Life is Not a Hero's Journey

[Music] like many of you i spent a significant amount of time immersed in stories and as much as i've enjoyed and let myself be inspired by the countless stories i've experienced through a variety of mediums there's one thing i've always wondered about if stories like all forms of art are supposed to reflect life either by directly representing it or by forming a more symbolical mirror then why are they so different from reality and by different i don't mean that they take place in imaginary worlds or are filled with fantastical elements i mean that at the

most fundamental level there exists a dissonance between the way stories are structured and the way we experience our own lives perhaps the most famous conceptualization of storytelling is joseph campbell's the hero with a thousand faces in which he uncovers the archetypal structure the so-called monomyth although more commonly referred to as the hero's journey that is fundamental to countless stories across different ages and different cultures the hero's journey articulates the transformative process or simply the adventure that a hero embarks upon which leads them outside of their own ordinary world into a new unknown one where they

encounter specific characters face a crisis and eventually return as a changed person even in this brief summary we can immediately see the dissonance with our own lives whereas the hero's journey is clearly structured our own often feels messy and chaotic whereas the hero encounters events and characters that are purposeful to the larger adventure our own experiences often feel incidental and lacking in tangible meaning and whereas the hero almost always has a transformative arc we ourselves do not walk such defined paths where do these differences come from why do we tell stories so differently from the

way we live them and somewhat inversely what happens when we do approach our own experiences as stories what are the implications of viewing our lives as heroes journeys i've graced the surface of these questions in other videos like the fantasy of ultimate purpose and my video on it's a wonderful life which among other things explores the relation between the hero's journey and modern individualism but a while back i came across a book called adventures don't exist written by two dutch philosophers who perfectly articulate and expand on everything i wanted to say about it unfortunately as

of yet the book has not been translated into other languages but seeing as their main thesis is built on the work of other more widely available philosophers i'll make sure to refer to their references as well so over the course of the next few videos let's begin a new journey let's really dive into the principles of storytelling and their relation to our own identities starting today with the fundamental difference between stories and reality [Music] up get up once there was an ordinary world now in which a hero lived an ordinary life whether this world resembles

our own either past or present come on or if it's a more imaginative place like a distant planet or a fantastical realm doesn't really matter what matters is that to the hero this is ordinary existence after all where else does the extraordinary emerge if not out of the ordinary it is from this place that the hero is called to adventure to a journey into a new world they encounter someone or something that disrupts the course of their ordinary life a mysterious stranger a message a peculiar object a promise hey we were saving that but today

i can't see it for the call to adventure in whatever form it comes implies that our hero is no longer ordinary but special you're a wizard harry i'm a what there's another world waiting for them an evil force to defeat a universe to save it's a goal that seems frightening at first and is often downright refused you've got the wrong hobbit perhaps the hero feels they cannot leave their ordinary world because of various obligations within it i can't get involved i've got work to do perhaps it is because they feel they are not brave or

capable enough to live up to the task luckily a mentor already familiar with the world beyond is ready to help what you know you can't explain but you feel it it is this feeling that has brought you to me and our hero is guided over the threshold into the unknown i'm going on an adventure [Music] as you can see these simple narrative elements can be found in most popular stories the beginning in the ordinary world the call to adventure and the supernatural aid guiding the would-be hero they are the first steps in joseph campbell's hero's

journey if we briefly review the rest of the circle we find that the same goes for the other steps the adaptation to the unfamiliar often marked by a period of training or investigation the first victory and transformation the atonement for the heroes venturing through the world of chaos followed by the moment of ultimate darkness the moment where all hope for a safe return and happy endings seem to be lost the realization that changes the initial goal of the hero and marks the moment of growth and maturation which eventually rescues them from disaster finally there is

the moment of return now a master of two worlds our hero is back in their ordinary world but has found a renewed balance and peace while it is easy to recognize this archetypal structure in grand adventures like star wars the lord of the rings or harry potter where the stakes are high and the heroic victories are triumphantly celebrated it is also present in stories that seem less grand and less adventurous can i buy you a drink no you say no a lot don't you no oh boy take any romantic comedy for example and there's a

good chance you'll find the same foundations of the hero's journey in these stories the call to adventure often comes in the form of a mysterious stranger that propels the hero on a romantic journey here too we see the monomythical circle being played out as the new couple falls in love faces some kind of conflict that breaks them apart for a little bit which will soon be followed by our hero realizing something they should have known all along and making one final effort in the name of love a dash to the airport a grand romantic gesture

you know how it goes the lovers are reunited once again and live happily ever after before we get into the analysis of the hero's journey and how it relates to real life i briefly want to address one more type of story that does seem to break from this traditional structure and that is the tragedy the first season of game of thrones starts out pretty conventually there's a heroic character by the name of ned stark who is presented as a man of honor and principles in an otherwise ruthless and chaotic world the man who passes the

sentence i should swing the sword like any other hero he too goes on a journey beyond the world he knows but whereas the hero's journey ends in a victorious return ned's journey ends in an unexpected tragedy it is this apparent break from traditional storytelling that made the first few seasons of game of thrones so popular whereas in other stories you could be fairly certain that the main hero despite facing a significant conflict wouldn't unceremoniously die halfway along the journey in game of thrones you were never quite sure about the fate that would befall the characters

