February 21, 2019 (bigthink.com)
There is no “I” in ideology
At least not the authentic kind.
The philosopher Alan Watts framed the confusion of modern society this way: ‘We’re all alone together, whistling in the dark.’ How do we make sense of the world without a guiding myth like religion?
According to Watts and the renowned Joseph Campbell – who popularized the idea of the hero’s journey – ideology is a poor guide because it’s not your story. “Like the hunter of old who has nobody around him to tell him how to feel,” as Watts described in the essay “A Return to the Forest”, we must search for truth on our own.
Campbell expressed a similar idea:
“You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. Where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s path. You are not on your own path. If you follow someone else’s way, you are not going to realize your potential.”
To Watts, personal truth is experiential:
“These are the kinds of experiences that cannot be transmitted, which for their very nature are something one finds out for themselves,” Watts said. “If they could be explained or transmitted they couldn’t be the very thing which they are intended to be. Our discoveries of something authentic, genuine, first hand and part of one’s universe, cannot be codified and be factored into social communication.”
