I want to live heroically. And I write about it. You guys know the drill.
Often, that means people want to talk to me about Joseph Campbell. And every time, I cringe.
Who is Joseph Campbell
Some of you might not know this name (I won’t judge), so I’ll do my best to fill you in. Joseph Campbell was an author who wrote about world myth. He was an avid reader, traveled quite a bit, and knew his topic well. There’s no denying that Campbell digested a lot of myth in his day. Oh yeah, and Hollywood likes him.
Campbell’s writing focuses on finding universal patterns in myths from around the world. If you know much about the study of myth, this should already be setting off alarms for you. He was heavily influenced by Carl Jung, and decided that myths reflect universal archetypes in the human mind. He believed that all myths tell a single story. He called this the “monomyth.”
So What’s the Problem with JC?
I want to point out that I don’t hate Campbell. His personal philosophy was that people should pursue their passions. I’m down with that. It’s good stuff.
But there are a variety of problems with his work on mythology. Most of these aren’t new; they’ve been covered by plenty of scholars. Let’s get them out of the way quickly:
- All myths don’t tell a single story. There are motifs common to some (not all) hero myths, but that doesn’t mean they have the same lesson or meaning behind them. When you decide on a pattern that you’re sure is right it’s easy to ignore stories that don’t fit or reinterpret stories that just kinda-sorta fit. That’s exactly what Campbell did.
- The idea of a monomyth undermines what’s greatest about mythology. Myths carry a tremendous amount of cultural content. The entire worldview of a society, its values and highest aspirations, are encoded in myth. This value-content is unique to each culture’s mythology, and it’s what makes myth magical. Focusing on the things that are the same between all cultures means ignoring the heart of myth.
- When you universalize myth, you don’t. Any attempt to define the universal story of myth will end up defining the author’s own personal bias. In Campbell’s case, he focused primarily on male mythic figures and stories that agreed with his own theosophical views. The monomyth he tells resonates strongly with Western audiences because it was written by a Westerner.
If any of this seems too nitpicky or academic, let me put it this way:
In the 1940s a white American man wrote about the sacred myths of other cultures. He decided he knew what they meant better than those cultures themselves did.
The problem with this should be self-evident.
A Russian female soldier in the Russo-Japanese War.
Being an Actual Hero
Okay, so all those problems I just outlined? None of those are my beef with Joseph Campbell. If I twitched every time a white author said something ethnocentric, I’d need seizure medication to get near a library.
No, my problem with Campbell is simple: I want to be an actual hero.
You know, the kind where you do stuff that saves lives or makes people safer.
Campbell’s work doesn’t lend itself to that. Typically, when someone uses the monomyth to talk about living heroically, it goes something like this:
- Hey, cool, there’s this story cycle that all heroic myths follow!
- What if I took that narrative and applied it to my life?
- Hmm, some events in my life kind of correspond to things in the narrative.
- So if I re-imagine my life as following this monomyth….
- …I’m a hero in my own story!
And that’s great. It’s a way for engineers, bus operators, sales VPs, moms and dads, doctors and teachers, and the guy at the coffee shop with the awesome teeth to feel good about themselves. It might also help them guide their choices, by providing a framework for making strong decisions.
I respect that.
But what it really boils down to is telling a story. And that is unlikely in the extreme to save lives.
Kind of like cosplay.
Literature and Taking Action
Campbell’s approach pretty much guarantees that his work must follow this arc. When Campbell fell in love with Eastern religion, he didn’t set about mastering meditation and chanting practices. When he pursued the question of heroism, he didn’t train his body or confront dangerous challenges. In both cases, he began by reading stories.
Campbell’s approach was primarily literary. And by focusing on a universal myth, he marginalized all the details that root literature in actual experience: cultural customs, religious practices, historic figures, proverbs and mores. He chose to abstract away from a rich body of lore based on human experience and write a new story altogether.
There’s a value to this literary approach. Last month I tweeted asking why people like JC. Many people responded by saying he made mythology interesting. He’s the one who got them into mythology in the first place. He was definitely a popularizer of myth, and that’s pretty awesome.
The problem is that his name has become synonymous with heroism, and he says absolutely nothing meaningful about heroism.
A literary pattern is not heroism. Templating a narrative onto our own lives is not the tool by which heroes are made. An accountant who compares her college days to the “Belly of the Whale” stage of the monomyth is still an accountant. A father of three who views selling his house as the “Road of Trials” stage is still a father of three.
And I don’t want to disparage that. Accountants have saved my ass numerous times (thank you Tracy!). Dads do one of the most important jobs on earth, just like moms do.
But does that make them heroic?
When I think of becoming heroic, I think of the actions that actual heroes took that made them into what they were. These don’t correspond well with the stages of the monomyth that Campbell describes.
In the case of mythical heroes, receiving some kind of lengthy training seems prominent. Having actual skills is nice.
In the case of historic heroes (Che Guevara comes to mind), traveling widely is a recurring theme. Travel shows you a much wider section of the human condition. It gives you a deeper sense of what’s at stake when dads and accountants have no one to stand up for them.
In the monomyth, the literary hero is yanked into adventure by some greater force. In the real world, there is no call to adventure. If you see a chance to do something heroic and you refuse the call, nothing will pull you forward. Being a hero is not a destiny, it’s a choice—the choice to act when no one else will.
This reminded me of Che.
Join the Conversation
What do you think? What does it mean to be heroic, and does Joseph Campbell’s writing help at all? Is it even important to be “heroic” in this day and age? And can it mean the same thing it did in ages past? I love seeing the discussion evolve. Comment and share your thoughts.
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Drew Jacob, Rogue Priest
July 4th, 2011 at 8:44 am
I feel that what pulls me forward is my commitment to my gods/goddesses. I feel a pull each and every day to do the hard thing in my view the heroic thing.
