Humanity is on a journey. The Hero’s Journey, which was taught by Joseph Campbell. His most famous book is Heroes of a Thousand Faces. He is a mythologist who had studied world mythologies for his entire life. He came to this insight, which is that all myths are the same stories. These myths all seem to have the same origin story. A myth does not mean it’s not true. A myth is a story without.
The myth/story is that a young person goes out into the world seeking adventure and knowledge and we may think of the odyssey, which is the European myth of western society. So, Odysseus goes out and he has these adventures. He meets the cyclopes’, in which he engages in battles. These battles include near death experiences. He is sailing around and then at some point the hero turns back. He turns to where he began. But he sees everything differently now. Because he sees it from the perspective of experience and wisdom, which includes humility. He learned all these things on his voyage.
Now, look at us as a species and I see a lot of the trajectory of our path as a species, which aligns with that. We develop all these amazing weapons and scientific processes. We learned how to take energy out of the ground. And we learned how to concentrate that energy by creating steel, concrete, these motors, and mechanisms that can cut through mountains. We learned how to fly and ultimately take off. We learned how to fly to the moon and other planets. It’s like holy shit we are really accomplishing a lot. And at the same time, we are sewing destruction and spewing toxic waste into the rivers and brutally killing animals and ourselves. We are causing all these unforeseen repercussions.
And at some point, we realize that we are at the point where we are right now. We have gone as far as we need to go. Now we are starting to understand that the further we go, the further development, the further progress actually requires us to turn back towards home.
The outward movement is fueled by a youthful perspective of, “holy cow, look at what we can do” energy and the return towards home is fueled by, “OMG look at what we have done” energy. I think as a species, we are starting to take a closer look at what we have done with a more balanced perspective.
“Ok, we can shoot rockets to the moon, but we have 3 billion people starving. America is the richest country in the world but 40% of the children are going to bed hungry.” It is insane.
Thirty years ago, no one would have listened to this message of civilized to death and no one would have listened to the message that monogamy is the only way for civilization to work. It wasn’t until so many people had seen monogamy fail and so many divorces. So many kids being ripped away from one parent and reared by a single parent. Now, people are open to saying, “Maybe monogamy isn’t the only way.” Now people are open to the fact that we as a human species didn’t come from a monogamous way of life.
If someone had said 40 years ago that civilization isn’t such a great thing and it may destroy us, no one would listen. Civilization is the biggest disaster that humans created, and people would have scoffed at those speaking these words. Now they are looking around and seeing, Chernobyl and the other disaster in Japan. We can look back at many of these life-threatening disasters and these disasters were just barely averted. And, how many times are we going to be lucky with averting disaster.
People are now open to looking at the possibility that maybe there is something in the past worth revisiting.
For example, psychedelics were there at the beginning of evolution and part of human consciousness perhaps. OR has now made them legal under certain conditions. Forget about Prozac. Let’s talk about psylocibin. Evolutionary medicine is looking at hunter gatherers for information on the right way for us to eat and what’s the right way for us to move? What’s the right way to engage with each other? What’s the right way to rear children?
We are looking back to understand a way in which to move forward. It feels like this is our trajectory. We go out on this journey and curl back to our way back home. We are at this cusp of turning back towards home.
When we get home, we aren’t the same as we were when we left. In speaking about a return to a hunter gatherer society. We return to something more like a hunter gatherer life in a sense that we are living more lightly on the earth and engaging with other animals in a much more respectful way, less wasteful, less cruel and we have the technology to control human population. Now, we can have as much sex as we want without getting pregnant by accident all the time. We have enough wealth that we can guarantee people’s security throughout their lives and they don’t have to have 10 children to take care of them when they are older. We can remove the incentives for over-population, and we have the technology to help people be deliberate about how many children they have. We can reduce global population, which will allow our foot-print on the planet to be much lighter. We will have more space and more landscape that doesn’t have to be full of factory farms or pollution created industries.
We have the ability to create energy from the sun and we don’t need to dig up coal anymore or pump oil. We have learned things that will allow us to return to a different place with all this knowledge, which includes experience and understanding.
T.S. Elliott from the Four Quartets said, “We shall not seek from exploration but at the end of our exploring, we shall return to where we began and know the place for the first time.”
That is our trajectory and the hero’s journey of homo sapiens. To go out and have all these near-death experiences and go back to where we began with this knowledge and understanding of our place in the world and the fragility of the eco system. A greater appreciation and honoring our home. We will have an understanding that every animal is going to be the happiest in the environment in which it evolved. An ocean fish will not survive in the river.
It’s no accident that it relaxes us looking into fire. It’s no accident that we have a sense of awe when we look up at the stars. It’s no accident that what makes us happiest is helping other people. This is how we evolved. And to deny that, invites disaster.
The age of the compassionate and collaborative Bonobos and these aggressive masculine aggressive energies of the chimpanzees can rebalance into a more compassionate, more humility, and hey guys we have a fucking hole in our roof, and we need to get our shit together. We are on a clock and we have only so much time to figure it out.
The pandemic exacerbates the challenges and accelerates everything that was already happening to create more of an urgency that it’s go time. A globally shared disaster is a good thing for us at this point. It is so hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea that something can happen to upset normality and to see it happen so quickly. This is a really good lesson.
We hope it makes people look at climate change. And to say, that climate change is happening. I can see it and I can feel it. With COVID, shit can hit the fan at any moment. I know what it looks like.
Shitty governance. This is not a self-driving car here. We need someone at the wheel with compassion and understanding for other people. Hunter gatherers leadership is based upon respect and not based on someone’s desire to be a leader. When someone desires to be a leader, they are considered to be ridiculous. There should be a mechanism where we choose our leaders from people who don’t necessarily want to be leaders. Someone who is really smart, and she is rarely wrong. She’s kind and she would have all this money and give it away. You, as a collective group, nominate her to be our leader. And she gets dragged into it.
Look at how great I am, look at all my money, and look at my gold faucets and I want to be the leader. That is not someone who is going to take care of humanity.
Veterans come back from war and are traumatized. Some people are born to be warriors. It’s good if we can channel their warrior skills into useful productivity to save the environment or in other ways that benefit the world. They are born to stand up and face darkness and fear and are able to protect those that are less able. We need to tell them that we need their warrior skills. We need you to help others and heal our planet. These are deeper problems. And a much more important battle.
Pamela Chambers
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