“Thought of the Week” for June 15, 1998
Our worldview gives meaning and direction
…For most of us, a world view is a lived truth, something we just take for granted and seldom try to describe. Indeed, there is normally motivation to do so only if something goes wrong, if in some way our world view is inadequate or is changing. Only then do we become self-conscious about it.
At the most personal level, a world view is a theme running through a life, a thread that draws apparently disparate pieces together and joins them into a coherent whole. Each of us has, or at least strives to acquire, one. We search for the pattern in terms of which the decisions that we make or the actions we carry out make sense. . .
If, at this personal level, one fails to sense some coherent world view, then life itself fragments. We say that such a person has “lost his sense of direction” or “doesn’t know who he is.” The alienation suffered at this level is alienation from the self.
Danah Zohar. (1990). The Quantum Self: Human nature and consciousness defined by the new physics. New York: William Morrow and Co.
Comment:
Our world view gives meaning and coherence to lifeitle
by Reg Harris
Copyright © 1998 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated February 2009. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me.
For those of you interested in the connections between quantum physics and human consciousness, The Quantum Self is a clear and fascinating analysis.
In the quote above, Zohar hits on three important elements of the Hero’s Journey. In paragraph one, she could be describing the Call to adventure. As long as our world views, the framework on which we hang experiences to give them coherence and meaning, functions, we have no need to question it or our values. However, when something goes wrong, when the scope of our world view or values is not large enough to incorporate an experience (that is, the experience does not fit on he framework because we have not created a place for it), we are called to enlarge our world view and re-examine our values. This is the call to the adventure of redefining our self or expanding our understanding to incorporate the new experience.
The second paragraph of the quote could be describing our personal myth. Carol Pearson, in The Hero Within, wrote,
“Our experience quite literally is defined by our assumptions about life. We make stories about the world and to a large degree live out their plots. What our lives are like depends to a great extent on the script we consciously, or more likely, unconsciously, have adopted” (p. xxv).
Sam Keen and Ann Valley-Fox describe the same process in Your Mythic Journey. They write, “A myth creates the plotline that organizes the diverse experiences of a person or a community into a single story” (p. xii-xiii). When Zohar writes, “a world view is a theme running through a life, a thread that draws apparently disparate pieces together and joins them into a coherent whole,” she is, essentially, describing the personal myth.
The personal myth is the framework I spoke of earlier. In a narrative sense, this means that we create a story about our lives and that story, with its underlying plots (many of which are inaccurate), organizes and guides our perceptions of ourselves and our experiences of the world. The personal narrative becomes the organizing structure on which we hang experience to give it coherence and “meaning.”
Our personal myth or world view also gives us a sense of security in that it removes much of the unknown from experience. The danger in this, however, is that the personal myth also makes it difficult for us to grow and expand our understanding because to learn means admitting that our understanding is inadequate. This is both threatening and painful.
As Keen and Valley-Fox write,
“…in the same measure that myth gives us security and identity, it also creates selective blindness, narrowness, and rigidity. . . As long as no radical change is necessary for survival, the status quo remains sacred, the myth and ritual are unquestioned and the patterns of life, like the seasons of the year, repeat themselves. But when crisis comes . . . the mythic mind is at a loss to deal with novelty” (p. xiii).
This idea leads us to the last paragraph quoted above. Zohar writes, “If, at this personal level, one fails to sense some coherent world view, then life itself fragments.” This is the crisis of the Call Refused, and is one of the great themes of literature. The Hamlets, the Willlie Lomans, the Kurtzs that people the great works of literature all face this crisis and all fail to readjust their personal myths to incorporate the new experience and grow from it. The result, as with most cases of refusing the call, is tragedy.
References
Keen, Sam and Ann Valley-Fox. 1989. Your Mythic Journey: Finding Meaning in Your Life through Writing and Storytelling. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc.
Pearson, Carol. (1989). The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By. New York: HarperCollins.
Zohar, Danah. (1990). The Quantum Self: Human nature and consciousness defined by the new physics. New York: William Morrow and Co.