July 5th, 2011 at 10:00 am
That’s awesome Morgana. I feel that call too. I think that’s an excellent point; I meant that society (our fellow man) won’t pull us forward, because people don’t really expect us to be heroic. But I do feel that pull from the gods. Mostly Lugh. Though even he is very hands-off, in my experience.
July 4th, 2011 at 9:22 am
While I agree with the criticisms of Campbell and his reductionist approach to mythology, I think you’ve taken the same reductionist approach to Campbell. Not only can the mythic template be applied to real life and be successful at it, there are times when it should be applied to real life in order to spurn the ‘heroic’ life in the first place.
And I think you’re selling short the call to adventure. Maybe you have a different definition of ‘adventure’—don’t we all?—but that call can be powerful. Likewise, I feel that refusing the chance to do something heroic definitely does something to us: it makes us just a little bit smaller each time. It’s not cataclysmic like the end of the world or stretched out on a cross, but it’s definitely a death of something inside that eventually marginalizes us to the sidelines of life.
July 5th, 2011 at 10:03 am
I agree, refusing the chance for adventures kills a little bit of the human spirit. But many people live their whole lives in that state. The clouds don’t part with a sudden revelation that they should accept the call. There is no Frodo moment. In fiction, either you step up or the world ends; in real life, you can just keep your head down and life will probably go on. To me that’s what makes a hero heroic: they choose to step up voluntarily, when really, they could just be a bystander like everyone else.
July 11th, 2011 at 8:04 pm
The key factor to being a hero is choosing action over inaction. Right on.
You may have addressed the Call to Adventure later in the comments (or perhaps in the post itself), but I think we all regularly have calls. Ignoring is part of life, but it doesn’t end our stories. Our lives don’t fit into a book, but the calls are there, as are all of the other steps. I would say waiting for a “sign from god” type of call clearly can lead to disappointment. It’s the small calls that helps us learn day to day.
July 16th, 2011 at 4:02 pm
A question for you Matt. If we’re not waiting for a “sign from god,” then what kinds of things would you say are “calls to adventure”? Can you give examples of these small calls that happen in real life?
December 26th, 2011 at 2:17 am
I can give an example. This Blog.
December 29th, 2011 at 7:41 am
Ha! That is high praise Michael. Thank you.
August 10th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
That’s spot on, Matt. I think The “literary” hero disappoints us in his grandeur. I believe that some 24-hour periods can involve some small apocalypse and a new creation. The cycle of “unknown,” “disorientation,” “ordeal,” and “new orientation” (gift), is something that we live through often–it’s a matter of awareness fidelity to our lives.
Drew: Calls = waking up when you want go to sleep. Having one less cup of coffee. Taking a road trip. Walking until you don’t want to go home. Revisiting a childhood park. These are just some that jump to mind.
July 4th, 2011 at 9:52 am
Great post, Drew! “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” is sitting on my bookshelf, and I just haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. I am, however, familiar with the ideas of Campbell, so I can comment and talk about this.
I have to admit, I’m sympathetic to the idea that myths are retellings of the same underlying story, with surface details changed. I come at this from a different angle, having not immersed myself in world mythology. My reading of the literature on evolutionary psychology suggests to me that, while cultural differences are not vacuous, all humans share an underlying cognitive architecture. This means that there are only so many ways to process experiences, including religious and spiritual ones, and retell them in myth. People everywhere share a certain subset of motives and certain range of conscious states (being able to extend that range with things like drugs or meditation), and this idea is reflected in the stories they tell and the god(s) they worship. One does need to be careful, of course, in dismissing variations in details. This thesis doesn’t rely on Jungian psychology, of which I am skeptical. But it does suggest that there might be archetypes, templates, patterns to which we keep returning. One also doesn’t need to espouse the idea that there is a single myth, with different flavors. Rather, there might be multiple threads making up the tapestry of global and historical religious myth.
How essential do you find the cultural content of myths? As you don’t seem to like the idea of a unity underlying our collective religious stories, do you think the idiosyncratic rituals surrounding different gods/goddesses are especially useful in cultivating a spiritual path? Would my meditation practice be enhanced by chanting, as many monks did and still do? Would a neopagan be best served by participating in drum circles during the summer solstice? Or, could I develop some sort of all-purpose ritual, picking and choosing from the good parts or world religion and leaving out the distasteful bits. Would something critical be lost? In other words, do you think the spiritual technologies that have crept up around different gods/goddesses are accidents of history, or the only way to effectively invoke those gods/goddesses?
Some of this argument could also spill over into a debate about the perennial philosophy. This is the idea that, while the language used to convey religious experiences differs greatly, the content of religious experience does not (or at least not significantly). So, while Christian and Sunni mystics use radically different words to describe their unity with god, they are feeling something quite similar (and useful). Do you think religious experiences really do differ as much as they seem to when described on paper? Could they differ in individuals? If I use rituals taken from both sunni mysticism and neopaganism, would I experience ecstasy differently in each context?
Thanks again.
July 5th, 2011 at 10:16 am
I agree that we share a cognitive landscape and that there is a limit to the range of human experience. However that doesn’t mean all myths tell the same story.
I believe that cultural content of myth and the cultural practices around spirituality are essential to understanding myth & spirituality. Pulling these things out of their context does a great disservice, not just to the tradition they came from but to anyone seeking to build a strong spirituality.
Creating something eclectic or brand new can work, but only to the extent that new cultural context eventually forms around it.
Regarding “all religions are the same,” I strongly disagree with that, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Check out Mario Beauregard’s work monitoring brain activity of Christian nuns when they experience a state of communion with Christ, the highest spiritual state they seek in their tradition. Cf. with studies on the brain during Buddhist and Hindu meditation. Different brain areas are activated and a different mental state is achieved. Different religions seek radically different things, even though the language and symbols they use are sometimes similar.
