Hero with 1,000 Faces
The classic hero seems to teach us the value of humanity, while helping us strive for excellence by understanding the value of the experiences rendered through intuition, emotions, and often feelings that are special to the hero -- often rather than logical reasoning. The paradigm of heroism transcends genre, chronology and has become so common in the human collective consciousness that it is easily recognized and repeated (Campbell).
One very interesting aspect of the human experience is the manner in which certain themes appear again and again over time, in literature, religion, mythology, and culture -- regardless of the geographic location, the economic status, and the time period. Perhaps it is the innate human need to explain and explore the known and unknown, but to have disparate cultures in time and location find ways of explaining certain principles in such similar manner leads one to believe that there is perhaps more to myth and ritual than simple repetition of archetypal themes. In a sense, then, to acculturate the future, we must re-craft the past, and the way that seems to happen is in the synergism of myth and ritual as expressed in a variety of forms (Bittarello)
Archetypes
Joseph Campbell, as we have noted, believed that while myth survived all these years to reflect societal organization, contemporary society can benefit by using myth to uncover deeper psychological truths about oneself. Thus, the way ritual and myth define the individual and the group allow humans the nature to reinvent, to critique, and above all -- to grow and learn:
The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that prescience with whom is our whole destiny to be atoned, indeed, must not wait for his community to case off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. "Live," Nietzsche says, "as though the day were here." (Campbell, 2003, 199).
In many stories, there are several archetypes of behavior. It is quite interesting to note that certain themes are repetitive -- they appear again and again over time in literature, art, music, religion and culture irrespective of the time period of the geographical location (Bittarello,...
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