Insights on inner transformation and outer contribution from my coaching program, Antihero Project.
The hero’s journey, it turns out, is not as universal as we imagine. It is a Western, individualist story dressed up as one. It is, in its own way, another example of Western whitewashing of a rich, diverse tapestry of human storytelling.
Joseph Campbell’s 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces argued that many of humanity’s most famous stories share a common narrative blueprint that resonates deeply with the human spirit.
The elusive “social impact” has just become another object of our lust and greed. And when we can never quite achieve enough impact, the burnout that follows is uniquely devastating.
The challenges are thornier than ever. We ask more of ourselves than ever. And we have less energy and capacity to do it than ever.
Our disciplinary society has transformed into an achievement society. And because of it, we are now swimming in a sea of inadequacy. If we can — and should — achieve whatever we put our minds to, what we actually do always falls short.
The polycrisis is the knot of crises facing humanity today, all intensifying and complicating one another. But it’s not just that. Our internal experience of these crises is itself a real crisis. Living with the deeply troubling challenges of our world, with the growing possibility that civilization as we know it will collapse within our lifetime, elicits anxiety, despair, and existential dread within so many of us. The climate crisis alone is enough to do this. In a 2021 Lancet Planetary Health study of 10,000 young people aged 16–25 across ten countries, 75% said ‘the future is frightening,’ and 56% said […]
Humanity in the 21st Century is facing a seemingly endless stream of crises: the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, poverty, economic inequality, pandemics, growing authoritarianism, terrorism, gun violence, runaway technological advancement, the erosion of shared knowledge and meaning, and much more.
The hero begins their journey in the “ordinary world” of relative peace, comfort, and familiarity. The antihero begins their journey already in the extraordinary world, already striving for heroic greatness, already exhausted trying to be something they will never be.
Your “issues” are only ever just a tiny fraction of who you are. They are potholes in the road. They are a puff of cloud temporarily blocking out the vast Sun of your being.