Very interesting questions Trent… thank you for that!
July 4th, 2011 at 10:02 am
I totally understand your beef with JC.
I might also take a look at the at the work of GK Chesterton, Otto Rank, CG Jung, Geza. I think Campbell pulled the trigger, while many others did the work. Monomyth was an idea from Finnegan’s Wake, and much of Campbell’s theory is based on his study of Joyce.
I kind of have an issue with Christopher Vogler, who wrote the ‘Writers’ Journey.’ He seemed to “cash in” on the “hero’s journey”; the imitation in Hollywood has red-lined to crazy. It’s imitation, not narrative power.
I will say that Campbell’s work (while fairly arrogant) must have been pretty radical, given his attention to indigenous myth. It’s biased because a white male wrote it, but I think he had some reverence to the narrative power of the smaller cultures.
July 5th, 2011 at 10:20 am
Great points Mark. I agree that it was fairly radical when it came out – I suspect he wouldn’t have gotten so much spotlight otherwise. You’re right, it’s essentially an application of Jung et al. to the realm of world myth. I don’t think Campbell was bigoted (he seemed to truly love the cultures he studied) but I also don’t think he had the training to screen out his own white American point of view when examining world myth. The last 20 years have been really productive for that in the field of ethnic studies, anthropology, etc.; but it was hardly even acknowledged as a problem in Campbell’s time.
July 11th, 2011 at 8:06 pm
Totally agree with Mark on Vogler’s negative impact on the hero’s journey. I don’t think it was deliberate – I think he came at it with genuine humility and reverence. As with anything, once the corporations notice you can make billions with a tool, they’re going to jump on it and rip the heart out of it.
July 4th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
I think Campbell’s association with heroism is more Vogler’s fault. I avoided Campbell for years bc I found Vogler’s book so off-putting as a screenwriter. The heroic journey can’t be boiled down into 12 plot points every action movie needs to have. That’s not heroism: that’s just Hollywood. Using Campbell in that way is stupid and dangerous and I don’t pay any attention to the steps when I write fiction.
Except the Call to Adventure. I think this is necessary for any story and for any life. it can be destiny or it can be a choice. Its just that moment when a door opens and you don’t know what’s on the other side. Sometimes you go in voluntarily. And sometimes you get pushed.
July 5th, 2011 at 10:24 am
I’m so happy we now have at least two screenwriters regularly reading Rogue Priest. Yay writers!
Okay, so I’m curious about this Chase. You say the Call to Adventure is necessary not just for any story but for any life. How do you see the Call to Adventure happening in a real life? What form does it takes? What happens if we refuse it? Is it a one-time opportunity or a recurring opportunity? Is it literally a chance to be heroic or are you using this metaphorically? This seems to be the stage of Campbell’s Journey that people take the most interest in, so I’m very curious to hear what you think.
July 4th, 2011 at 1:43 pm
I totally agree that Campbell abstracts things and doesn’t focus on the concrete reality of the stories — that’s beautifully put. We need to balance our need to find basic mythic components of the human condition, our human instinct to be pattern-observers, with an appreciation for specificity and plurality.
If we owe Campbell anything, I think we owe him the fact that the popularization to the Jungian approach to myth (without the depth psychology baggage, which is often reductivist too) alerted many to the reality of myth’s metaphorical dimension. What’s strange, jarring, and confounding about myth becomes more relevant when you look at it in a symbolic way. That sort of lens was the province of academics for so long, and his popularization of it gave people tools to use it for themselves.
July 5th, 2011 at 10:25 am
Hmm. Well said Arden. That’s an awesome insight.
July 5th, 2011 at 8:55 am
Yep. The way I see it, Campbell created a pattern, not a path. He was fascinated by the pattern he (thought he) saw in myths the world over. And for him, that was enough. I suppose it may have been an experience like contemplating the Harmony of the Spheres. It is certainly spiritual in some sense, genuinely moving for some people, and potentially profound. However, it’s not about becoming a hero. It’s about thinking about heroes.
Side note: I have to agree with Mark D Robertson’s comment above – it may be anachronistic to fault Campbell for ethnocentric and sexist bias. As I understand it, he fell in love with Native American myths first, and dearly loved them – that may have been quite progressive for the time. Also, he devotes quite a lot of energy to female myths and stories, including a separate sub-version of the monomyth in his Masks of God series. Measured by today’s standards he may be at fault, but I’m not sure that would be so if measured by his contemporaries.
July 5th, 2011 at 10:29 am
Re. your side note: I agree :)
I love the way you describe Campbell’s approach. It’s not about becoming a hero, it’s about thinking about heroes. Well said.
July 5th, 2011 at 1:12 pm
What I dislike is when people call a murderer like Che a “hero.” But that’s just me.
July 5th, 2011 at 11:37 pm
I’m a little surprised to see that characterization of him. I went back and reread some of his biography.
During warfare, Che shot enemy soldiers. In his role as a general and an official in Cuba, he also authorized the execution of war criminals and traitors.
The Wikipedia article on Che has this excellent snippet:
Kaif, is there a specific incident you’re talking about, that you could give us more detail on?
July 11th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Are you surprised by the characterization as hero or murderer? They’re both pretty common, I thought.
July 16th, 2011 at 4:05 pm
As murderer. I know lots of people hate Che because he is a Communist. But unlike many other revolutionaries, he’s not accused of any kind of war crimes or purges or genocide or anything else murdery. I was especially surprised because Katherine is the one calling him a murderer, and I happen to know she is very progressive/leftist politically. I was hoping she would give us some explanation on why she feels that way about him.
July 5th, 2011 at 7:56 pm
Heroes?
These days we hear so little of what I was taught defines heroism. Now the word has devolved into little more than a vague euphemism.
