2023-12-11 21:08:48
The myth researcher Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) “recognized archetypal basic structures of the human soul in the prehistory of peoples”: the hero always has to go through some form of separation from the usual, is then transformed by his new experiences and finally has to return to his to use his newfound maturity for the good of the community that once launched him into his adventure of self-development.
The practical value of the “hero’s journey” archetype for fictional writing is outlined by Christopher Vogler in his world bestseller “The Writer’s Journey.” The Berlin painter and journalist Raymond Unger starts with this “monomyth” and develops an unusual but illuminating view of society and politics by consistently psychologizing the topic.
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Everyone’s life story
For Unger, stories in the hero’s journey pattern touch us for this reason always because they don’t tell random events, but rather reflect the structure of the human psyche. The hero’s journey, according to the basic thesis of the book, symbolizes the path of healthy personal development (or “self-development”).
Childhood imprints and injuries, often referred to as “the unconscious” or “the inner child”, would have to be called up again by the adult, fully appreciated if necessary with pain and then integrated into the self-image as a “recognized experience” (Ayya Khema). “Only re-experiencing and acknowledging the denied (childhood) feelings can make a person whole again.”
Only in this way can people be free from what CG Jung called the psychological “shadow”. Only after we have fully become ourselves are we no longer driven by avoidance or compensatory actions with which we try to avoid the fight with the “dragon” of our previous insults and traumas.
Let’s experience the departure, the breakthrough to self and the return to our community as you this time really As an adult member, according to Unger, emotional capacities are freed up to treat others with more understanding and compassion.
Rigid judgment and condemnation of others is no longer needed as before in order to combat in others what one feared or shamefully hid within oneself. Above all, by defeating his own personal “dragon”, people become less interested in spending their existence in undemanding conformism: “The hero’s real task now is to search for his own true calling.“
Infantile and adult politics
So far, so personal. Unger uses a simple analogy to turn his thoughts into the social and political: the individual is subject to his unconscious as long as he has not yet completed the hero’s journey to the self and thus claimed the sovereign interpretation of his life story.
And in the same way, according to Unger’s thesis, the citizen is actually immature as long as he does not gain clarity about the influence of interested parties on his opinion formation and living conditions. Unger’s analysis of the passage of time is multifaceted, but simple and clear when it comes to the basic structure of a technocratic model of rule, which could be fully observed in action for the first time during the Corona events.
“Enormous amounts of money in the hands of a few oligarchs” have created “global cartels” that “have hijacked supranational organizations with the help of the philanthropy business model.” The oligopoly of Big Tech and other corporations works with governments and oligarchically financed NGOs in such a way that the general direction of the mass media can now be determined “top-down”. This paves the way “for blackmailing sovereign states. Because whoever controls the opinions of citizens can also drive national politicians ahead of them.”
In such a power-political situation – Unger warns us – mass psychological immaturity in private life could have fatal consequences for politics: just as an immature person looks for a mother and father in the world around them in order to achieve what was denied to them as a child too little was given, or the rules and prohibitions practiced as a child continued to be considered worthy of parental love good child ritually adhere to – just like that, a citizen who is poorly informed about the danger posed by “large concentrations of money and influence” (Noam Chomsky) will all too easily believe the marketing narratives of well-organized oligarchs who offer us security from ever new, real or alleged threats at the price of our freedom promise.
In the course of the logically clearly structured explanations, here and there the pride of originality of the successful self-made artist Raymond Unger brings a lot of personal things into play that would not always be necessary for purely argumentative purposes. However, some of the self-confessions here also serve to illustrate the theory presented.
It is worthwhile for anyone who experiences the present as a crisis to follow Raymond Unger’s unusual diagnosis of the times, including its ramifications. Supporters of democratic government and free culture must be interested in as many individual heroic journeys as possible “from infantile subjects to responsible and sovereign citizens”.
Raymond Unger: The Citizen’s Hero’s Journey. Europa-Verlag, Munich 2023, 404 pages, 25 euros
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