Thursday, February 4, 2010

Changing into Old Age


Joseph Campbell's books on myth in culture include The Hero of a Thousand Faces. The Power of Myth is Campbell's explanation of myth as a guide for living, particularly for growing old. One thing that myth encourages to embrace, he says, is change.

In his work Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell describes life as a journey from "the womb to the tomb." On a complete journey, we are born (womb), grow to maturity (phallus/ yonus), and complete the cycle to old age and death (tomb). Same as Carl Jung: a complete person is one who accepts all of the stages, and lets go as each is completed. An unfulfilled life, an unhappy life, is one that avoids changing and going to the next stage. Anyone who tries to stay protected and refuse responsibility, for example, remains in the womb stage of life. They refuse to make the whole journey.

His drift: if we live our lives in the security of the womb, and refuse the responsibilities of fertility or adulthood, or the decline of old age, we aer not fully accepting our life. In refusing to let go of the phallis/ yonus/ sexual prime, we deny old age and death. The message from myth or Jung is: don't be afraid to let go, to change, to explore all the parts of life.
Old age brings a change which is hard to accept: loss. Loss of vitality, mobility, responsiblity, among other things. Clearly downhill. A way to deal with this loss, says Campbell, is to make a sort of pre-emptive strike: change yourself. Change your name. Change where you live. Change your habits. Why make changes?
Because outer change creates inner change. What do Russian child psychologist Lev Vygotsky, Joseph Brownowski [The Ascent of Man], and 2001: Space Odyssey have in common?The idea that concept formation follows physical action. We change how we think by changing our environment. For example, the scene in 2001 where the ape picks up a stick, whacks the giant monolith with it, and realizes hes just used the stick for a guided purpose. Whacking with a stick eventually led to a point where body and mind learned a use for it. Or as Brownowski illustrated it, digging into the earth to make caves to live in eventually gave way to the realization that shaping earth into bricks was an even better idea. Using bricks/ physical changes then change the way we look at the world, after we make those changes. And as Vygotsky observed, children learn by playing: concept is formed by purposeful action. Physical education and play are vital to thinking and changes, at any stage of life.
At any age, purposeful changes leads to new ideas, to forward motion, and to the next stage of life.

The drawing on this post is 10 years old. The model was an interesting person, a veteran of Vietnam, and a great reader. He practiced meditation, and could pose without moving, literally, for hours. He was interesting. Thanks Ron. Youre in our memory, and on our walls.

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