Soldiers and civil servants doing their job, assuming the admittedly high level of risk they signed up for and re-assume going to work every day. No, I’m sorry, their bravery is admirable and we should be continually thankful for it, this does not qualify them as heroes.
Worse yet, this watered down definition of “heroism” now embraces the survivor, simple victims and innocent bystander. In my estimation it started with POW’s, themselves tragic victims, some of which (some,) endured to become survivors. Sad, inspiring, admirable in their resolution to make it through unimaginable difficulties… but “heroes”?
Our shmaltzy popular media has so buggered the definition of heroism it’s hard to imagine what the children of today will teach their own.
Heroic blog though bud,
Earrach of Pittsburgh
(Neopagan Druid Priest)
http://thebookofsassafras.blogspot.com
July 5th, 2011 at 10:46 pm
Well, Joe helped save my life. And I’ve heard the call, too ;) It indeed came from the divine like a slap on the face. A really, really big slap. Like the whole universe stepped on me. You should pay attention, because you might get one too- but it’s good to live life like you already have. You’re more on the ball than I was in my youth, and so maybe you don’t have to get slapped.
So, do you think we should stick to writing about our own cultures? Or our own ancestors’ cultures? Because if it’s the latter, we all come from Africa. And I most recently come from a bunch of different places, but you know, I don’t know nearly as much about my Native American roots as I do about Greek mythology, and I haven’t the faintest clue how I could be related to Greek peoples. I guess I’m just not as into American stuff, particularly- I am into a global community, though. And I have been called a “monist” because I believe all is one, and do not see any real issue with the monomyth- I can see that the myths are still different. I think the one and the many are beautiful.
And I mean, even, which state’s culture do I write about when I’ve lived in more than one? California? Iowa? Missouri? South Dakota? Minnesota? Pennsylvania? Some other state? Which myths do I interact with? Hell, I don’t even know the names of the divinities locally worshipped here long ago or the ones worshipped by my own ancestral tribe- I know about the Great Spirit Hunyawat, but I’ve never lived in Oregon, so, should I not write about him? Again, I see the commonality of one community here like Joe saw the commonality in the world’s myths. And I feel like I have a pretty good connection to Jesus, Shiva, and Dionysos, even though I’m a mostly white NativeAmericanGermanIrishScottishAmerican.
Not to knock you down or anything. You have your own opinion like I do about music. But I have a completely different experience than yours, it seems.
July 5th, 2011 at 11:40 pm
Hi KoraKaos, I think our views are closer together than you think. Please know that I never said we should only study our own culture’s myths. Studying the myths of the world is a beautiful, amazing topic. Study the myths of whatever cultures inspire you.
But to say that the people of California, Iowa, Oregon, Africa, and ancient Greece are all telling the exact same story? That’s unlikely.
July 11th, 2011 at 7:39 am
By hitting on Hero with a Thousand Faces (originally titled How to Read a Myth) you’re setting up something of a straw man. That book was relatively early in his career, and, though more accessible, is less important than the multi-volume Masks of God.
It’s more than a bit disingenuous to say that Campbell suggests that many different people are “all telling the exact same story.” Campbell found patterns in the preserved narratives of diverse people. And he also explored how the narratives changed over time. An agrarian people did not tell the same same stories as nomad people as seafaring people as desert people. He’s quite clear on that. But there is an underlying pattern of humanness to all our stories. We eat, we poop, we make babies, we get along with our pack or we don’t, we get restless, we take risks — or we don’t. We tell stories, some of which resonate with more people for longer periods of time. Campbell analyzed those stories.
In Hero, Campbell looked at that one form of literature, the hero story, and found patterns across cultures and across time. Hero isn’t about–never intended to be about–”how to be a hero.” It’s about understanding story. Story is one way of understanding the arc of our own lives, and many people have used Hero that way. That doesn’t make either Hero or those people less than adequate.
You’ve crafted your own vision of an heroic life. From the perspective of someone a few decades further down the road, one who has made unconventional choices (though not as dramatic as some of yours), and who was called “brave” by her own father, I am curious to see where your path takes you, although I won’t be around long enough to see what you’re like at my age. But I can tell you, do what you’re doing while you’re young. It’ll get harder, later.
July 11th, 2011 at 8:16 pm
I came to make the points made in the second and third paragraphs. Campbell wasn’t telling us how to be heroic, nor was he saying every story is the same. He was showing that stories from around the world followed the same patterns. The patterns of our stories reflect the patterns of our lives.
July 16th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
I question the patterns thing. Once you start looking for a pattern, you will find it everywhere you want to see it. Humans are great at that. For instance if I decided that every myth is actually about the balance between Earth, Fire, Water, and Wind I could find passages in any story to support that, even though most cultures never believed in that paradigm. Sure, all humans eat and mate and war, and there are patterns to that, but I’m unconvinced that Campbell’s monomyth accurately sums up those patterns. It seems like he made it up and then read it in where he wants.
July 11th, 2011 at 9:39 pm
Yeah, I don’t think it’s all the same story. Not the EXACT same. Obviously our stories are different. I received a very obvious divine call and you did not because you didn’t need one. I don’t have a miraculous birth, but many heroes do. But I do believe all is one and that we are all meant to be heroes, in the original sense of the word that to be a hero is to be a real man. I believe there is a reason that things follow a similar pattern; the universe has a certain gravity, and we are all one in this one universe.
July 16th, 2011 at 3:45 pm
Hi Phaedra. Great to see you here again!
You write that “In Hero, Campbell looked at that one form of literature, the hero story, and found patterns across cultures and across time. Hero isn’t about–never intended to be about–’how to be a hero.’” That’s exactly right. I agree with you here. What I’ve seen lately are a large number of blogs, books, and self-help types who do present Campbell as a recipe for how to be a hero. I think that’s mistaken for exactly you give here.
