Culture

Are You A Hero When It’s About You?

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A friend recently introduced me to a YouTube culture analyst Maggie Mae Fish. She did a two part analysis of Joseph Campbell, who really is a sexist and biased person with a very limited view of people. He’s famous for the too-present “Hero’s Journey” map with the usual Call To Action, Ordeal, etc. stuff we’ve seen everywhere from psychology to writing class. It will not surprise you that Maggie effectively points out, with humor, that Campbell’s “heroic pattern” is not universal.

And in fact, I don’t think it’s that heroic. I was never enchanted by Cambell, largely because of when I grew up. It always seemed sort of generic and washed-out to me, a psych major in the 80s, where we had weird Neo-Jungianism, high strangeness, and 60’s leftovers.

First, Campbell’s idea of a generic hero’s journey for all of humanity really doesn’t stand up if you have any awareness of world culture. In my own interest in Taoist culture, many of the Taoist hero stories don’t fit Campbell’s model – the call to “heroism” is often one of withdrawal, really screwing up, midlife crises, or become a point of regret in life. Just because he got George Lucas to pay attention to his ideas doesn’t mean they’re right.

And honestly, the idea that this is some common universal map is annoying. I’m tired of seeing it as a map of how to do fiction, how to do psychology, etc. It ignores a lot of human culture, experience, and models. Plus it doesn’t seem that damn heroic if someone handed you a checklist.

But Maggie Mae Fish’s channel really drove home to me that this model isn’t that heroic.

The “Hero’s journey” is all about the hero and their realization but it doesn’t seem like there’s much heroic being done. It always seems to be about them and their issues and so on, the world or princess or whatever existing only to be saved. The world is a prop to our so-called Hero, and needing the world as your stage doesn’t seem really freaking heroic.

(Just hearing about Campbell’s take on World War II was, well, not heroic.)

We can’t exactly call people heroes when it’s all about them. Perhaps at best they’re protagonists, but are they making the world better? Are they achieving great things greater than themselves? Looking back, Campbell’s model and his take on it seem selfish, so small.

Campbell turns our mythical heroes, clever tricksters to bloody combatants in mythology, into some kind of simplified self-realization therapy. I mean even some jerk of a monster slayer at least left you with less monsters around. Sure you kinda wanted him to move on thanks but he wasn’t waxing philosophic about his daddy issues.

As I seem to note repeatedly in my own meditative and mystical experiences, the map can become shackles. In the case of these heroic maps, maybe it even keeps you from being the hero it promises you can be. Then again, maybe “real heroes” are willing to get off the map and face the real unknown.

–Xenofact

The Ecosystem And Greater Development

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I’ve been reading “McMindfulness,” a book on how a kind of stripped-down Buddhism became a big fad by promoting “mindfulness.” Basically you learn to be aware of stress and decisions, while of course doing crap-all to make the world a less stressful place. It’s a few techniques used as a kind of though-stopping cliche. Also it’s written rather angrily by a Buddhist, and angry Buddhist writing is an experience.

One thing the author notes, repeatedly is that such “Mindfulness” techniques are bereft of things like ethical teachings, the importance of community, etc. The famous “Eightfold Path” which is sort of integral to leading an effective lifestyle for a Buddhist is missing. Its just awareness exercises otherwise, and you’re not that aware without them.

This struck my own experiences in what I call “the ecosystem.” My meditative work, Taoist-derived, is far far more effective, insightful, and useful combined with a “big picture” set of efforts. Ethical and social considerations, reading the Tao Te Ching, use of symbolic systems like the I Ching to interpret states, and so on. Meditation without a larger structure is just different ways to sit there but not “sit there” if you know what I mean.

It dawned on me that having an ecosystem is necessary to spiritual practice and without it you’ll develop little if at all. In fact you might just be self-centered and more withdrawn, being really aware of how you’re not doing anything with your spiritual awareness.

The ecosystem provides a way to support your growth – and often that involves supporting others. To deal with ethical considerations, choices, and operate among people is vital for spiritual development. You often need people for that development anyway, even if some of us really wonder about being hermits now and then. To exist in society and pursue spiritual growth requires a framework.

The ecosystem also primes you for real growth. To ask about moral considerations, one’s role in society, and so on is to prepare you to use those insights. Your spiritual growth is not trapped inside a bubble of self- it helps you become a much larger person.

Finally, the ecosystem is a form of meditation. What does the Eightfold Path really mean to a Buddhist? What do Taoists mean when they say that sounds can “deafen the ear?” To have an ecosystem of ethics and social practices is to ask why they exist and give you more to contemplate.

Meditative practices, mindfulness practices, do not end at just being a bit more aware. That’s the beginning, and to remove the larger ecosystem of ethics, social principles, etc. is to strip down meditative practices to nearly nothing. Certainly enough nothing to be marketed in endless seminars where people are taught to put up with all the crap in the world.

I’m not yet done with this book, but I’m getting why the Buddhist writer is pissed off.

–Xenofact

The World Behind It All

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“Fairy tales are more than moral lessons and time capsules for cultural commentary; they are natural law. The child raised on folklore will quickly learn the rules of crossroads and lakes, mirrors and mushroom rings. They’ll never eat or drink of a strange harvest or insult an old woman or fritter away their name as though there’s no power in it. They’ll never underestimate the youngest son or touch anyone’s hairpin or rosebush or bed without asking, and their steps through the woods will be light and unpresumptuous. Little ones who seek out fairy tales are taught to be shrewd and courteous citizens of the seen world, just in case the unseen one ever bleeds over.”

― S.T. Gibson

This quote is one I see come up again and again in pagan and occult circles I run in and it always strikes a chord in me.

It is a reminder that the world we see is only part of something much larger, much more connected. Forests echo with life in the present and over time, culled by forest fires and rergrowing in a rhythm as sure as breathing. Old homes bear the weight of history, tears and laughter echoing down hallways for as long as it stands. Every person is a tale extending back untold generations.

And all of this rhythm and history and lineages comes together in something so much larger. We’ve all had those moments where we realize how big and live the world is. We feel that pulse behind everything, something we might call supernatural, but it’s actually very natural, but nature is really big and complex and everywhere. We’re just doing our best to understand it.

When you get to things that are traditionally supernatural it’s not hard to understand why people might believe them. In this big world we understand a slice of it really well but there’s that bigness to it all, and maybe it’s really big if you get my drift. As I’ve said in various forms, believing in gods, spirits, etc. may be necessary just to apprehend something much larger.

To deal with this bigness, we really do need things like folklore, myth, and more. These are ways to remind us of connectivity of the world. To know there are things outside of our everyday life, and to walk carefully lest we step disrespectfully.

Folklore and myths might not correspond 1:1 to reality – or even the bigger reality – but they are good reminders of that bigger reality. It’s hard to boil down that bigness into guides and the like, but tales and correspondence tables and legends are a good try. At least you keep thinking, at least you take some caution when you tread in the world.

People who aren’t mystically or occult-inclined, even the most materialist, still have their folklore and myths. The sports fan who has their rituals so their team wins. The people who talk to their beloved cars. The cup of coffee you have to have in the morning in just the right cup to get going. Everyone has their folklore and sense of the bigness of the world.

We need folklore to see the bigger world. We might as well admit it – and who knows what we can find when we do?

-Xenofact