society’s 'values.' Again this seems paradoxical, as he agreed with the relativistic notion that there is no such thing as universal 'values,' but the fact that a society requires accepted 'values' does not make them universal, or objectively true. After long study, autodidacticism and contemplation, he wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces and twenty more books. He taught at Sarah Lawrence College from 1934 to 1972 and then he lectured across the country. He went on interviews on NPR, and then he went on PBS to converse with Bill Moyers. Regardless of criticisms, Joseph Campbell has incontestably had a great influence on contemporary world-view and religious debate. When the conversations between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers aired on PBS, first in 1988, The Power of Myth series changed many lives. To many what Joseph Campbell was saying was either different and interesting, or different and blasphemous. Either way, Joseph Campbell was very original and very influential, perhaps one of the most influential Americans of the late twentieth century.
Seminal Joseph Campbell quote; “Follow your bliss.”
Campbell believed that at the heart of every hero myth was just that message. After the Power of Myth series aired it became a bit of a catch-phrase. Many agree with Campbell’s metaphysical argument that it is a conscious agreement with transcendent forces, but it has been likened by critics as a modern-day “Do what thou wilt,” as Aleister Crowley said, “shall be the only law.”
Joseph Campbell explains his maxim with Bill Moyers;
BILL MOYERS: Do you ever have the sense of... being helped by hidden hands?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time - namely, that 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. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.
Campbell also encourages others to read all the myths of the ages and peoples as he did.
"Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts -- but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message."