Psychology

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

They Believe Differently

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“Do they believe it or not?”

We ask that question of many a grifter, politician, preacher, media personality, and probably more people close to us than we’d like. Is the bullshit and paranoia coming out of their mouths real, or are they basically making it up and lying? We’d like to know so we can be upset with them properly, and in a few cases get the hell away or alert people.

It’s easy to see this as a binary. People believe or they don’t, with some but not significant wiggle room. It’s more or less truth or lying, right? However I’d like to suggest we’re missing a larger scale – maybe some people we deal with (the grifters and conspiracy theorists and the like) believe differently than a simple binary that probably applies to the majority of people.

Some people don’t have beliefs, but a narrative they’re eternally juggling to keep up, often for reasons that are, well, grifty and self-serving. We all have narratives, but these people are the narrative with far less person in there.

. . . I’d better explain.

I’m a fan of the podcast Knowledge Fight, where two sort-of-former comedians analyze infamous conspiracy theorist/grifter/harasser Alex Jones. As the two hosts, Dan and Jordan, are performers they bring a unique understanding to people like Jones. Being a kind of whatever-works bottom feeder who rose to the top, Jones is an excellent case study of people like him.

In one episode, Dan realized that Jones’ various interviews, comments, etc. were not really engaging people. They were self-soothing internal narratives that were externalized, ever seeking to deal with the chaotic mess inside his head. Jones is clearly an insecure person raised on conspiracy theories, eternally in a media bubble since his youth. His “human” interactions were just him constantly stating, validating, and reinforcing the juggling act that was inside his brain – that of a tale where he was the hero.

The comment by Dan stuck with me, and I brought that “is this internal narrative” to listening to Jones and other people of his ilk. Though I’m sure I brought my own biases, many sounded like that. Self-aggrandizing stories, weird insertions of extra data to keep up their mental frameworks, constant pushing for viewpoints to be confirmed. People who constantly sought a kind of self-validation writ as a grander narrative of conspiracy and religion and technology or whatever.

They did not believe anything. They were just trying to keep their story straight, the story where they were always right and good – and made a lot of money and were famous and sold merch. It wasn’t a belief or a lack of belief, it was juggling the tale.

Also I noticed how painful these people seemed inside. There was something to their narratives that were empty, no one was really home, they just had the tales. There was neediness, emptiness, craving, and below that a weird raging anger that didn’t have a point. It was like they were angry for all the bad things they might feel.

(And yes, this recalls a kind of Hungry Ghost).

So no, some people don’t believe or disbelieve. They’re just weaving a story because that’s all they have. They don’t even have the solidity of lying to count on.

-Xenofact