The Hero's Journey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A longtime friend of mine posted a piece that touched me recently.  It's a different view of the Hero. In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, or the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.

Earlier figures had proposed similar concepts, including psychoanalyst Otto Rank and amateur anthropologist Lord Raglan.^[1] Eventually, hero myth pattern studies were popularized by Joseph Campbell, who was influenced by Carl Jung's analytical psychology. Campbell used the monomyth to analyze and compare religions. In his famous book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), he describes the narrative pattern as follows:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Possibly because I think of myself as a hero, and because of a recent event in which two colleagues managed to conduct a coup d etat on a project that I founded, funded, and managed for six years, these words reached out like they might not have before.

"People constantly throw around the term 'Hero’s Journey' without having any idea what it really means. Everyone from CEOs to wellness-influencers thinks the Hero’s Journey means facing your fears, slaying a dragon, and gaining 25k followers on Instagram. 

 

But that’s not the real hero’s journey.

 

In the real hero’s journey, the dragon slays YOU. 

 

Much to your surprise, you couldn’t make that marriage work. Much to your surprise, you turned forty with no kids, no house, and no prospects. Much to your surprise, the world didn’t want the gifts you proudly offered it.

 

If you are foolish, this is where you will abort the journey and start another, and another, abusing your heart over and over for the brief illusion of winning. 

 

But if you are wise, you will let yourself be shattered, and return to the village, humbled, but with a newfound sense that you don’t have to identify with the part of you that needs to win, needs to be recognized, needs to know. 

 

This is where your transcendent life begins.

 

So embrace humility in everything. Life isn’t out to get you, nor are your struggles your fault. 

 

Every defeat is just an angel, tugging at your sleeve, telling you that you don’t have to keep banging your head against the wall. 

 

Leave that striver there, trapped in his lonely ambitions. Just walk away, and life in its vastness will embrace you. "   - Paul Weinfield

 

The friend who posted this was closely involved in our days at Armadillo and Space City Video.  So thank you Paula Helene and wow, you would have so loved our most recent Hero with a Thousand Faces adventure to Vegas to see U2 at the Sphere

 

 

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 The Sphere is exactly what it is cracked up to be.

 

It is an entirely new form of entertainment venue.

 

I'm waiting for a politician to get a hold of it.

 

And it can't be the orange menace. 

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We Will Survive

There is a story I tell about change;  how most times things just pretty much stay the same.  But then every now and then, things change in a hurry, in the blink of an eye. It's like a scale where you add just one more little weight and then the scale moves completely.

I had mentioned the corona virus in my January "Midnight in Washington" post:

"Meanwhile, the Coronavirus threatens our social welfare  as cities, ships, and travelers become quarantined and markets react with uncertainty. (clip)

"So where do we go from this dark night?

How do we right our ship? (clip)

"As the Poet says, "There is a crack in everything...that's how the light gets in.

Maybe this Unpresident will overplay his hand, maybe the plague will kill his economy, " (clip)

"Maybe frogs will fall from the sky."

If you don't remember the movie, frogs did fall from the sky. In Magnolia, Tom Cruise, Julianna Moore, Philip Seymore Hoffman, Jason Robards, William H Macy, and Aimee Mann's wonderful It's Not Going to Stop song("Wise Up") are the big stars.

You're sure
There's a cure
And you have finally found it
you think
One drink
will shrink you til your're underground
And living down

But it's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
'Till you wise up.

So the scale has moved at lightening speed. And we all find ourselves in our own Hollywood movie.  The stock market is into bear territory.  Airlines are going broke.  Most restaurants are going broke.  The banks are going to get seriously bent. Real Estate values will suffer. Trillions of Dollars, Euros, and Yen will be created and spent to save our  global economies.

Oh, and the lives.  Oh yes, the lives.  The Dr. lady on the UnPOTUS non-reality TV show who wears the Hermes scarfs just told us that if we are lucky, only 200,000 Americans will die as a result of their deft management.

Meanwhile, the US has surpassed China as the country with the greatest known cases of Covid 19.  Just last week,  the UnPOTUS was talking about restarting the economy on Easter.

Our movie, just like most disaster movies, starts with some national leader not listening to the scientists.  Our leader said just a month ago that the numbers would go to zero by now.  Now he uses the former Hoax Pandemic to supercharge his now afternoon parade of lie seasoned word salad  Orwellian News-speak.

So we have the incompetent malevolent leader, the greedy advisors, the corrupt politicians, the brave first responders,  the stoic doctors, and the legions of nurses and technicians who all seem willing to play their parts.

But where is the hero?  Where is the life saving new drug or vaccination?

Where are the UV bus tunnels that kill the virus?  And to be correct, it can't be killed, it must be destroyed.  This description is going around:

• A virus is not a living organism, but only a molecule of protein (RNA) covered by a protective layer of lipids (fats), that upon being absorbed by ocular, nasal and mouth mucosa cells changes the genetic code of the cells and converts them into aggressor and multiplier cells.

• Since the virus is not a living organism but rather a molecule of protein, it doesn’t die but rather disintegrates on its own. The length of time it takes to disintegrate depends on temperature, humidity and the type of material where it sits.

• The virus is very fragile, the only thing that protects it is a thin external layer of fat. That’s why any soap or detergent is the best remedy because suds break down grease/fats (that’s why you have to suds up for 20 seconds or more in order to make a lot of suds). Once the layer of fat is dissolved, the molecule of protein falls apart and disintegrates on its own.

But what else works?

• Alcohol or any mixture of alcohol at more than 65% will dissolve any grease/fats, especially the outer fat layer of the virus.

• Any mixture of 1 part clorox and 5 parts water dissolve directly the protein, which kills it from the inside.

• Oxidized water can be used besides soap, alcohol, and clorox because peroxide dissolves the protein of the virus, but you have to use it alone and it damages the skin.

• ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT on any object where it can land will disintegrate the protein of the virus. For example, it is perfect to disinfect and be able to reuse a mask. UV is damaging to human eyes and skin. (see comment below)

We need new vaccines and we need medicines that work. But we also need to destroy the virus.  That is what the Chinese have done and are doing.

Our public spaces, our homes, and  our work places must be free of this feral RNA.

For our hero may not be a physician, it may be a physicist.

In our movie, we will survive.

But that malevolent leader must go.

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Let's Stop Talking About Saving The Planet

If we want to save the planet we need to stop calling it that. We live in a thin strip of breathable air less than three miles in thickness. Our deepest ocean is only seven miles deep and our deepest freshwater only a mile. The width of our living space on this planet is about as thick as 10 minutes of highway.

We see what we hear.

When we hear "planet" or "Earth" we picture our large, friendly and rugged rock orbiting the sun.

How could we possibly hurt something so big?

When we hear the word environment or biosphere, we hear technical terms that some of us understand and many of us don't. People can understand the idea of "the life space." People can see that the thin strips of air and water painted onto this rock might be affected by what we dump into them, if we stop calling those places "the planet." The planet is going to continue orbiting the sun just fine.

It's the life space we need to worry about.

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