even here there's a structure at the foundation a sort of inversion of the hero's journey one that goes all the way back to the ancient tragedies in which as conceptualized by aristotle in his poetics we are presented with a heroic character who goes on an adventurous journey but instead of them claiming a victory through transformation they instead find their downfall through a fundamental flaw in their character what makes a tragic hero tragic is that they meet their fate because they are acting with good intentions ned stark's demise was set in motion because he discovered the

secret that put the honorable yet also stubborn principles of his character at odds with his loyalty to the king and more generally with the rules of the game of thrones when you play the game of thrones you win or you die there is no middle ground in another example in breaking bad walter white initially starts cooking meth to pay for his cancer treatments but his fundamental flaw of grandiosity ultimately corrupts his journey and he too meets his tragic fate so while the specific journey of the tragic hero is different from that of the triumphant one

there is still a similar structure at the core except instead of the steps of the hero's journey leading to a victorious return they lead to a tragic downfall what they have in common however is that all these steps in the hero's journey regardless if they lead to a victorious or tragic outcome all serve a singular purpose and this at last brings us to the fundamental difference between stories and reality knowing how most popular stories play out according to similar structural foundations we can begin to understand why they are so fundamentally different from reality for this

one simple yet important element that separates the heroic journeys of let's say luke skywalker harry potter and neo from those of our own and that is that they didn't just happen to go on heroic journeys they were destined to you are the one neo i've spent my entire life looking for you they were never truly ordinary or were already fated to become extraordinary heroes long before that first call to adventure luke skywalker is the son of darth vader and it is this lineage and his subsequent special connection to the force that made his heroic journey

inevitable the same goes for harry potter whose tragic past connected him to the main villain and granted him extraordinary magical potential in the case of neo this heroic destiny is even clearer through a prophecy that explicitly states that he and no one else is the one the oracle prophesied his return and that his coming would hail the destruction of the matrix looking at some other popular stories we see the same recurring trend as a descendant of royal blood simba is born to become king as is aragorn as is t'challa it is your time to be

king clark kent's innate powers destined him to become superman you will give the people of earth an ideal to strive towards just as diana's origins led to her becoming wonder woman it is a form of determinism that is present in most stories it is there in a slightly more complicated version in interstellar in which cooper and his daughter were specifically chosen by greater forces for their parts in the adventure why me and it is present in the terminator films where the main heroes are not drawn into the adventure through random selection but because of a

pre-existing destiny that made them unique compared to anyone else there was one man who taught us to fight your son sarah your unborn son terminator 3 rise of the machines also shows the tragic inversion of this heroic destiny as here the story is driven by a prophecy that promises not a hero but a tragedy one that despite the hero's best efforts is fulfilled at the end our destiny was never to stop judgment day it was merely to survive it another example of this is anakin's transformation into the villain darth vader in the star wars prequels

here we have two different prophecies guiding the course of the story the first being that anakin will bring balance to the force which initially promises a more traditional heroic journey but then we learn of a second darker prophecy as anakin becomes plagued by visions of his wife dying and it is because of these visions that he grows fearful and angry and eventually turns to the dark side in doing so he too ultimately fulfills his tragic prophecy in your anger you killed her but what about all the ordinary heroes the ones who weren't born to kings

and queens who don't have innate special powers or a prophecy connected to their existence what about the underdogs who came from nothing and either ascended to heroism or fell into tragedy by virtue of their own character three two one think about the citizens who built themselves into superheroes or the gangsters who rose up the ranks of a criminal organization only to bring about their own downfall or the ordinary individuals who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time come on to the coast we get together have a few lives well let's

look a little closer to real life and all the biographies of historic people all the musicians who after a long struggle became world famous all the billionaire mavericks who started out in their garages or dorm rooms everyone who achieved or experienced something extraordinary enough that we are now retelling their tales can it be said of all these characters that they were destined to go on hero's journeys that they were never as ordinary as they appeared in a way yes while none of these characters were explicitly destined for a greater purpose it is the very structure

of the hero's journey and by extension the act of retelling it that grants them this purpose anyways all stories are essentially told backwards by their very nature they are told already knowing where it's going to go as such the end is always built into the beginning and as a consequence the beginning and the journey that follows is always made up of selected parts that are directly meaningful to the end it is why everything we see the hero do is filled with promise and purpose and why we rarely see them spend a lot of time doing

uninteresting ordinary everyday things like eating folding laundry or filling out tax forms it is also why the hero never does something awkward that significantly stumbles the journey the soldier never sprains his ankle and has to sit out the big battle nor does the boxer get onset diarrhea just before the climactic fight or do they oh cut my gloves off what's wrong i'm freaking out okay i'm freaking out right now i gotta take a a little nervous nervous hurry up there are plenty of popular films that deliberately subvert some aspects of the hero's journey although these

are mostly smaller moments that serve as unexpected twists or as comic relief superhero landing she gonna do a superhero landing wait for it [Music] there are however some popular films that follow the hero's journey while still providing a more meaningful commentary on it the ending of the lord of the rings for example shows that the hero's return isn't always as easy and triumphant as we might imagine it to be frodo finds his way back to the shire but truly return he does not it's an ending that shows how the trauma experienced along the way isn't

