
TEASER
(Philosophy)
Find a sample of the philosophy here :
Described as a monomyth:
Essentially it is Joseph Campbell's mapping of myths from different cultures into a mythological structure’. This was used to find the recurring themes in ‘the journey of the hero’ that transcended all cultures. From this mythological structure some of the best stories have been created. Including Star Wars and Lord Of The Rings. The metaphor of embarking on one’s hero’s journey does not have to follow the theme quite as strictly as most successful fictional novels seem too. But a lot of the themes can be useful to consider when one finds themselves on their own ‘hero’s journey’.
Jung found myths and depicted their typical movements to correspond to ethno-psychological development of complexes. The myth of the hero is to become independent from the mother: the incest motif is returning to the mother to be reborn. In other words the myth of the hero or perhaps one of the first hero’s journeys we may partake in life, is that of breaking away from the safety of our family and starting our own lives, failure to do this is akin to living in your parents basement forever. The mother can, of course, be allegorical for any over-dependency in your life or something that you cling on to that you are perhaps outgrowing.
The above Is a slightly simplified version of the hero's journey, with the original containing 17 steps. But all 17 steps were not necessarily found within each story. For use to the reader we want to understand how this can benefit us as it is not only a good map for a mythological story but very useful in a real life cycle of self improvement. A successful journey in real life will often reflect the hero’s journey. You might be able to reflect on this and think of a time when you changed as a person. What events preceded this and see if it reflects the journey. As for people on a journey you might be able to identify where you think you are on the journey and be able to pick up what might help you. For example, encountering trials and failure, but have you considered seeking out a mentor? A lot of what is contained in the hero’s journey psychologically will be reflected in following articles on a lot of Jung’s work, so I won’t go into any more depth. But it will be useful to keep this in mind, try to map it to the story above and to the lessons below.
6) free will
Really difficult to provide a short synopsis around free will. But here is how I see it:
The argument of materialism and a lot of science is that there are only two forces in the world that attribute to how you form as a human being. Both of which are out of your control. Your genetics and your environment. If these two forces make up the totality of you as a human then you have no free will. Now I happen to completely disagree with this. I believe free will is a fundamental part of nature, we can see it in single celled organisms who display behaviour traits without even a nucleus. This doesn't take away from the fact that your environment and your DNA are huge factors.
Without getting into an explanation of free will (it will be provided in a linked essay) I will get into a more useful relation of free will to your life. Free will fluctuates. Consider the character at the very start of the story. Stifled by routine and then consider the character towards the end of the story, he has much more free will. We gain free will in two ways. One is working on many things above. Improving yourself. Basically, if you are a simpler creature you will have a simpler form of free will. That is how it is displayed in nature. If you work on your consciousness and your intelligence you will be able to spot more possibilities in the world. These possibilities are given to us by a built in randomness that is in nature and the universe. All this randomness is all the possibilities for us to choose from. The idea is to make yourself available to more and more options(randomness) so that you can improve your life in different and better ways. Habit and routine are not necessarily destructive or reducing your free will if it is enforced by discipline, in other words if it is enforced by your will. These things are positive. A regular workout, meditation and study routine is clearly beneficial. But if your habits and routines are not your choice, then free will is being taken away from you. Society and its rules are literally sucking the free will right out of you. Then ‘science’ will tell you that there’s no such thing as free will anyway, that it's just an illusion. This causes nihilistic attitudes in people's psyches as nothing really matters if you aren't making any of your own choices right? Don’t let the boring catatonic routine take away your willpower. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have.