July 6th, 2011 at 5:15 am
I don’t want to get into Campbell and folklore and myth because it’s entire field that I know very little about. What you say about ‘arm chair heros’ (my words, not yours!) is interesting: that thinking of ourselves as heros in our own journey is a way to feel good about ourselves, but isn’t actually being a hero that saves lives. I have several thoughts about this.
Firstly, as a woman who has had Disney movies and Christianity guiding my development on what my life as a woman should be like – as cultural phenomena, not necessarily as my personal taste – I am tired of being shown that I need a man to save me. That I’m not enough. That I will be made whole by Man or a male God. I believe we save ourselves and each other. As a woman, I want to be my own hero: I want to save myself. This isn’t me flipping the bird to those who would or could help me in specific struggles, but I need to be able to ask for help when I need or want it, not expect that others will ride to my rescue. So while I may not be winning wars, swooping in to save a child from a roiling river, or jumping out of planes on a grand Adventure with a capital A, being the captain and navigator of my own ship is – as a woman – is me being my own hero.
Secondly, my question to you is: what are your heroic acts? What *does* being a hero look like for you? So far, judging from your posts, your view of heroism doesn’t seem that far off from the ‘arm chair heroics’ of people trying to live their most authentic lives. Well, except for the fact that you can literally live off the land and most of us can’t. How are you saving lives? And is that the only and/or main definition of a hero/saviour for you?
July 6th, 2011 at 4:34 pm
First of all, that is awesome. Whenever a woman can overcome the “I need to wait for a man” schtick I have to stand up and applaud. You rock.
Secondly, I don’t believe I have ever saved a human life. I also don’t believe I am a hero.
My definition of a hero is “someone who takes extraordinary personal risk to help others.” That may mean risking their life to save lives, or it may mean other forms of serious personal risk (risking their career, their health, etc.) to help people in a variety of ways (to fight for democracy, to organize communities, to build infrastructure, to educate people, etc.).
Most people focus on the “helping others” part as heroic, but to me, that’s just being a good citizen. Heroes go a step further by risking their own wellbeing for the sake of others’ wellbeing.
Being a hero is something I aspire to, but as I’ve said many times, it’s not something you can declare yourself to be. The best I can do is live the heroic path and make sure I am as prepared as possible to make the right choice if the time comes.
By the way Niki, this is one of my favorite questions anyone has ever asked. I’d love to hear more about what you think a hero is.
July 7th, 2011 at 4:09 am
I really like your definition of a hero. It means that there are a lot of unsung heroes out there. I think about some of the things that parents have to do for their children.
I’m not sure I could answer what I think a hero is. It’s like that aphorism: I’ll know one when I see one! But I do know that there are qualities that I aspire to, qualities that I think a hero would have, things like integrity, adventurousness, bravery, hope.
I myself am certainly not a hero, though I am ever more my own hero. Not there yet. But seeing how far I’ve come so far I know it’s possible!
July 8th, 2011 at 12:18 pm
I like the way you put that Niki. “I myself am certainly not a hero, though I am ever more my own hero.” That’s awesome.
July 7th, 2011 at 10:57 am
Yes, thank you both, myownashram for articulating the question, and Drew for finally answering it so I grok what we’ve been talking about for the last month.
Now, to commence my own long-ass comment:
“The problem is that his name has become synonymous with heroism, and he says absolutely nothing meaningful about heroism.”
That is absolutely the biggest problem with JC. But what he does, and the reason I still recommend him is that he supplies people with a narrative that gives them power and responsibility.
People are pattern-seeking creatures. They are always looking at the narratives, and typically tend to choose the negative ones over the positive ones. A heroic narrative at least takes them outside of themselves and into the realm of possibility.
I favour the broadest interpretation of the hero’s journey, so I use the monomyth more or less interchangeably with folkloric tropes.
Still, I do think there comes a point when the narrative is no longer useful to you, and at that point, it must be discarded.
So, Drew, does making a point of taking personal risks to help others negate the moral value of what you’re doing? On one hand, it brings to mind Paladins, roaming the land looking for people to save. But on the other it looks like an rationalization for risky behavior. I suppose there’s no harm in being prepared to lay down your lives for others, but I’m a pragmatist, I have to be pretty damn certain I’m not doing things for my own selfish reasons when I choose to intervene.
July 8th, 2011 at 12:29 pm
Ooh, really deep question Shanna.
Here’s my personal take on it. A lot of spiritual quests start out for selfish reasons – and that’s OK. People might have very short-term or self-centered reasons to pursue martial arts, mysticism, yoga, art, or any of the other myriad transformative journeys that we can go on. The same goes for adventure. But the beautiful thing about those journeys is that they are transformative: the seeker changes the longer they practice, and (I believe) begin to value much wider ideals.
In the case of the heroic life itself, I could definitely see people setting out purely because they love adventure or want an excuse for thrill-seeking. But if they do indeed follow the heroic path, along the way they will see the profound effect their actions (and even just their presence) have on other people. “Come for the beer, stay for the show.” Come for the adventure, stay for helping others.
August 23rd, 2012 at 10:44 am
“My definition of a hero is ‘someone who takes extraordinary personal risk to help others.’ That may mean risking their life to save lives, or it may mean other forms of serious personal risk (risking their career, their health, etc.) to help people in a variety of ways…”
Hmmmm….that definition fits caretaking an aging parent. I had to quit a job and risked my health to make sure my mom had the best possible care in the last years of her life. I sometimes resented it, I sometimes felt like a martyr. But I stayed the course, and glad of it.
As much as I covet the outward journeys, the inward journeys are often what defines us. Facing the dark places in our lives, healing wounds that bind us, forgiving those who hurt us, coming out of denial, asking forgiveness, and being authentic can be as heroic, or more so, than an outward journey up a mountain or across two continents on foot.