always in service of some greater end sometimes pain is just dead another interesting example is blade runner 2049 in which the main character a replicant comes to believe he is special that he is born with a unique destiny a promise of cosmic purpose that is eventually pulled out from under him as it turns out he wasn't special at all you imagined it was you and that he wasn't going on the hero's journey in the way he thought he did star wars the last jedi tried to do a similar thing as the series new hero rey

was foreshadowed to be of important ancestry but was later revealed to be simply an ordinary individual like everyone else you have no place in the story you come from nothing you're nothing the twist however was undone in the rise of skywalker in which it was revealed that rey was of special heritage after all and therefore that there was some innate destiny within her being that once again made her a classical hero there are of course more examples of mainstream films that play around with the individual elements of the hero's journey or use them for the

purpose of commentary but still it is extremely rare for them to significantly break from the concept as a whole for that you really have to turn to arthouse films which are generally more likely to interrogate and challenge the structures of traditional storytelling but even here we find the same rules that make these stories distinct from reality the famous literary principle of jakkov's gun for example states that every element in a story must be significant that if you present a rifle hanging on the wall it has to go off at some point again the end is

built into the beginning for unlike an actual gun jacob's gun exists within innate destiny and furthermore even the most unconventional films cannot escape having some sort of ordinary principle as after all they are still products that have defined boundaries they exist within their own little universe that begins with an opening shot and ends with the credits and it is within these confines that the story however incomprehensible it may be is still organized with some measure of intent and outside overview however if you dig far enough you will certainly find experimental films that dismiss the idea

of purposeful storytelling altogether and although these films can be really interesting and meaningful for a lot of people it is telling that these structurally chaotic and unheroic films never really break into the mainstream nor do they truly become part of our collective subconscious and besides says ernest hemingway once pointed out even in stories that seem to be made up of insignificant incoherent elements people will still project meaningful patterns on them anyways it seems as if there is a part of us that desires the purposeful structure of adventures that wants stories to be meaningful heroic journeys

that longs for that innate destiny but why now that we've discussed how most popular stories unlike our own lives unfold according to an archetypal structure in which every character trait that we're shown every effort that is made every event that is experienced every victory every defeat every step along the way tends to be imbued with an inherent sense of purpose we can also see what makes them so appealing it's obviously comforting to believe that our lives too are ordered according to meaningful principles that everything we do is significant to a greater purpose and that it

will all work out in the end but stories are ordered from the beginning in a way that we can only do by virtue of hindsight by looking back afterwards and trying to make sense of everything that came prior therefore when we recount our own lives as stories as we so often tend to do we are basically fictionalizing what really was take historical biographies for example here it becomes especially clear that people's lives are never retold as they truly were in fact events are often misrepresented shuffled around or made up altogether to ensure that every part

of the story becomes directly meaningful purposeful to the greater end it is why as many others have pointed out that musical biographies all tend to feel the same even though the real life stories are all unique and are oftentimes barely comparable to each other [Applause] it is also the reason that we can now look at certain historical figures and say that they were indeed born to do what they do that they were made for greatness or that they were doomed for tragedy all this is not to diminish or undermine any real life accomplishments but the

point is that when we retell these stories we fundamentally separate them from reality and because of this we tend to mistakenly create the illusion that whatever goal was achieved whatever outcome got materialized was already in a way destined from the start and that everything along the way was directly meaningful to this end and this of course is not how we experience our own lives we live looking forward without knowing what end if any is built into our actions we connect with a certain goal in mind but we never have the security that the actions we

take towards that goal will actually bring us closer to it even if there is a predetermined meaning to what we do we don't have access to it until we are once again looking backwards still it seems that more than ever we are obsessed with heroic adventures not just the stories in films but also as expectations in our own lives we are increasingly occupied with turning our lives into adventures we want our lives to be exciting and memorable at the very least we want them to be meaningful we want them to have some sense of coherence

and we tend to retell our stories as such as if we are the heroes of our own cosmic adventures in which every experience is framed as significant as a stepping stone to some greater purpose why is storytelling so closely related to our own personal identities how exactly does the hero's journey impact who we are and how we see ourselves and how does it affect our society as a whole [Music] while the heroic adventure is often associated with stories we are increasingly seeing it in our own lives simulation complete with so many ordinary products being framed

as either the gateway 2 or the unmissable item 4 exciting journeys passionate romances and otherwise impactful experiences it seems that we are all called to adventure that we are all invited to fulfill our own hero's journeys would you like to take it for a test drive i just did we see this as well in the way we are presenting ourselves on social media more than ever we now have the freedom to go into the unknown to explore new worlds and to present our experiences as cinematic journeys growingly indistinguishable from the stories we see in films

finally we can all live the exciting lives that those characters do we can all become heroes living lives worth telling about lives that are filled with purpose and meaning right obviously the implications of our growing pursuit for the adventurous life run deeper than this as all developments do there are unintended side effects new risks and other damaging consequences to be taken into account like when does the invitation to a new and exciting thing become an expected norm and when does potential become pressure however before we can properly discuss the role and consequences of the now

