Neither Hero nor Journey

Power in Community Across history, many schools of thought converged on this singular truth: none of us can flourish on our own. But our cultural narrative continues to romanticize the lone hero.

Ulysses is for me the prototype of … modern man … (and) the man of the future as well, because he represents the type of the ‘trapped’ voyager. His journey was a voyage toward the centre, toward Ithaca, which is to say, toward himself. He was a fine navigator, but destiny – spoken here in terms of trials of initiation which he had to overcome – for

the artist's life is about the works she will produce. These taken in sum will comprise her body of work. They're her "oeuvre." They're also her destiny. If she does it right, they will constitute upon completion a pretty fair expression of why she was put on Earth. They'll define who she is. They will be her "gift for the people.&qu

Hero’s Journey stories convey the transformation of a person—almost always a Quarterlifer—from one level of consciousness to another. It’s a transformation that occurs through some combination of risk-taking, happenstance, hard work, and magic; never through pure logic or planning alone.

In particular, I loved introducing my students to the scholarship of Joseph Campbell. Together we applied his three-tiered description of the classic hero’s journey to the process of birth. In Campbell’s description, a hero departs from the known world; experiences various trials, revelations, and fulfillment; and finally returns to the community b