2006-12-23 - 3:19 p.m.

Hero of a Thousand Faces

Joseph Campbell wrote a rather remarkable book called Hero of a Thousand Faces. In short, it advances the idea that we are hardwired the world over, species-wide, to create myths and heros and moreover to give them structurally-identical adventures regardless of their names or the specifics of their situations. It would be fascinating enough on its own if he didn't spend time delving into the philosophy of heroism and their utility to civilization and the individual both.

"...every failure to cope with a life situation must be laid, in the end, to a restriction of consciousness. Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late. The whole sense of the ubiquitous myth of the hero's passage is that it shall serve as a general pattern for men and women, wherever they may stand along the scale. Therefore it is formulated in the broadest possible terms. The individual has only to discover his own position with reference to this general human formula, and let it assist him past his restricting walls. Who and where are his ogres? Those are the reflections of the unsolved enigmas of his own humanity. What are his ideals? Those are the symptoms of his grasp of life."

After years of contemplating the things that ought to be held as admirable, the value of hard-won growth, the necessity of personal rebirth to avoid the death of stagnation, and the desperately endless path of personal growth and renewal, I could not have imagined how validating and how helpful it would be to discover that I was not alone in having had these thoughts. More, that someone else had carried them much further and had brought up critical and necessary implications of those thoughts. Joseph Campbell died in 1987, but I am not alone.

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