ever-present hero's journey in our society we must first understand where it came from so to begin this second episode of our exploration of the principles of storytelling and their relation to our own identities let's briefly review the history of the heroic adventure [Music] it will be worth it an adventure and just the three of us well today everyone experiences the desire for and pressure off heroic adventures this wasn't always the case in fact for a long time the hero's journey was only reserved for a privileged few if we go back all the way to the

real stories of old the adventure was only experienced by selected mythological figures by primal heroes endowed with the cosmic purpose we discussed in episode 1 you're the son of zeus after all often times these heroes were even directly created by the gods themselves half human half god and lived their lives for the sole purpose of heroic pursuits although we now tend to give these heroes more characterization when we retell their stories back then these heroes were far less relatable on a personal level they may have embodied certain virtues like courage and strength but given that

they had an implicit or explicit superhuman nature and a rather narrow heroic destiny in which they almost solely concerned themselves with slaying monsters there was a much clearer separation between their adventures and those of our own it can even be said that a primal hero is specifically destined to exist only in adventurous stories in our ordinary world their presence would be awkward and strange just drink i like it i know it's great right and they probably wouldn't be trusted because of their unrelatable nature we still see the echoes of this separateness in the stories of

gunslingers and other lone wolves who have a place in the world of adventure but not in our own moving on into medieval times and we witness the rise of the chivalric romance the stories about knights like the primal hero the knight 2 ventures into an unknown world to face the dangers that lurk there but unlike the primal hero the knight wasn't faded for these adventures quite the opposite they went on their quests because of their own choice most often driven by the opportunity to display nightly virtues be without fear in the face of your enemies

when they were done they did have an ordinary world to return to however because knighthood was also a privilege for selected individuals there was still a rather distinct separation between these heroes and most of the people enjoying their stories around the 14th century the term adventure became associated with a different type of heroism that today we tend to be more critical of and that is the rise of colonialism and capitalism the heroes in these stories were often traits men sailing around the world to establish new trade routes set up colonies and bring home exotic goods

unlike the primal heroes and knights these adventurers didn't journey into new worlds to battle dragons and other monsters they went there to civilize it to expand their own world into uncharted territories and exploit its resources as such the heroic adventure also became strongly associated with material gain while these adventures were still mostly reserved for the more wealthy individuals the entrepreneurial spirit at the basis of their stories did resonate more widely among the general public and it still does so today as the adventurous tales of the entrepreneur are arguably more popular than ever even though now

the focus has shifted from conquering new worlds to conquering new markets the democratization of the heroic adventure continued in the 16th century with the picaresque genre unlike the exclusivity of the previous adventures in these stories for the first time the hero could be anyone in fact in picaresque stories the hero was typically someone from a lower social class someone who often challenged the rules and institutions of their society welcome to sherwood my lady this was the time for heroic deviants petty criminals and pirates whose behavior while bordering on being criminal was still framed as sympathetic

it was heroic right is it pretend it was epic today these are the stories of the likable outlaws as for example seen in point break the fast and the furious and ocean's eleven there's one final development that brought us to where we are today for while in the pickeresque stories the adventure was technically open to anyone it was still something that you had to embark on the adventure was still driven and reflected by the will and character of the would-be hero around the 18th century this changed with stories that featured adventures but no real adventurers

as we have seen up until this point one of the most influential stories of this movement was that of robinson grouseau who famously stranded and had to survive on a desert island grouseau was unlike any other hero in the sense that he himself wasn't adventurous by nature instead of seeking out danger and excitement he desired comfort and safety and tried to rebuild his ordinary world around him as such the main focus of the adventure wasn't directed outwards but inwards when crusoe's own character it was because of stories like these that the adventure was no longer

an explicit journey but more of an experience one that can happen to anyone at any place and any time the unknown world that the hero ventures into no longer has to be a physical space but can also simply be the hero's own mind and this eventually led the way to psychological stories stories that were centered around the inner journey of the hero that were driven by the hero's own character emotions and motivations by traits we all possess and can all relate to and thus our very being became the source for adventure note that this was

of course a very rough and simplified historical overview one that is based only on western literary history the main point was to showcase the very general trend from adventures as being reserved for unrelatable mythological heroes that we observed from a distance to being directly relatable and open to anyone as this is pretty much where we find ourselves today now that everything we do everything we experience and everything we feel is seen as adventurous as worthy of a story everyone can experience the adventure everyone can go on their own hero's journey what does it really mean

to live life as an adventure as discussed in episode 1 the fundamental difference between stories and reality is that the adventures in stories are always made up of meaningful elements they are always constructed in hindsight by a storyteller who uses this vantage point to give order and significance to disconnected parts until they form a cohesive hole this is often done according to similar structures which can be assigned to the more general format of a transformative heroic journey be it a triumphant or a tragic one or to a more specific genre like the previously discussed types

of adventures as such stories create norms and expected patterns for how certain things play out and with the boundary between stories and real life having largely evaporated over time and the heroic adventure now being a realistic expectation for anyone stories are increasingly informing what our own adventures should be like we shall have such great adventures together of course we don't expect our lives to become adventures in the literal sense that we too will be fighting aliens or becoming pirates oh good no worries but it's the underlying structures those norms and expected patterns that we are

