It Is For The Creative Hero to Save Society

Someone recently asked me to write a post on how to encourage members of their community to more effectively live their ideals in practice, as there was a noticeable gap between purported values and lived values.

Flashing into mind was something I’ve been pondering on for some time in relation to my own journey; the words of Joseph Campbell within his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

Through his deep understanding of ancient mythology and the parallels therein, Campbell understood the relationship between the individual as hero and the ailing mass in need of redemption.

As he put it,

“It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal—carries the cross of the redeemer—not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.”

Imagine if more of us who have complaints about our communities and society at large would take that on…

Imagine if instead of being angry, resentful, self-serving victims in the face of personal despair, more of us decided to transcend our pain and carry our cross for the purposes of serving others to improve the whole.

Just imagine.

What a difference that would make.

What a life for the individual.

What an environment for the community.

What a world for the many.

Who, then, will heed the call to serve?