Carol Pearson’s, The Hero Within, Six Archtypes to Live By, is a nice little primer on charting our course as a hero. “The essential rule…is to honor yourself as well as others, seeing everyone as a hero or potential hero….It is the individual journey, not the map, that is important.”
August 23rd, 2012 at 8:56 pm
I agree about inward journeys, Martha. I think travel is a catalyst for inner change, but by no means the only way of doing it.
In subsequent blog posts, my readers and I further defined what it means to be a hero. Not just taking risk to help others, but doing it with no personal stake in it. For example, the person who helps others only out of a sense of obligation may do great things, but doesn’t rise to the level of hero.
I wonder what you think of that in relation to helping a parent. Does doing your duty make you a hero? Or should every decent person do their duty? This is a sticky question.
August 23rd, 2012 at 11:46 pm
Drew. After I wrote my reply to this post, I realized it was a year old. But thanks for responding.
I’ve thought about whether or not caretaking a parent is a hero’s journey. It depends. Duty can sometimes be heroic, but sometimes it’s martrydom. I often felt more like a martyr than a hero, but friends saw the hero in me. I cared for my mother in one way or another for 19 years. She cared for me as well, trying to make up for the past.
I was 17 months old when mom married a predator three months after my father died. She became PTA president, an upstanding church participant, drank too much, and didn’t protect me from the monster. She was beautiful, charming, generous, and completely exasperating. When she learned about the abuse when I was in my late 20s, her first words to me were, “Why are you trying to hurt me?” Thirty-five years later, seven weeks shy of her 102nd birthday, with her hands on my arm and a light in her eyes, she said, “No mother could have loved her children more. But I didn’t do right by my kids. I have lived with that regret always. But we must forgive ourselves.” I recognized words of closure. She died two days later. A year later I traveled from Washington State to L.A. to bury her ashes next to my dad who had died exactly 65 years earlier. It felt like a hero’s journey to me.
August 24th, 2012 at 12:20 pm
I think that’s beautiful, Martha. I’m glad you were there for her. It can be so hard to love our parents, especially as we age. Thank you for sharing that.
July 7th, 2011 at 8:21 pm
I think I enjoy Joseph Campbell so much *because* he looks at everything through the skew of literature. See, I am a great lover of certain types of tales – myths, fairy tales,folktales, urban legends (which are essentially *modern* folklore). Many of these stories are broken down and studied based on reoccurring motifs (ex, the thief gets his comeuppance, two children in the woods) and Campbell’s style of breaking tales down in this way appealed to me, and put things into a frame work that made it easier for me, personally, to glean information and study and what not.
It helps that my personal philosophy is also fairly Jungian – ultimately, the way I relate to the supernatural is that I perceive everything as being facets of a larger, single whole, which we break down into smaller, more symbolic bits that we can understand – so again, things resonated.
I do agree that what he did was not much of anything that could be used as a practical path of heroism. While many heroes went through a similar thematic life path, living as heroically as they did involves a hell of a lot more than recognizing where in the ‘heroes cycle’ you may or may not be in your life (actually, IMO, comparing your life to that of a heroic cycle seems kind of silly if you aren’t actually a hero or in heroic circumstances, but ymmv)
July 8th, 2011 at 12:39 pm
Hi Wendy, thank you for your comment! What I find interesting is that I also tend to think of the divine as one great whole that we break into smaller bits. (Or that breaks itself into smaller bits so that we can actually interface with it). But, I still find the idea of the monomyth hard to swallow.
The reason is this. Even if gods and myths around the world reflect a single greater divine presence, why would that mean they all present the same essential story? A myth about a boy holding off an army from invading his country; a myth about a young man rescuing a woman from her imprisoner and marrying her; a myth about a girl being forced to marry an underworld deity; and a myth about a band of warriors storming the other world to bring back the fertility of the land. Those are all the same story?
I think that One Giant God Thing can probably come up with more than one lesson to reveal to humankind, using more than one genre of story. Actually, I think that goes hand-in-hand with the idea of the divine breaking down into smaller pieces so that we can understand it. What do you think?
July 11th, 2011 at 8:22 pm
Wendy,
I believe comparing your life to the heroic cycle is a powerful tool for those who need to be convinced that they can be heroic. I teach it because self-labeling is a strong psychological practice. If someone can see themselves as the hero of their own story, then it’s a smaller step to do something heroic when a hero is needed.
July 16th, 2011 at 4:09 pm
I can see the value of that. Good on you Matt.
July 10th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
hero
Pearls from the Sun
Diamonds from the Moon
Gold-dusted silks from
exotic worlds
Valued in danger, adventure
from there to here.
Fine old wood
mellowed with wisdom
tasting of Earth
silently regales with tales
old and pure.
Young Percival took knighthood seriously. To protect and to serve King and country.
The old King sickening, perhaps dying, soul sickness they said.
Crops failed. Floods and droughts, inopportune times. The peasants too sickened,
died, lived in dreadful poverty and despair.
In a dream, the young knight was shown the Grail — shiny jewels upon a golden cup
self-generating elixir of immortality.
On awakening, he took off in the direction of adventure. He left the dying kingdom
to its own devices, in search of a promised land of magical curative power. He was
not thinking of King or country, but of a delicious ecstatic pounding he knew to be
his own heart.
Where do you ride, fair Percival?
Off to find the dreamer’s Grail?
Learn your song and tell your tale.
Become a son of Sky and Earth
and rain
to return with all you gain
some wondrous day.
Break the spell.
Release the kingdom’s pain.
He learned the ways of seers, demons, subtle sorceries and charms. Growing ever
stronger with healthy exercise and happy purpose, he made his way. Trial by
treacherous trial, he ever more closely approaches his prize.
