Excerpt
Page 5 andlt;BRandgt;As an adult of considerable cultural refinement and social polish, Joseph Campbell himself seemed amused by how much he identified with the rustic visionaries and antlered shamans of the "primitive," preliterate world.andnbsp; There was never any doubt that he preferred the little Indian to General Crook.andnbsp; A deeply felt connection with nature and psyche was pitted against collective patterns of thought and behavior; the Paleolithic versus the Neolithic worldviews; the hunters versus the planters, the shamans versus the priests of orthodoxy.andnbsp; These value conflicts would become lifelong elements of his personal mythscape. andlt;BRandgt;andnbsp; Why, he asked, contemplating a culture with such obvious identity problems, should we remain rootless, when voices and visions since time out of mind beckon us to find our place in a timeless human community?andnbsp; Campbell felt that by bringing ancient myths recurrently to the attention of the literate community, he was giving these root metaphors a voice--explaining why they, too, must contribute not only to our world, but to the shaping of our worldview.andnbsp; His vision began, as we have seen, with an ear close to the soil of hisandnbsp; native land, and to the end of his life he was highly conscious, and mostly proud, of being an American.andnbsp; Could we draw some nobility and some human wisdom, he wondered, from our own tragically conquered and subjected native population?