{"id":27932,"date":"2021-11-11T15:16:18","date_gmt":"2021-11-11T23:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=27932"},"modified":"2021-11-11T15:16:18","modified_gmt":"2021-11-11T23:16:18","slug":"a-new-hero-is-needed-in-this-new-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/a-new-hero-is-needed-in-this-new-world\/","title":{"rendered":"A new hero is needed in this new world…"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces<\/em>, Joseph Campbell presents stories and imageries of different myths from all over the world. Joseph Campbell\u2019s lifelong passion for comparative mythology is extensively demonstrated in this book. The book is divided into three parts, prologue \u2013 the monomyth, part I \u2013 the adventure of the hero, part II \u2013 the cosmogonic cycle, to validate and discuss his theme of a Hero\u2019s journey that exists \u201cthroughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, myths of man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind.\u201d[1]<\/a> Campbell extensively breaks down and covers many mythological narratives further to explore the hero\u2019s path from a monomyth structure.<\/p>\n

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Personally, it was a fascinating experience to read and learn about so many different myths and stories that I had never seen and heard before. (The visual images were very helpful in understanding the psychology of other cultures) Campbell wonderfully and extensively covers through so many stories and myths from all over the world that existed over centuries after centuries that have shaped and influenced the minds and values of different cultures in every era. At the end of his book, the author further discusses the transformation of the hero\u2019s journey by giving examples of stories and myths that presents the hero as a warrior, a lover, an emperor or a tyrant, a world redeemer, a saint, and departure of the hero. And Campbell mentions the concerns of his lifelong research findings in his epilogue. He wrote, \u201call of which is far indeed from the contemporary view; for the democratic ideal of the self-determining individual, the invention of the power-driven machine, and the development of the scientific method of research have so transformed human life that the long-inherited, timeless universe of symbols has collapsed.\u201d[2]<\/a> He also shared his concern that our current global social units are \u201cnot a carrier of religious content, but an economic-political organization\u2026today no meaning is in the group \u2013 none in the world: all is in the individual\u201d[3]<\/a> Campbell is exceptionally accurate in describing the collapse of the timeless universe of symbols and meaning is found all in the individual now.<\/p>\n

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The final chapters and the epilogue of this book reminded me of one keyword on my mind these days. The word is meta-verse. As we move into the transitional period of the world of meta-modernism after post-modernism, I see and hear about meta-verse opening up these days. It\u2019s not just the ads that Facebook is pushing for under the keyword meta-verse. I observe a massive wave of transition of people\u2019s preferences, hang-out time, and inspirations moving more and more into the digital world of meta-verse. One key thing we need to be aware of for our emerging NextGen is that they are growing up naturally switching back and forth in between two worlds \u2013 a physical and inhabited world from the past and a virtual and digitized world of the present. This is all challenging and confusing for all of us because not only is the meta-verse expanding at an exponential speed. It is also bringing a new tsunami of innovative disruption into our societies. We hear about it as cryptocurrencies, RPG, oculus, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), Roblox, and whatever creative name they will use in the future. The new modern-day hero will appear with a not thousand, but with a billion faces in our self-idolizing world. I have to ask myself this question: What is the hero\u2019s story or narrative being told on these platforms of meta-verse?<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Third edition<\/em>. (Novato, Calif: New World Library, 2008), 1.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, <\/em>333.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, <\/em>334.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell presents stories and imageries of different myths from all over the world. Joseph Campbell\u2019s lifelong passion for comparative mythology is extensively demonstrated in this book. The book is divided into three parts, prologue \u2013 the monomyth, part I \u2013 the adventure of the hero, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[789,2106],"class_list":["post-27932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-campbell","tag-the-hero-with-a-thousand-faces","cohort-lgp11"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27933,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27932\/revisions\/27933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}