Campbell sync

At 2:28 this morning I received an email, addressed to a group of which I am part, which included this:

In the early 2000s I was very keen on Joseph Campbell, who occupied what was probably a similar cultural space [to Wayne Dyer]; and got most of his books. The basis was mixture of Jung and comparative mythology, with a spiritual basis in Buddhism and Hinduism - and an American self-help spin. 

At 7:07 this evening (as indicated by a timestamped screenshot), I read this in The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst:

One model for the powerful but scattered impact of the Alice books is suggested by Joseph Campbell's influential 1949 work of comparative mythology The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

I dislike The Hero With a Thousand Faces and rarely think of Joseph Campbell; when I do mention him, it's usually by accident because, in a strangely persistent slip of the tongue, I am forever referring to the linguist Joseph Greenberg by that name. The sync made me think of my recent dream "We must maintain a warlike atmosphere in Antarctica" (March 12), the post title being the motto of a dream character called Campbell.

Speaking of a warlike atmosphere in Antarctica, last night I read the long and engaging comment thread on Kristor's Orthosphere post "Anselm & Job," consisting mostly of an argument between /ourguy/ J. M. Smith and more conventional Supergod Christians like Kristor. Smith writes that "Jesus was present to men in the flesh; YHWH and El were what we today call theoretical constructs or representations" -- like, I might add, that blasted thousand-faced hero! -- to which Kristor responds:

When I suggested that, to the 1st Century Judeans and Galileans, YHWH was real, and not just a theoretical construct, I meant that he was not real to them the way that quarks are to us, or that the luminiferous ether once was, but rather that he was real to them in at least the way that to us Antarctica is real, even though almost none of us have ever seen it.

There is also talk of fighting for its own sake, as promoted by dream-Campbell. Smith writes of "mere controversialists who cross swords to keep their mind off of death" and states that "Controversy is the soul of blogging."