Wednesday, December 21, 2011

All Hail the Invisible Hand!

The Great Metaphor for the collective actions of humanity in the absence of aggression.

That's the though I had when I read this passage of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell (p. 241, hardcover):
In mythology, whenever the Unmoved Mover, the Mighty Living One, holds the center of attention, there is a miraculous spontaneity about the shaping of the universe. The elements condense and move into play of their own accord, or at the Creator's slightest word: the portions of the self-shattering cosmic egg go to their stations without aid.
I like my words better, this is quite a ways into the book - the preceding 240 pages make sense of the weird sounding stuff. The rest of the paragraph is certainly true of people's understandings of each other's thoughts and actions throughout history, but I'm completely down with these first couple sentences.

...And, since I started this during family time, naturally I can't finish it. It's time to attend to the needs of my loved ones.

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