Bill Moyers: Worship Celebrities

https://billmoyers.com/content/joseph-campbell-myths-live-part-one/

BILL MOYERS: We seem to worship celebrities today, not heroes.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes, and that’s too bad. A questionnaire was once sent around one of the high schools in Brooklyn which asked, “What would you like to be?” Two thirds of the students responded, “A celebrity.” They had no notion of having to give of themselves in order to achieve something.

BILL MOYERS: Just to be known.

CAMPBELL: Just to be known, to have fame—name and fame. It’s too bad.

BILL MOYERS: But does a society need heroes?

CAMPBELL: Yes, I think so.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

CAMPBELL: Because it has to have constellating images to pull together all these tendencies to separation, to pull them together into some intention.

BILL MOYERS: To follow some path.

CAMPBELL: I think so. The nation has to have an intention somehow to operate as a single power.