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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4623304" data-attributes="member: 54707">Joseph Campbell argues against your very point. I've seen and heard him speak against it many, many times.Growing up as an individual, and taking your place as a leader and hero among your people are not diametrically opposed achievements, they are complimentary ends.By growing up as an individual you become suited to take your place as a hero and leader.Growing up is the testing method of becoming heroic and finally understanding that the world is not about how it may serve you, but how you may serve it. Of course you cannot lead until you grow up, you would be unfit if you always remained a self-absorbed child. You've confused method with purpose. By killing the minotaur you save everyone else who would have sacrificed to it in the future had you not intervened. By killing Grendel you save your companions and the Scyldings from the scourge of the murderous beast, and by killing the dragon you save your people from it as well. Arthur takes the sword not to be just the King but to redeem the land. To create Camelot, that is, his kingdom is not just for himself, but to promote justice. He doesn't just ride around on a charger getting drunk and killing monsters cause that's fun. He has a realm to remake.Roland saves the rearguard, not for his own sake. He could have deserted long before. Parsifal saves the Grail King (Amfortas) so that others may prosper, despite the danger to himself and his own inexperience. Prometheus gives fire to man out of concern for man and suffers the consequences. Herakles commits his labors not for glory but to atone for sin. (You have to believe you are capable of doing wrong and owe a penance for that sin to bother with atonement. If you're just out for yourself then you needn't bother. Herakles had no motive of "who is powerful enough to make me atone for my wrong? I'm the biggest badass around. Who will force me?" He withdrew to the wilderness in anguish. He didn't undertake the labors for personal glory. He did it for atonement. Because he believed he had obligations beyond himself. That is to say power does not make you heroic, heroism makes you powerful.) The glory is not the purpose of the endeavor, it is the result. Not the cause, but the consequence. The heroes of myth are not just hack and slash D&D types (though D&D types also don't have to be just hack and slash type mercenaries - that's exactly what I've been saying, that they don't have to be so limited) they are heroes for other reasons. Achieving things for yourself and fulfilling your obligations to others are not contradictory aims. The hero faces the supreme ordeal, gains a reward or loses one (Gilgamesh lost both his quest for immortality and his best friend), becomes transformed and returns to improve his society or culture. The mature man understands the symbiotic relationship between what the individual should achieve for benefit of himself, and what he must achieve for the benefit of others.I studied under Joseph Campbell. Attended his lectures. The idea that growing up or gaining a kingdom is the purpose of the hero is to totally misunderstand heroism and the myth of the hero. The myth of the hero is not formed by assuming power - rather assuming power and proving yourself merely makes you potentially worthy to become heroic. It does not automatically make you heroic. It is just a stage of development. The anamorphosis of maturing is a process, not an objective. The hero grows up so that he may have a purpose. Growing up though is not his purpose, it's his challenge. And only his first one, though it may also be seminal in some way. Heroes have adventures to test them, to train them, to mature them. To make them worthy. They are not just personal stories. They are stories about individuals who exceeded themselves. Average people have "personal stories." Heroes have myths. You don't read of the myth of Joe the carwasher on 51st street. You read the myth of Gawain of the Table and the Green Knight. To Campbell the hero was an archetype on a universal mission. This is exactly what I mean about the Tomb of Myth. Myth has become over time so enwrapped in a burial shroud of "crazy, awesome stuff," that there is nothing but a shriveled mummy of itself remaining underneath. There has come to be a confusion in the mind of many that equates the corpse of heroism with the spirit of heroism. As Campbell would say, "The mask of God is not the face of God."</blockquote>

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