The Hero’s Journey: Our personal myth
“Thought of the Week” for June 15, 1998
Our worldview gives meaning and direction
…For most of us, a world view is a lived truth, something we just take for granted and seldom try to describe. Indeed, there is normally motivation to do so only if something goes wrong, if in some way our world view is inadequate or is changing. Only then do we become self-conscious about it.
At the most personal level, a world view is a theme running through a life, a thread that draws apparently disparate pieces together and joins them into a coherent whole. Each of us has, or at least strives to acquire, one. We search for the pattern in terms of which the decisions that we make or the actions we carry out make sense. . .
If, at this personal level, one fails to sense some coherent world view, then life itself fragments. We say that such a person has “lost his sense of direction” or “doesn’t know who he is.” The alienation suffered at this level is alienation from the self.
Danah Zohar. (1990). The Quantum Self: Human nature and consciousness defined by the new physics. New York: William Morrow and Co.
Comment:
Our world view gives meaning and coherence to lifeitle
by Reg Harris
Copyright © 1998 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated February 2009. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me.
For those of you interested in the connections between quantum physics and human consciousness, The Quantum Self is a clear and fascinating analysis.
In the quote above, Zohar hits on three important elements of the Hero’s Journey. In paragraph one, she could be describing the Call to adventure. As long as our world views, the framework on which we hang experiences to give them coherence and meaning, functions, we have no need to question it or our values. However, when something goes wrong, when the scope of our world view or values is not large enough to incorporate an experience (that is, the experience does not fit on he framework because we have not created a place for it), we are called to enlarge our world view and re-examine our values. This is the call to the adventure of redefining our self or expanding our understanding to incorporate the new experience.
The second paragraph of the quote could be describing our personal myth. Carol Pearson, in The Hero Within, wrote,
“Our experience quite literally is defined by our assumptions about life. We make stories about the world and to a large degree live out their plots. What our lives are like depends to a great extent on the script we consciously, or more likely, unconsciously, have adopted” (p. xxv).
Sam Keen and Ann Valley-Fox describe the same process in Your Mythic Journey. They write, “A myth creates the plotline that organizes the diverse experiences of a person or a community into a single story” (p. xii-xiii). When Zohar writes, “a world view is a theme running through a life, a thread that draws apparently disparate pieces together and joins them into a coherent whole,” she is, essentially, describing the personal myth.
The personal myth is the framework I spoke of earlier. In a narrative sense, this means that we create a story about our lives and that story, with its underlying plots (many of which are inaccurate), organizes and guides our perceptions of ourselves and our experiences of the world. The personal narrative becomes the organizing structure on which we hang experience to give it coherence and “meaning.”
Our personal myth or world view also gives us a sense of security in that it removes much of the unknown from experience. The danger in this, however, is that the personal myth also makes it difficult for us to grow and expand our understanding because to learn means admitting that our understanding is inadequate. This is both threatening and painful.
As Keen and Valley-Fox write,
“…in the same measure that myth gives us security and identity, it also creates selective blindness, narrowness, and rigidity. . . As long as no radical change is necessary for survival, the status quo remains sacred, the myth and ritual are unquestioned and the patterns of life, like the seasons of the year, repeat themselves. But when crisis comes . . . the mythic mind is at a loss to deal with novelty” (p. xiii).
This idea leads us to the last paragraph quoted above. Zohar writes, “If, at this personal level, one fails to sense some coherent world view, then life itself fragments.” This is the crisis of the Call Refused, and is one of the great themes of literature. The Hamlets, the Willlie Lomans, the Kurtzs that people the great works of literature all face this crisis and all fail to readjust their personal myths to incorporate the new experience and grow from it. The result, as with most cases of refusing the call, is tragedy.
References
Keen, Sam and Ann Valley-Fox. 1989. Your Mythic Journey: Finding Meaning in Your Life through Writing and Storytelling. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc.
Pearson, Carol. (1989). The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By. New York: HarperCollins.
Zohar, Danah. (1990). The Quantum Self: Human nature and consciousness defined by the new physics. New York: William Morrow and Co.