Bleeding Edge

Living in No Man’s land…

This is the Hero’s journey.

For me the disposition of the hero is not to be where the gods have predicated for him to suffer because heroes need to suffer. But he is here on a Hero’s journey because heroes need to rebel.

Heroes ought to be revolutionaries much like the ancient Prometheus. 

Indeed, heroes do not accept the divine commands, like Oedipus who goes against the oracle. In the end the story is confirmed: The truth of the gods in the end is imposed. 

And that has always been the problem for me, because I do not agree with this predictably unjust outcome…

Our ways are the cause of our mistakes, and therefore we cannot point the finger, since our societies do not accept those that are different. And often times this the reason why Heroes eventually become fanatics about being the change-makers of this world.

This is “Oedipus” in the midst of an epidemic that causes a disaster through this current pandemic. 

He looks around for the person in charge and concludes that there is nobody else but himself. 

This is a very deep and disturbing truth – because it hurts, and it hurts a lot.

Because indeed, there are many ways to be a cop-out in our society. 

But in our private lives — if we want to be true to ourselves — we need to deal honestly with our own disasters, and we need to see that we own them, and that they are completely ours to hold near & dear.

Yours,

Dr Churchill

PS:

No, this thing of the Hero’s Journey, does not go well with my life.

Nor does it go well with the World’s vision of me, which is all about stories of resistance, breaking the boundaries of the system that oppresses us, and breaking free of where fate has put us — while we struggle to improve the World for all of our dispossessed people.

And that’s a Sisyphian bargain that only the Hero dares to accept for his Life that he eventually has to give up for the benefit of the many souls that are stranded at the bottom of the pyramid.

So the Hero travels to the netherworld to rescue them all, and he just might bring back some, but to do that he has to travel far and wide in the wilderness of Man’s soul.

Indeed it is good to wonder in the No Man’s land of our Societies, of our Lives and of our Souls.