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KPFK: Heroic Death of Isolated Ego

Listen Live @1PM (PT) Tuesday 4/14/2020: kpfk.org/player/

Vanessa Valdez & Transforming Consciousness: kpfk.org/on-air/vanessa-valdez/ 

The radio show is with Vanessa Valdez on 90.7 as part of her regular series, Transforming Consciousness.

The radio show is with Vanessa Valdez on 90.7 as part of her regular series, Transforming Consciousness.

This is a reflection on the historic momentum and trajectory of human ego from the heroic declaration of autonomy to a tyrannical commitment to greed. This requires an examination of major meta-narratives in human history; for example, the arc from atom to photon, from Adam to Christ and from Herakles to Hebe. Along the way, we’ll look at the historical narrative of humanity’s journey to, through and beyond the individual, which will ultimately bring us to today.

For those ahead of the curve, a paradigm shift of great magnitude has been apparent for quite some time. We’ve also had a good sense of what it is: towards networks, towards holistic thinking, global community, a revaluation of the earth and femininity. These are all next steps on this grand human journey of the individual. Where we find ourselves now is a great inflection point no one saw coming. Like others, I thought we’d just keep gradually moving down this road. But it wasn’t to be. This moment is a great lurching forward. The curve is catching up. Networks, wave technologies, communal thinking, planetary healing–these have been the directions of what now looks like a running start.  Hope calls for a leap.

As an editor for the Joseph Campbell Foundation on the upcoming Skeleton’s Key to Hero with a Thousand Faces, and as a mythology professor for story-students, I’ll also make an effort to situate this long arc within the Hero’s Journey paradigm. In essence, what I’d like to do is deconstruct the heroic masculine attitude that can become tyrannical and certainly greedy, and what I’d like to show is how the completion of a proper Hero Journey requires the defeat of an isolated worldview, a defeat of the tyrannical ego, a restoration of the repressed other and a newfound embodiment of the coming day’s paradigm. The call I’d like to make is for clarity when it comes to what should be attacked and what should be championed. We need heroes–real heroes–and real heroes need to turn their efforts against misplaced heroism, disproportionate individuality and the estrangement of ego in prisons of isolation.

With love,

Will Linn

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