Limbo, in any case from these interviews with Campbell that I've seen so far and my foggy memory of his work, he seems to go out of his way often to de-mystify the myth and make it something that people can apply to the mundane. Campbell strikes me in the end as more pragmatist than mystical.
He seems to simplify his views where you seem to endeavor to complicate yours. Frankly, you don't seem to have knack of breaking it down into re-enforceable claims that you yourself can articulately finding common ground here. If you can't find it, what is accomplished by only challenging and antagonizing people here? A few sentences and then off again! That isn't teaching or presenting an argument. That's not how Campbell communicates. He doesn't go into a discussion saying, "Don't bother me with things you don't understand from my point of view. Read this book!" That's not a good way to get a point across, not in the short run. And if you don't engage people in the short run there is no long run. Otherwise in the long run they might consider the harder work.
And Campbell believes some things which, no matter what he presents, it doesn't back up his claims. For instance, he states a sort of belief that there is a consciousness everywhere. But we do not have any way of demonstrating that at this time. Furthermore, as far as can be demonstrated, exactly the opposite is true. There is no mystical 'force' that gives rocks feeling and directs nature. There are chemical processes that over quintillions and quintillions of replications and adaptions create life and consciousness. And through energy they are autonomous. As fascinating as Campbell's knowledge of myth, its history and how it relates to the modern world he makes some claims with the double burden of first needing to disprove what we know about how the world works, and then demonstrating that a second system exists over the top of it. Rather than the quantum waves of probability and the four forces which are known drivers. Nothing else is demonstratively true at this time. Just logically, much less experimentally, it has to be forced onto the closed system of this universe. The mystical needs to be forced on because it is not needed as part of the process which already demonstratively works. Sorry, the force is not seen, even in the blood.
And while there are certainly social, entertaining and inspirational aspects of myth that relates to today, there is also a line which now exists. For the last 400 years the old texts and mythologies, wives tales, and other such things had their place before science proved the nature of the universe. Including lots of superstition, coping mechanisms that got people through their lives in a senseless world. Mechanisms that could be driven to influence or to even become peoples worldviews. In ways that are still used against them in every fashion imaginable. But now exists a microscope that can be used as a baseline of truth to see where the obvious bluff and bluster is and where there are untruths of mistakes from former misunderstanding. And what else is left over is what can't honestly be defined yet.
And by the way, the microscope doesn't work on personal experience. There is no known way to tell if the experience is true, obsessive or psychotic, or lies for gain from outside a person. Read
Thomas Paine on revelation in 'The Age of Reason'. Perhaps science will do better determining instances of the last three eventually in a bit of time. That would help. And how can the individual tell for certain if it isn't obsession or the more common instance of confirmation bias which allows them to believe? It's our world view, we resist hard when it's wrong and needs repair. And both obsession and personal bias include lying to ones self as well. (Though of course, wise ones like you and I would never fall prey to that again, will we?)
