BILL MOYERS: Do you think you, Joseph Campbell, have to…it has to be physical?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: No, but it can be a peak experience there are other kinds of peak experiences, which I know were superior to those, but those are the ones that when I read Maslow and read of peak experience, I just know that those were peak experiences.
BILL MOYERS: What about James Joyce’s epiphanies?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Now, that’s another thing. This has to do with the esthetic experience. Joyce’s formula for the esthetic experience is that it does not move you to want to possess the object, that he calls pornography; nor does it move you to criticize and reject the object, that he calls didactics, social criticism in art and all that kind of thing. It is the holding the object, and he says you put a frame around it and see it as one thing, and then seeing it as one thing, you become aware of the relationship of part to part, the part to the whole and the whole to each of the parts. This is the essential esthetic factor rhythm, the rhythm, the rhythmic relationships. And when a fortunate rhythm has been struck by the artist, there is a radiance. That’s the epiphany. And that is what would be the Christ coming through, do you understand what I’m saying?
BILL MOYERS: The face of the saint beholding God.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: And it doesn’t matter who it is. I mean, you could take someone who you would think of as being a monster, that is an ethical judgment on the life, and this is transcendent of ethics, no didactics.
BILL MOYERS: But see, that’s where I would disagree with you, because it seems to me in order to experience the epiphany, that which you behold but do not want to possess must be beautiful in some way. A moment ago, when you talked about your peak experience, running, you said it was beautiful. Beautiful is an esthetic word.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yeah, that’s right.
BILL MOYERS: “it seems to me in order to experience the epiphany, that which you behold but do not want to possess must be beautiful in some way. A moment ago, when you talked about your peak experience, running, you said it was beautiful. Beautiful is an esthetic word.”
That’s a lot of what people don’t grasp about Donald J. Trump’s power. Donald J Trump is “transcendent of ethics, no didactics”. People do not wish to have sex with Donald Trump, but they are beholden to him, in their hate of him, in their repulsive disgust of him.
Star Wars Fans were supposed to have studied this aspect of Darth Vader with these Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell interviews filmed at Skywalker Ranch. But nobody can criticize why people can not resist the charm of Donald J Trump. Joseph Campbell was in his final year in 1987, he is spinning in his grave in 2025 at how ignorant Star Wars fans are about these Skywalker Ranch educational films for We The People.
People behold the Adult Depends Diapers of Donald Trump, like David Foster Wallace emphasized in the “Year of the Depends Adult Diapers”. Joseph Campbell age 83: “that which you behold but do not want to possess” - that is Donald Trump. That is what draws Elon Musk and the entire population of mockers who mock and behold the social power of Donald J Trump in April 2025.