These trials are the key. They test mettle while bestowing grace, confidence,
skill acquisition, glimmerings of wisdom. The prize glitters, shines, glows
brilliantly in the distance to maintain focus, a clear point, fixed star to contemplate
through twisting, turning, misty mythic pathways.
Sometimes the brick is yellow. Some paths are more intuitive, steps in the dark,
brambly forest.
Percival knows what a hero does. A hero perseveres. A hero scales the tower to free
the enchanted maiden, goes where others dare not because fear is a solid companion.
Daring, fighting, sometimes dazed, momentarily forgetting his cause, he perseveres.
He need but think to look to see his Grail shining, calling him forward.
Of course, he reaches the Grail, discovers the codes, incantations, disarms dragons,
ensorcels giants, generally blazes through to capture his dream.
Returning triumphant, he fixes the kingdom, drop-kicks the curse, cures the old King
of his soul malady, takes the throne to wisely guide into times of prosperity.
So the story goes.
(c) June 14, 2008 Laurie Corzett/libramoon
July 10th, 2011 at 8:54 pm
This is wonderful Laurie. Thank you so much for sharing this here! I just checked out your site and you’ve got some very interesting stuff.
I wonder, what inspired you to write this?
August 26th, 2011 at 8:52 am
Im reading “The Hero with a thousand faces”, and enjoying it very much. My interest in Joseph Campbells perspective is purely personal, I have a deep interest and experience with archetypes and mythology and have been trying to live by it, but Ive come to a point in my life when Im reevaluating what I once thought I understood. This book is an interesting perspective to the common themes underlying all myths which Im finding helpful food for thought regarding my own personal interpretation of my own experiences. I am not a hero by any stretch of the imagination, but at one stage I may have had delusions of granduer, or perhaps I dont have what it takes to do what needs to be done, or perhaps I have misunderstood, who knows, but I think the point is I am and I presume we all are simply trying to figure things out, and mythology or Joseph Campbells insights or wherever inspiration is found may hopefully help.
August 26th, 2011 at 2:05 pm
http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1829
The Myth of the Great Ending. Interview with Author Joseph M. Felser, Ph.D. by Willi Paul. Co-Sponsored by CommunityAlchemy.com with openmythsource.com
November 4th, 2011 at 3:50 pm
Bravo! All wonderful points. Once again, you echo my thoughts, good friend. Now this inspires me to write a bit more on this subject, yet I have to sit and give it more thought. Thank you for giving me something to meditate upon today. I truly enjoy reading your blog, even though sometimes I get sentimental. But this is Val you’re talking to! When am I ever not emotional in one way or another? Cheers and blessings to you.
I started a WordPress blog over Samhain, but still getting used to the format here and trying things on. So far, I like it. Expect some writing of my own to come soon!!!
January 25th, 2012 at 3:49 pm
Hi, Drew,
I think this is a fascinating post (as always), and you raise some valid points about Joseph Campbell and his work… I was especially struck by the critique of a singular universal “monomyth,” as well as the limitations of the perspective of a white man in the 1940s.
I wondered if your biggest beef with Joseph Campbell (failure to provide guidance of HOW to be “an actual hero”) is a language problem as opposed to a fundamental operational or philosophical problem.
“Hero” is a word with multiple meanings for multiple audiences, and I can’t help but think that you and Joseph Campbell (1) have completely different definitions of the word and (2) both are absolutely, completely, 100% accurate in your understanding and use of the word.
As you pointed out, Campbell’s work is primarily literary. In the literary and mythical world, “hero” is equal to “protagonist”. The other criticisms of Campbell’s work aside (see my first paragraph), it is entirely possible that Campbell’s hero is very different from the hero you put forth. When you consider that one of Campbell’s foundational theses is to “follow your bliss,” it is apparent that his idea of the heroic journey is an internal, personal struggle to self-actualize. A guide, but not a map. In other words, it is a fight for the soul, and a fight of the soul. Many of the examples have some variation of a wo/man’s intellectual or spiritual self against an emotional or physical enemy. In a metaphorical sense, our rational selves must overcome our impulsive selves in order to self-actualize.
I hate to speak for old, long-ago-passed-away scholars, but I don’t think Campbell envisioned his hero’s journey as a preparation for heroic acting or heroic doing, but instead a process of bringing one’s authentic self into existence, or heroic being. The return or road back are the ways in which authentic, self-actualized selves return to their communities and uplift those communities’ social consciousness.
I may be completely off base, but that is how I understand Joseph Campbell and his work. :-)
May 5th, 2012 at 8:04 am
[...] I’ve been reading Joseph Campbell, an author I usually don’t like, but whose presentation of Eastern myth is quite [...]
June 20th, 2012 at 1:25 am
i am no intellect but, you so don’t understand him.
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October 14th, 2012 at 12:13 am
Campbell taught me that a symbol get you where words do not.
Example:
I saw the statue of Jesus and instead of just seeing this as a historical figure with no metaphorical value this time for some reason Jesus represented a symbol of how much God loves us and boom like going down I wormhole I experienced God’s love. Or metaphorically speaking you could say the holy Spirit descended upon me.
October 14th, 2012 at 7:09 pm
That’s quite fair, Lee. Campbell certainly made many good points in his work and helped introduce mythology to a whole generation (several, actually) of readers.
I don’t think that improves or erases the very serious errors he made in interpreting world myth. But I do give him credit for being a popularizer of a thoughtful approach to myth such as what you just described.
January 17th, 2013 at 5:31 pm
I don’t fundamentally disagree with your critique of Campbell’s work. These are major issues in his work, and ones that perceptive readers always catch (eventually!). But, there are a few points that I’d dispute, or at least modify, in the characterization you’ve given of him.