increasingly projecting onto our own lives we see this very simply in the way we talk about ourselves when we tell others our stories we essentially become the authors of our own lives and what makes a better story than an adventurous one but it started raining now lightning it's fun to go to a party but it's not truly epic until it escalates like it does in project x or until it ends with a morning after as it does in the hangover it's nice to meet someone and fall in love but it's not truly romantic until it

becomes depending on what you're into a grand love story like that in the notebook or a quirky one as seen in so many indie films there's a lot to say about the growing feeling of having to one-up each other with ever more exciting tales of adventures which i don't think is just because we want to appear more interesting to our friends but also because nowadays it's becoming so much of a norm applying for a job or university no longer means just having the necessary skills becoming an artist no longer means just being good at your

art you also need a good story you need to stand out from everyone else you are to some extent expected to have experienced adventures this is also where our consumer culture comes in as we are constantly bombarded with the apparently necessary items for new adventures here too it's not really about the explicit message but about the subliminal one i know that if i get the newest gopro my life won't suddenly turn into an extreme sports adventure but i might be able to present it as slightly more adventurous than it is now even though i already

own an older gopro model i still can't help but imagine how much sharper and more colorful and therefore more adventurous i could present my life as with this new one same goes with expensive fragrances i know these won't turn my life into that of the celebrity presenting it but wearing one that slightly raises my appeal and confidence might just give me that extra edge to turn an ordinary knight into an adventurous one it might seem easy to just brush this all off to laugh at the commercials trying to get us to buy products we don't

really need but when you take everything together when every story shows you heroic journeys when every product promises you adventures and when everybody around you is presenting their lives as more exciting than they really are it's hard not to feel like you are falling behind that you are missing out that you are not living up to your potential and this i think is what it ultimately comes down to by forming a break from the ordinary the adventure always promises a potential for more more excitement more romance more personal transformation more fame and fortune more meaning

and purpose even when your life is already pretty good the adventure will still be there as the voice in the back of your mind telling you that you can do better that you can be better that you are meant for more than this i want to do it get you started on this thing of yours on my great i know on your great alaskan adventure i think it's fair to assume that we all have dreams that there are things we want to achieve adventures that we want to go on maybe you want to start a

business and become rich and successful maybe you want to go on a journey of self-discovery and explore exotic places maybe you just want to find someone to love because you don't like being alone there's something that feels so good about sharing your life with somebody when we set out on these adventures we often subconsciously do so while assuming the norms and expected patterns imposed on us by adventures as seen in stories we see entrepreneurs who came from nothing pulling themselves up by their bootstraps to achieve great financial success and believe that if we follow their

lead we can do the same yeah let's do it we see people having amazing journeys in foreign countries and believe that if we just go to the same place our adventure will be equally meaningful and we see romances unfold into beautiful relationships and believe that if we just play the act we are guaranteed to experience the same story to be clear it's not that all these things can't happen it's just that they are not guaranteed to happen as they are in stories your business may fail before even taking off the amazing journey you go on

might be disappointing and not at all like you expected and being a perfect romantic doesn't guarantee a successful romance as the other person might simply not like you back especially when it comes to the bigger goals that so many people dream of becoming the next billionaire a blockbuster filmmaker or a world famous artist they are not even remotely likely to happen and yet because stories show those adventures as so relatable as so accessible for everyone a part of us still clings to that secret little voice telling us of course it doesn't happen for most people

but it might happen for me i'm not like everyone else my story is different i am meant to do this and the thing is it's hard to argue against this because again it's technically not impossible but this is also kind of the point we can't know how our lives will turn out and by believing in all the heroic adventures telling us that we can we simplify and endlessly complex reality that does not unfold according to those structures we create the illusion of cosmic purpose the false belief that there are specific steps that will lead to

a predetermined goal and by assuming these unrealistic expectations by assuming that our lives unfold according to a simple plot to but a handful of variables we are bound to set ourselves up for disappointment just imagine how many people dropped out of college to become the next steve jobs or mark zuckerberg how many people recklessly moved to los angeles to become the next superstar how many people believed that as long as they followed the steps of the hero's journey they would surely make it and for how many did it actually pan out the way they envisioned

it furthermore when we reduce reality to the simplified structures of heroic adventures we also tend to focus only on those elements that are within our control on things like willpower discipline and perseverance once again all important qualities that are hard to argue against but what is especially insidious about this focus on individual agency is that whether or not you will get to live out your hero's journey become solely determined by personal responsibility it reinforces the idea that you are not only expected to have an adventurous life but also that you yourself have to make it

happen every step of the way a burden that only makes you more vulnerable to the belief that you need to buy all those things that might just make the difference between success and failure because following this perspective if you don't succeed if you don't fulfill your hero's journey your destiny it is your fault it is your failure but is this really true at this point you might see the paradox that arises when we project the adventures as seen in stories on our own lives on the one hand we are all called to adventure we are

all driven to become the heroes of our own heroes journeys but on the other hand it is also clear that an actual hero's journey is still exclusive that not everyone gets to have one then there's also the issue that heroic stories aren't just made up of heroes but also have supporting characters villains and extras and so if everyone is expected to claim the main part of the hero who gets to play the other parts okay fine you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain what do all these

