"The Soul's Code" by James Hillman is full of quoteworthy material
but I am too lazy to type it all up. Here's something that sort
of encapsulates the book's message (minus the notion of the daimon
which you can find in the phlog post "Daimon")
He is referring to the American culture with the first question.
Why is the exceptional suspect? Do we resist it because we fear
inspiration, conceiving it to be an elitist condition of the
private mind, privileging communication with spirits over
community of peers? And what about a culture that imagines
inspiration to be asocial - will it not cling ever more
tenaciously to uninspired mediocrity?
Let us not forget that societies are elevated and rewarded by
those who are inspired: the emergency nurse; the teacher of the
year; the basketball guard who arcs a perfect three-pointer.
The inspired moment does not invalidate the team, but belongs to
the context of the team and to its wider hometown public. To sink
the shot in the final second and thereby save a crucial game is
not merely an isolated heroic act. It reconstitutes the hero
itself within an archetypal context: The hero is the one who
performs inspired deeds for the glory of the city and its gods.
Our civilization's egocentric, competitive notions of inspired
actions make us miss their social service. "Inspiration" means
simply "inbreathing the spirit," not "exaltation of the spirited."