You’ll have to point out to me where (if at all) Campbell used the term “monomyth”–I’ve heard that term mostly from modern proponents and critics of Campbell, but I don’t recall off the top of my head reading it in his works. (Perhaps I haven’t read the right ones, and there are many of them, but anyway…) While the term and the way we understand it now certainly applies to his work quite well (and was very likely based upon it!), it would be an error to credit him with the term when it is likely that it was engineered as a convenience by his detractors, and thus created specifically in a manner to critique him.
Campbell was physically active throughout his life, and was a champion runner while he was in college. No, he didn’t go out bear-hunting with no weapons, but it isn’t as if he only sat in studies and read all day. Athleticism does count for something–perhaps not the status of heroism, but to those of us who are disabled and can never imagine doing such things, it looks enviable, to say the least.
Further, Campbell never claimed to be anything but a scholar. When people called him a guru or tried to think of him as a spiritual teacher (which many do now), he would outright refuse it and contradict their assertions. He always said “My spiritual practice is I underline passages in books.” He also said that he lived the life of a maverick, but he never said this was the same thing as being a hero. To evaluate him with the criteria of spiritual visionaries or heroes, then, might be doing as much a disservice to him as seeing President Barack Obama as a “failed literature professor and failed Olympic water polo player,” when in fact he never set out to do those things.
On that matter of his self-identification as a maverick: he was not quite old enough to fight in WWI, but he would have been to fight in WWII. He didn’t end up having to serve, probably because of his position as a professor at SLC, but perhaps his drive to make the everyday “heroic” (even if only metaphorically–which it is for the housewife and the accountant and the bus driver) was also an effort on his part to justify his own oddity in terms of what was considered “heroic” in his own day. Heroes, it would have been said, are the “real men” who go off and fight wars, not frou-frou bookish people who are probably Communists (and he did join the Communist party, at least for a period). To do and to think a great deal of what he did involved some serious counter-cultural decisions and identifications, which his culture would have defined as “unheroic,” and which he thus always understood as “being a maverick,” but which people now could potentially see as “heroic” for some value of the term (even if only metaphorical). And, as he said over and over again, myths’ power lies in its metaphorical nature and its applicability to everyday life.
Is there any harm in that, whatever other critiques might be made of him? Is it his fault that people have not understood the metaphorical nature of his statements and his application of heroism to everyone, and instead have thought they were literally heroes?
But, as I said to begin, I do think your critiques of many aspects of his mythic project, and those which a variety of people have tried to carry on after him (which lead to monism and other things that I don’t find very appealing), are entirely valid and correct, and should be read or heard soon after people come into contact with his work, if and when possible.
January 19th, 2013 at 12:32 am
Thanks for a measured reply Aedicula.
I do think there is still a fault in Campbell’s work.
(First off, note: I no longer have any Campbell books to check — not out of spite but because I could only take one book with me when traveling — but I believe he first used “monomyth” in Hero With a Thousand Faces.)
You basically make a case that, first, he was very humble; and secondly, he had personal reasons for presenting heroism as he did.
I would suggest neither of those make his work any more accurate.
I do believe Campbell was very humble (and also, for that matter, wise); I suspect I would have enjoyed spending time with him if I had ever known him. In some ways our journeys are similar.
But, as humble as he may have been, he did present his work on heroism as an authoritative analysis of world hero myth, and it has been taken as definitive — but it was deeply flawed.
I think this is largely a product of his time and culture. 20th century America was very much about cultural imperialism, and syncretizing and explaining different “exotic” beliefs under a united psychological theory. That is exactly what he did, to the detriment of many cultures around the world and two generations of Americans who took him at his word.
His work swells our sense of entitlement and superiority, while diminishing the unique beauty of each of the cultures from which he borrowed; and it lessens any sense of duty the reader may have to go out and experience or understand a culture through its own lens.
January 24th, 2013 at 9:53 pm
I, too, have a common tendency to give precedence to the aspects of Campbell’s work that has and continues to prove to be inspiring and influential. His late work, in particular, is rich in variety and storytelling in his own way. However, I’m more interested in what supplementary books (comparative mythology or otherwise) you would recommend that best address or remedy the errors of Campbell’s weakest moments. You mention cultural imperialism, and I cannot help but think of Edward Said’s work on the subject, a masterpiece in its own right. Still, I’d very much appreciate other books you or anyone else here could suggest that considers myths specifically in contexts both cultural and historical. I would imagine that this would require examining with a magnifying glass every culture from which Campbell derives his material throughout his oeuvre, although perhaps some could be more accurately condensed than others. Now take, for example, JC’s four-volume Masks of God series, particularly the middle volumes focusing on the ‘Occidental’ and the ‘Oriental.’ I would rather have a more nuanced look at the diverse array of cultures from the latter, not to mention African mythology. Perhaps I’m overplaying my hand with this post, but to draw this to a close, I suppose what draws young adults to JC to this day is indeed that very compartmentalization because it’s convenient to have this compact view of world mythology in a dozen or so books. Anyway, thanks for reading.
January 27th, 2013 at 8:52 pm
You are correct James, I would recommend studying one or several cultures’ myths on their own terms. This is a much more authentic way of engaging them – as much through the native worldview of that culture as possible – than fitting them into a unifying modern-era worldview.
I don’t think this has to be a painful project, though. Reading a single book of Greek myths is often enough to jump start a lifetime interest in mythology, and then going on to read some west African myths – or delve deeper into the ancient Greek worldview – can be really rewarding.
Certainly, one book of Greek mythology was enough to spark lifelong interest on myth on my part, and I found reading the myths to be inspiring on a personal level in the same way that many people find Campbell’s work inspiring.
I think it’s a falsehood to think it’s somehow easier or more satisfying to hold a culture at arm’s length with protective Western gloves on. Studying something very different from our own way of life has a strong allure and can be fulfilling.