contradictions actually say about chasing an adventurous life maybe it is just that everyone can try but not everyone can succeed is that what it means to have democratized the heroic adventure do people have to compete with each other for the privilege of a fulfilled hero's journey and if so does success really just depend on individual determination and willpower are there not countless other social environmental and genetic factors as well but doesn't all this just bring us back to the notion of cosmic purpose that only some people have the right combination of traits that only some

are meant for a heroic destiny and that everyone else has to settle for a supporting role for what is at best a story about gracefully accepting defeat or about learning some lesson in humility maybe the hero's journey is not so democratized after all if we look at the stormtroopers in star wars for example do we say that these characters failed at their own heroic journeys or do we just assume that they were never meant to have one in the first place of course in our society there's no clear distinction between jedis and stormtroopers between main

characters and extras which raises what is perhaps the most important question how do you know if you are meant to be the hero of your story or just the casualty of someone else's here again we do see how the norms and expected patterns created by stories subconsciously inform us into answering this question as you may have noticed the historical overview of heroic adventures is heavily biased to a particular type of hero one that is primarily straight white and male as a consequence women people of color and people of different sexual orientations were often regulated to

supporting roles portrayed as villains or erased altogether to this day straight white men often remain the default main hero even in stories that deal with different cultures are set in foreign countries or are based on non-western fables we can however observe a trend towards better inclusivity and better representation everyone is fighting their own battles diana just as you are fighting yours women for example increasingly get to be the main characters of their heroic adventures but even here we see how our assumptions still color our biases as we continue to discuss how femininity must be portrayed

is it something that must be ignored or does portraying a woman in a traditionally male part only erase her womanhood his femininity then something that has to be incorporated meaningfully into the story and if so why is masculinity always a purposeful part of men's heroic journeys doesn't the whole idea that heroic women demand a reaction of any kind suggests that we still adhere to the underlying idea that this is some kind of subversion of the status quo of what was assumed to be normal so who does she marry despite our best efforts we still at

least for now seem to be bound by the limitations imposed on us limitations that determine who is meant to be a hero and who is not this also becomes problematic on the collective level on which the norms and expected patterns of heroic adventures and the hero's journey as a whole can create the illusion of cosmic purpose based on a common attribute be it an ethnicity a nation a religion or an ideology something that gives a group of people an imagined destiny that not only makes them heroic but also makes everyone else unheroic this at best

leads to stereotypes about those outside of the group but at worst as we've unfortunately seen unfold so many times throughout history it can lead to dehumanization hostility and violence [Music] so what is the answer to all this should we just do away with our heroic adventures are we better off believing that they are not meant for us that they resolve mostly and hurt both to ourselves as well as to others that they are just pipe dreams that only work out for the privileged few a marketing strategy that exploits our dreams and desires for material gain

can we even imagine ourselves without these stories for who are we if not the stories we tell about ourselves the stories that give our lives order and coherence significance and purpose can there be an identity without storytelling [Music] who are we without storytelling that is the last question that needs answering in the previous episodes we discussed how stories are fundamentally different from reality and how despite this difference we increasingly began to project the structures of heroic adventures onto our own lives began to use it as a predictive template as a way to set expectations for

the course of our lives we saw how the original meaning and purpose of the hero's journey became somewhat twisted because of this how it became a pressure for people to compete with each other for ever more exciting adventures how it became a source of serious disillusionment for people whose lives turned out differently than they expected them to who didn't achieve the success they were after who didn't go through the meaningful transformation they wanted or who didn't find the love they so desperately needed we also saw how the hero's journey can be corrupted by groups of

people who use it to forge their own cosmic destiny who feel so entitled to a heroic adventure that they victimize others in the process while in episode 2 i focused on the history of western society this obviously goes for all cultures which have their own history of heroic adventures and therefore their own views and biases that create heroes out of some and victims out of others are you ready to fight are you ready to fight it left me wondering if we are not better off without heroic adventures without those structures that only simplify a complex

reality but is that even a possibility is storytelling not the foundation of who we are is it not a result of the way we naturally experience the world and therefore maybe even rooted into the larger principles of the universe in this final episode let's return to the center of things to our own experience of the world and of ourselves let's explore what can be reconstructed out of the deconstructed let's see if we can find the essence of who we are without storytelling not just to see who we are not but also who we can be

[Music] just because our lives do not unfold according to the neatly confined and predictive structure of the hero's journey that doesn't mean we don't experience our lives adventurously the existential philosopher jean-paul sartre explored this subject in his famous book nausea in which the main character reflects on the adventures he experienced in his life and wonders what it really meant to have experienced them while he is certain he has gone on adventures he points out that many of the things he considered to be final parts of these adventures such as unfamiliar places and mysterious strangers weren't

adventurous in themselves foreign countries are not foreign to the people who live there and what is a stranger to one can be a close acquaintance of another he therefore concluded that the content of the adventure does not matter it is the form that does we turn events into adventures by experiencing them as such german sociologist george schimel had a similar analysis and argued that the adventure or rather the experience of the adventure simply results from the process of familiarizing yourself with the unfamiliar a new place a new person a new event or activity as such

the adventure is always to greater or lesser extent transformative you engage in something new which then adds removes or otherwise changes some part of your being as you can see so far this experience closely resembles the hero in joseph campbell's hero's journey who goes into the unknown to eventually become a master of two worlds good morning morning another way to look at the adventure is as a distinct way of perceiving time when we go through our day-to-day life time is somewhat predictable structured office hours dinner time night time we generally have some notion of what

