"Make your god transparent to the transcendent, and it doesn't matter what his name is," says Joseph. (Good grief, we're still just in the introduction.) In other words, make your myths emotionally permeable.

Luke Skywalker's an easy example; he's the God (or the Hero, at least) of a science fiction film that's enjoyed even by people who don't enjoy science fiction. Which is to say, it doesn't matter that his name is sci-fi; he's transparent. (Haven't we all identified with some aspect of Luke from time to time? Or Lindsay Weir? There's moments where they're hard to tell apart.)

Of course, you have to wade through the sci-fi before you get to the Luke, or the 80s before you get to Lindsay. But what is all that junk? Adolph Bastian called it "local," in contrast to the "elementary" emotional resonance of the characters and plot. If you shine an x-ray through the local stuff (which, I pointed out, could be a religion, or World of Warcraft, or gays in the Castro) you see something there on the other side that means something. The "magnificence" that K. G. Durkheim talked about; that basic human need to slip ourselves into a bigger-than-us stream.

In olden times -- like, when we lived in caves -- there were shamans who could step over boundaries and see freely through the local stuff. They were crazy. Such is the effect of passing through your local commitments. Young people often tiptoe up to the cusp of that craziness; there's what Joseph calls a "shivering, neurotic sickness." You remember what it was like to be 16. Everywhere you went, it felt like there was a song calling you further.

And then, still in olden times, they'd go through rites and rituals to reconnect themselves to the magnificence of the society, so that they wouldn't go completely off the deep end or run away forever. Ignore the call of the song, says Joseph, citing suicides among shamanism-called indigenous Siberians, and you'll fall to pieces.

Here's a trailer for a movie that's basically about the different ways that people can crack up:

So when you find yourself gripped by that distress, whether a shaman or a teenager, how do you re-center yourself? I'll write about that next.