Thinking of ourselves and our lives through the lens of the hero’s journey has proven genuinely helpful for many. Through it, we see ourselves as capable of more than we imagined. We empower ourselves to meaningfully change the world.
Likewise, thinking of the world’s challenges through the lens of the polycrisis has proven helpful. It encourages us to see the world from a much wider, holistic, and more nuanced perspective than has been the norm. We can more clearly see where an intervention might have unintended consequences in seemingly unrelated domains. Or we might find ways to achieve positive gains across multiple challenges through a single intervention.
It recognizes the immensity and urgency of the problems at hand. And as an inherently global, universal challenge, it pushes us toward solutions that embrace our shared humanity. It unites us in a way that has eluded us in the past.
But these framings also come at a cost. They create an almost mythic obstacle in our path, just as terrifying and seemingly insurmountable as Sauron in Lord of the Rings, the Emperor in Star Wars, or the machines in The Matrix. Our very world is facing calamity bigger and more impenetrable than anything we could even conceive of in years past. There is no clear, predictable path to remedy it. We are in completely uncharted territory. No map. No compass. No real destination in mind.
And so many of us become paralyzed in despair, unwilling to look it in the eye, unable to do anything meaningful about it.
Those remaining find themselves with an impossible task. They believe the only way to confront such an existentially devastating enemy is for one exceptional hero to rise above and save the day. And so, consciously or unconsciously, they begin striving to become that hero.
But rather than deliver the personal and social transformation we hoped for, it only leads us further down the road of inadequacy, despair, and exhaustion.