we'll be doing during certain hours the adventure then is a break from this structure and invokes the uncertainty and excitement of new possible futures in this sense a smile from a stranger could suggest the beginning of a love story that will define the rest of your life or inversely an extreme sports adventure could mean a swift ending to it either way to experience an adventure is to perceive time differently it makes the future feel uncertain undefined thereby making the present moment more immediate urgent an adventure however doesn't truly become an adventure until it is completed

and can be recounted as a story for only then can we definitively distinguish all the hypothetical adventures all the potential futures from the one that actually happened only then can we determine the adventurous plot the way in which the different experiences are connected to each other and only then can we see the causal relations how events impacted others and became transformative as the existential philosopher soaring kierkegaard once said life must be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards as such no matter how you look at it our experiences always have a twofold significance first

there is the initial experience of something the strangeness of an unfamiliar event the excitement of meeting someone new or the pain following a failure and then there's the meaning that those experiences take on as we retell them in a story which has the power to change how we initially perceived them for example the once admirable ambition of a partner might be re-contextualized as selfish egoism as the relationship falls apart into tragedy or the initial failure might become a stepping stone to a more meaningful victory and give the story a triumphant ending after all here too

we see the work of joseph campbell reflected as the elements of the hero's journey also have a double significance there is the event in itself and there is the larger meaning of that event as it becomes recontextualized in the hero's journey as a whole the only thing is when it comes to the stories of our own lives we are both author and character in other words we are telling our stories as we are living them which makes it pretty difficult to effectively capture our lives into one adventurous story and especially into one that fits the

exact structure of the hero's journey because if our stories are ongoing as long as we are able to give shape to them to change them when do the individual experiences of our lives take on their definitive meaning when can you say that you have truly experienced a full adventure even though we can experience life adventurously for that feeling to become an actual adventure it seems that we ourselves need to transform it into one but this is easier said than done because while the potential for adventure is limitless so it seems it's the potential to reframe

it whether we're trying to tell the stories of our entire lives or just a tiny adventure within it how do we give significance to that which is constantly capable of evolving just look at how often we believe that we are at the start of a grand adventure and this is patterson bus 23 i have a situation only for it to become something that just happened and then passed without any discernible consequences you acted so heroically or on the contrary how often have we made life-changing decisions that seemed so minuscule at the moment that we didn't

realize their importance until decades later and even then can we truly trace those decisions back to their source are the choices we make not tied to countless invisible threats threats that have been unfolding and spinning around since long before we were born the same can be asked when it comes to our collective adventures when does a war begin is it the moment it is declared or is that just a consequence of a story that had already begun much earlier what is the history of a nation a people where does our story begin and just as

important where does it end [Music] what is often missing from our adventures as opposed to adventures in stories is what jean-paul sartre called perfect moments moments that mark definitive resolutions in our stories right we see such moments in invasion stories for example and in their often used trope called the mothership the mothership is an object or figure that represents the leader of the invading force and that when destroyed instantly disables all invading forces thereby marking a clear and conclusive victory for our heroes we also see perfect moments in romantic stories in which the grand climactic

kiss is implied to carry the rest of the relationship without further conflict and we see them in the form of blood twists moments in which seemingly unconnected threats are suddenly revealed to be intertwined in which chaos and confusion are suddenly replaced with order and understanding moments in which it all comes together in real life large-scale conflicts personal relations and quests for meaning are rarely defined or bookended by singular moments especially ones that we experience as such while they are happening when it comes to historical conflicts we can define certain milestones in hindsight the day of

surrender the signing of a declaration but for those who have actually lived the story it's probably hard to pinpoint the exact moment they felt things were back to normal take even our current health crisis it is unlikely this will be over after one defining victory after one clearly perceivable moment and is instead more likely to be resolved with a slow almost inconspicuous return to a state that can be called ordinary looking at our relationships here too we will surely find important moments the first kiss the wedding day and other moments of great personal significance but

again these are almost never truly as definitive as the majority of romantic stories we see in films there are some interesting counter examples however the film before midnight for example shows how a couple years after them finding each other in a dream like romance have to face the reality of what it really means to be in a relationship if you want true love then this is it this is real life it's not perfect but it's real in doing so it comes much closer to what relationships are like in real life a reality in which nothing

can be taken for granted in which every experienced moment can be redefined or even fall apart and about the reality of plot twists or moments of grand revelations well to quote a pastor from synecdoche new york everything is more complicated than you think you only see a tenth of what is true we may create some understanding of things over time but what is this really if not just a temporary feel of wisdom over what remains a fundamentally unknowable reality a brief moment of stillness in what remains an ever-changing story they're all leads of their own

stories they have to be given their due is a fully formed fully resolved story then nothing more than an ideal that's forever out of reach is this the real difference between stories and reality are we doomed to a state of perpetual storytelling of continuous narration without closure to again refer to synecdoche in new york are we like caleb who spent years on his grand play that continues to grow bigger and bigger until he eventually passes away in the ruins of his unfinished creation can nothing we do be set in stone [Music] there seems to be

