Western culture's heroic gene pool is getting a bit thin

Joseph Campbell said that Freud focused on the first half of a person’s life and Jung on the last. In essence, a person spends the first half of existence looking for love and the last half coming to terms with the impermanence of existence. Both of these pursuits are essentially narcissistic in nature. The notion of mythic hero (which was the principal focus of his work), however, was explained as an individual who overcomes the primordial obstacles and dragons that inhabit her subconscious as well as those of her tribe. The hero defers her own desires and concerns with that of the greater good. If Campbell’s analysis is accurate than Western Civilization is like Theseus groping around in a labyrinth for the minotaur.

Who are our heros? We have professional athletes who overcome extreme hardships to become stars and role models for millions of children. Yet we are constantly hearing of infantile behavior on and off the court as athletes engage in a gaggle of sensory pleasures and petty bickering that reaches its crescendo as contract negotiations near. We have religious leaders who encourage us to strive for the otherworld by good works yet traumatize defenseless children with their sexual perversions and build temples of gold in which to rail against other tribe’s temples. Our political leaders speak earnestly and tearfully of the sacrifice of those who fight in foreign wars yet those very wars appear spawned to fill the coffers of their friends.

I don't have a solution, as of yet, but I'm convinced that our popular culture is a bit off its path and heading precipitously closer to the labyrinth.

"passion is a blind monster--even if the passion is a noble one, even if it is pure"

The following is a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery from his "Wartime Writings 1939-1944." It is from a letter addressed to his friend Dr. Henri Comte in 1944. He was anticipating the possible bloodletting that would engulf France as the Gaullists took control of the country after the German occupation. Luckily, his worst fears went unrealized. However, his ruminations are equally relevant today as our own nation faces the insecurity of fighting a war of terror that, seemingly, has no end:

"Islam cut off the heads according to the Koran, the French Revolution guillotined according to Diderot, Russia executed according to Marx, Christianity had itself depacitated (which comes to the same thing) according to the Episles of Saint Paul. The exalted emotions that justify these massacres were only means that nature put at the disposal of the mind. Will emotions for the first time in man's history kill for their own sake, without knowing in which direction they're heading? To my way of thinking, passion is a blind monster--even if the passion is a noble one, even if it is pure."

I hope that just as Saint-Ex's fears went unrealized, my own fears of a nasty conflagration and epic decades-long round of suffering and death in a "War on Terror" goes unfinished.