Multiplicity in Mythos

On Joseph Campbell Chapter 7

Do you hear the people sing?

Does the world's heart beat within?

Mountains rise, while cities pour.

Sands o’ time sweep courageous past,

Gray haired is here at last.

Drums and horns bind old folks well,

The crowded cowards turned like a mountain rain,

Kings and queens dissolved like misty shore.

The dichotomy of the world was still nascent by the 1950s; the prevailing capitalist hegemony of the West, once seen as the singular engine of progress, was decelerating. The "Sputnik moment" postdated Joseph Campbell’s exploration of the monomyth. The erstwhile Anglo-Saxon hegemony in Western Europe was waning, with the ascendancy of the Soviet Union, the Russian "Foolishness for Christ" (διά Χριστόν σαλότητα), and the monumental sacrifices on the Arctic steppes serving as portentous omens impossible to disregard. The profound Jihad in the Middle East, revealed through the oil crisis and the Afghan resistance, along with the cyberpunk aspirations of technologically advanced Japan, generated more affl…