an unresolvable conflict between constantly experiencing the potential for adventure and actually being able to resolve one the easy answer is to search for closure for absoluteness on a larger level we can say that our stories begin when we are born and then after we die a clear beginning a clear end but it's not exactly as simple as that because even after we die the entirety of our lives might be recontextualized within a greater story beginning with that of our family our country all the way to human civilization and existence as a whole and this brings

us to some larger metaphysical issues for there is one question we also haven't really addressed the question of why there is a monomyth why we tell stories according to the same hero's journey is it simply because that is how we create meaning how we give structure to our experiences or is it because that is how we perceive the structure that is already there in other words does it originate within us or is it a pre-existing principle of the universe my shepherd bring us to your eternal light it's a question that leads us into the territory

of religion the belief that there is a grand cosmic story one that is authored by a higher force or divine being the existence of such a creator would certainly resolve the difference between stories and reality as it would give our lives our existence the intentionality structure and definitiveness of the hero's journey it will give us something to live for as our lives become purposeful journeys from and towards this great creator joseph campbell's own resolution has a similar type of cosmic determinism as he advises us to follow our bliss if you follow your bliss he wrote

you put yourself on the kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you and the life that you are to be living is the one you are living while not explicitly religious gamble here does seem to imply that there is someone or something that has laid out a path for us one that we need only put ourselves on for a meaningful life it's a solution that's worked well for many people and still does but personally speaking ending all this with a leap of faith doesn't satisfy me because even if there is

some cosmic plot even if the tracks are already laid out i still wouldn't know how i fit in i wouldn't know how to let it guide my choices my story i could try to follow my bliss but that just seems like an invitation to mistake fake intuition for absolute knowledge in the end i would feel like a replicant in the original blade runner chasing a creator for answers i'm not going to get you were made as well as we could make you but not to last even if there was some purpose i could never retain

it the path laid out for me would remain obscured and i would still die with the feeling that my life was but a mere collection of moments incoherent unresolved waiting to be lost in time like tears in rain so what is the way out of this for while it might be frustrating to try and live our lives as heroic adventures to fit our experiences into clear and cohesive stories so too is the opposite if we assume our lives to be without any kind of structure what is left but pointlessness but even if that were the

case we would still act in defiance of that fate we still naturally create patterns constructions storylines it's why today we are roughly the same person as the day before and the day before that and so on it's why we can connect with others and get a sense of who they are if they're responding to your work and your work is really personal then reading you is another way of meeting you isn't that right there seems to be an essence within us that simply refuses nihilism and that should mean something too it is therefore that jean-paul

sartre proposed a sort of middle ground between the nihilism of a life without the structures of stories and the frustration of a life that's too restricted by them basically he suggests that we let go of the idea of coherence of predetermined structures in favor of creativity that we take our story into our own hands and really become our own authors we've discussed how heroic adventures can put a pressure on the way we should live our lives but they also put a pressure on us we base so much of our identities on collected ideas of what

it means to be someone what it means to be a man a woman what it means to be strong to be weak to be attractive to be ugly to be adventurous to be boring and in doing so we create boundaries to maintain coherence we start acting according to the somebody we've cultivated ourselves to be and we can become afraid to act out of character both in the eyes of others as well as to ourselves if we truly become the authors of our own lives the adventure could mean to try and be someone new to become

who we would otherwise never dare to be to break away from the patterns and norms that kept us in place that kept us small as for why well the existential philosopher albert camus argued that life is inherently absurd as we've seen it's full of conflicts limitations and contradictions but there's also a freedom or at least a feeling of freedom within us although it's not the kind of freedom that allows us to transcend the absurdity of existence it is one that allows us to shape our experience of it it is the part of us that realizes

we will never truly understand our cosmic purpose that accepts it is for all intents and purposes meaningless but it is also the part that then sees a sunset or a smile a tiny glimpse of something beautiful and feels that it is not it is however not a matter of rationality or logic it's something deeper perhaps that's the bliss joseph campbell was talking about it is the part of us that doesn't just want to exist it wants us to live it is the part that tells us that if i have to create my own meaning i'm

going to create as much of it as i can if i have to tell my own story i'm going to fill it with beauty it is the part of us that wants to savor every moment be it exciting and adventurous or quiet and mundane that wants to experience life all of it with passion with intensity the part that wants us has come up with it to live to the point of tears [Music] perhaps this is why we turn to the same stories to help give shape to our own to enrich them to deepen our capacity

to experience the beauty around us to give us courage and strength to prepare us for the hardship the suffering and loss after all that's the only journey that shared between all of us the struggle that we all have in common an effort that is nothing short of heroic [Music] [Music] [Music] as much as the hero's journey has come to be seen as an individualistic concept a way to give shape and transform our own lives i think that in the end what it really does or should do is connect us to each other to make us

compassionate and patient and supportive towards our fellow human beings following the same journey to my big brother george the richest man in town as george bailey realizes at the end of it's a wonderful life no one is a failure who has friends and what better way is there to become close to someone if not to open yourself up without fear or anxiety and in doing so invite them to do the same if we let go of all the ideas of who we should be and instead focus on who we can be who we want to

be it can truly be a wonderful life because by embracing ourselves as storytellers but letting go of the structures that demand cohesion and limit our creativity what we would be left with is freedom for ourselves and for others freedom to break free freedom to be [Music] you