This was meant to be a more personal piece than most here at Journey to the Sea. Reading Campbell’s writings on bliss and the hero journey’s in part inspired me to get this site off the ground: the “journey” in the name makes reference to that. So I didn’t attempt to expound Campbell’s position in too much depth. But your question is a fair one. Motivational statements like “be all that you can be” and “strive to reach your full potential” do sound good, but you are right that they are also nebulous, vague, and hard to pin down. But I wouldn’t say that we should just dismiss such talk because we can’t precisely define it.

I think many people long for meaning and value, to feel like they are living for something bigger or more important than just themselves, to know they are not wasting what precious little life they have in insignificant ways. I think everyone has to find their own ways to deal with these longings. Campbell thought that by following your bliss you could reach a state in which you knew “the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living”. This is all of course very individual and very subjective, but I wouldn’t say that makes it any less real.

Campbell would probably agree with you that most people (at least most modern Western people) experience life as something dull and monotonous. But he would probably respond that these people would not be fulfilling their potential and that very few people do. He talked about following your bliss in terms of the hero’s journey pattern: you have to leave your everyday dull and monotonous world to go on some adventure and achieve some boon. Most people do not ever have such an adventure, but the few that do experience life on a whole new plane.

I doubt Tolkien and Campbell would have agreed on much, but I can definitely see some similarities between Tolkien’s escape and Campbell’s journey. I think for Tolkien reading myth brings about a transformation by itself; I think he would say that everyone should read myth. I’m not entirely sure Campbell would say the same thing. It seems that myth was Campbell’s bliss and that studying myth led him to his ideas that we should all go on our own “hero’s journey” — but I’m really not sure if he would recommend that everyone read myth. If pressed, he might say that you should follow your bliss instead of reading myth if the two were at odds.

I guess I find more sympathy for Tolkien’s view of myth being an escape. Not escapism but myth lifting a person out of the prison of this world for a brief time & showing us something beyond the bare, stark walls of what is called reality. Is Campbell saying something similar? Just curious.

Sorry for taking so long to comment on this but I just got around to reading this article. The Hogshead really takes up too much of my time. :)