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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FDP Mike" data-source="post: 250838" data-attributes="member: 325">Campbell's not so bad!Well, Campbell did inspire the great modern mythical epic: STAR WARS!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Still, that "serious scholars of religion" treat Campbell as barely worthy of "scholarly" respect has always irked me.  In fact, this is a problem somewhat plaguing academics these days, but that's, like, a whole other thread (and message board?) . . . .True, Campbell wrote some very accessible and perhaps in some respects simplified work on  mythology.  This, I feel, is where "scholars" often fail: an inability actually to reach people on a wide basis and communicate significant, even complicated ideas in such a way that they make sense and have appeal.  All academics/scholars/researchers ultimately suffer from "observational selection": partly, that's human nature; partly, that's simply what's done to establish and prove a thesis.  Campbell is no worse than others in this regard.Campbell, lest we forget, was a thorough scholar in his own right.  His 4-book Creative Mythology series is not all "easy" and "debunkable" stuff.  It's quite dense in places.  If anything, the man was a teacher, and we do have him to thank for Star Wars . . . as well as, for instance, a deeper understanding of Joyce.  The charge against Campbell's "universalism" comes from a post-modern distrust of universals -- a distrust that is no more correct or better and is often sort of entropic.I think, if someone like Campbell can get a message out that makes people think more about the human condition, then he's done something right and good.  What Campbell did give us was a sense of how to connect mythology -- i.e., let's say, stories of the gods (and heroes) and their actions -- to our daily lives, primarily because he saw that we were losing a sense of the role mythology played (to be on topic here?) in the building of society, the reinforcement of societal values, the perpetuation of certain ideas and themes.Any "debunking" of Campbell comes from what amounts to a small circle of more "scientifically" minded scholars who are ultimately (to take from Sir Philip Sydney's comments on philosophers) talking just to each other.  This situation is also very much why Carl Jung still today plays second fiddle to the more "scientific" Freud . . . .[Phew!  Had to get that off my chest for some reason.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /> ]As for Agback's original musings, I think that the Scarred Lands setting is somewhat indicative of what happens when gods have "cause[d] the bundle to come apart" -- well, at least, the Titans did so, and the tensions between some of the gods threaten stability.  Yes, look to the Scarred Lands for a setting in which the gods are very present.  Certainly no laziness there!  Then again, perhaps I'm misinterpreting the direction of Agback's thoughts . . . .  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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