[sunbug]

Stephen what you wrote resonates exactly with all those thoughts rumbling in my head…

And so too Shaahayda…

That is it to a T!

And yes Stephen I’ve learned not to engage in rebuttals, which would be the equivalent of a tangle of Ariadne’s thread! Though if I allow enough time and space might be interesting to think on the Challenging Campbell aspect.
My ornithologist friend in Maine has the same love of a challenge and being surprised in his studies and even thrilled to be wrong because of discovery! (Just as you referenced Stephen) and you emphasized Shaahayda!

My gut pause was not so much on the opinion. We all have those…heh heh.
But what seemed to be a call for re-education or reform to dump the hero quest. When I would see it more to dump the “narcissist quest.” Understandable. Though there was also a take the “hero quest is a primarily European thing.” So yeah can definitely see the complication and reasoning there. Yet non-European indigenous cultures still have vision quests/walk abouts in their history.

And yes Stephen I do remember Campbell referencing in wonder how the hero became the “people” In Jewish history. I can relate vicariously having played the fiddler on the roof twice, which becomes a symbol for Anatevek sp? And the people in that town…

And Star Trek too…the Enterprise…the crew as the hero,…My mom loved Star Trek.
I think Kirk and Spock could also be like the Twin Quest of the Navajo…

Or the Fellowship in Lord of the Rings.
But kind of interesting too as that team comes more out of the forest…than the center. Up Campbell’s alley.

If you have ever seen the Star Trek remake from 2009…Kirk does have a moment where even though the trickster and troublemaker he has information no one is interested in hearing because he’s still smart and remembers what he hears…and that info is vital to keeping the team on the enterprise alive…then it moves back into everyone’s story. Spock…has his reckoning too. And the time element allows the original Leonard Nimoy to make a lovely cameo (if sad)

But away from that tangent…my take is that sometimes there is something in the collective human psyche that grasps onto “absolutes,” or “absolutism,” even without religion… absolutes, which often have very little to do with intuition or reason individual/team hero/heroine.

That is why I love Campbell’s view to surprise and my naturalist friend, Bernd Heinrich and Clarice Bowman who spoke of not caging oneself from God’s surprise!!