Madness Makes Myths — How To Live Beyond Your Needs
Whether or not you have heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, there is fair chance a lot of your life has been focused on successfully meeting these needs. The influential psychologist posited that human needs form a sort of conceptual pyramid. At the base, we seek to meet physical needs that are necessary for survival. When these needs are met, we seek to fulfill social and emotional drives. And when we are satisfied with our personal relationships and our status in the community, we seek to “self-actualize” and become, spiritually and ethically, our best selves. Not everyone succeeds in putting that capstone on the pyramid. Indeed, some do not even perceive the existence of the final “need”, according to Maslow.
Modern studies of happiness suggest that focusing on the social components of Maslow’s needs is the secret to a long and happy life. But let’s allow Joseph Campbell to bluster in, upset the apple cart of conventional wisdom and tell us: to truly live, we must find something for which we would abandon all our Maslowian needs! “But that’s madness,” cries the chorus! Campbell answers: It’s in madness that inspiration lies, in madness that we find the origin of mythic deeds. And conversely, it’s in myth that will find the divine spark of inspiration. Let’s regard that as a possible useful bit of controlled folly…which we’ll explain further in our next article.
“Survival, security, personal relationships, prestige, self-development — in my experience, those are exactly the values that a mythically inspired person doesn’t live for. They have to do with the primary biological mode as understood by human consciousness. Mythology begins where madness starts.” Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss
Campbell Calls On You To Abandon Your Needs
Campbell has explained in his concept of the hero’s journey that there is a story common to all cultures. A hero lives in the ordinary world, hears a call to action, and embarks on a transformational journey. The hero has a comfortable life but chooses to sacrifice everything for adventure. Here we have a metaphor that crosses all cultures, a model for exceptional behavior, a description of the forging of a change agent, a recipe for a profound legacy. As Thomas Kuhn explains in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, careful technicians contribute to advance science within a paradigm. But it’s creative heretics, mad geniuses who defy everyone and risk everything who create the watershed events, the paradigm shifts in our understanding.
Martin Luther King believed in passionate commitment and died a martyr for his righteous cause. He knew the risk he took and he embraced his dangerous mission fearlessly. Because he believed, as he said: “If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.“ With such passion and willingness to sacrifice, great things are possible.
A Shaman Ritual To Show You What’s Really Important
Being a somewhat of an adventurous field scholar in the field of comparative religion, Campbell has a lot of interesting experiences to draw from. He describes an interesting and effective Shamanic ritual to help you recognize what is meaningful to you. Imagine you are asked to think of 7 cherished things in your life (conceptual things, not necessarily physical things) and then imagine selecting 7 small objects to represent them.
Now you proceed down a wooded road to the dark mouth of a cave. A man in a dog mask asks you to surrender one object that is of the least importance to you. Accompanied by various ceremonial flourishes and self-examination, you are asked to surrender 5 more objects one by one, in the order of their importance to you. Left with the one object that represents the thing that is most important to you, you are told you can rise and leave the cave. But at the guarded exit, you must give up the thing that you most cherished. Campbell is enthusiastic: “Watching your earlier bondages go really did change your feeling for the treasures you’d given up. It increased your love for them without the tenacity. I was amazed.” …A Story From Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living.
Explore The Art of the Good Life With Rascal
You may have noticed, Rascal isn’t your ordinary luxury travel magazine. Like other magazines, we explore the good life, but not just at the superficial level of “neat things you can buy” — although that can be fun too. Here, we will delve a little deeper into what makes a happy and truly meaningful life.
We explore the Hero’s Journey further here — and the get into its actionable implications in terms of defining a life project and becoming the active hero of your own story. This pervasive concept also arises in our discussion behavioral economist Tibor Scitovsky’s profound observations on the dichotomy between comfort and pleasure, achieved only through struggle, reinforcing what the Greeks taught us in the Myth of Eros and Psyche. The theme of nuanced and thoughtful examination of the idea of Eudaimonia, the good life, runs through our culture, from ancient Greeks to modern psychologists and economists. From the poet Keats to the psychologist Hillman, we’ll consider diverse musings on the concept of awakening our true soul. Leaving no stone unturned, we’ll yield the philosopher’s podium to famed economist John Maynard Keynes and let him take a crack at showing us the way to a meaningful life.
On a more practical note, we’ll share revelations from the applied social science of happiness studies in its diverse forms. You’ll discover the most popular course in the History of Yale, Psychology and the Good Life and how you can take it for free. Another Ivy, Harvard, provides powerful insight into what helps create a long and happy life — we tell you what they discovered in our coverage of the Harvard Report and touch a little on the famous blue zones too. We’ll also talk about a behavioral economist’s insight into how we can escape the consumer treadmill.
Turning to even more direct routes to a better life, we’ll talk about the scientifically proven benefits of yoga and how meditation can make you more relaxed and more productive too. After all that heavy stuff, we have a little lighter travel fare: five restaurants in Bali worthy of Michellin star consideration, incredible rare watches including one with invisible parts, and five spectacular remote beaches in Asia.
Please join us as we continue on our conceptual journey to the heart of the art of the good life. You can follow our articles here on Medium if you have an account, or simply bookmark our Medium page or follow us on Facebook.
