Don’t be afraid of the Dark.

“The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding.”

Faust assis, Jean-Paul Laurens, 1885. The Commons.

Somewhere along the continuum of time, the world did away with placing myths, legends and fairy tales at the centre of their lives.

Joseph Campbell wrote a book about it – The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It is brilliant, and most worthy of your time to read. I wrote an article on the legendary king Minos of Crete who built a labyrinth to house a creature which was half man, half bull – the Minotaur. A story of betrayal and hubris and a refusal to honour the calling which the king was gifted.

Campbell writes that the centre of gravity, meaning the realm of mystery and danger, has shifted, and with symbols no longer holding any interest for modern mankind, he argues that it is now man himself which is the mystery.

I propose that man has always been a mystery, but perhaps not in the all-consuming way we in which we attempt to analyse ourselves today. The term “navel gazing” is apt for too many. Although I ask: Is this about to change and lessons from the past will rise up to gain a foothold on modern soil?

Humans are creative animals at our core. But we have lost our attachment to it. This is a central message of the Hero book:

“It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal – carries the cross of the redeemer – not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.”

Human ability to adapt when standing at the precipice.

Sadly, there are many people suffering personally today as chaos engulfs much of our world. Uncertainty and rapid change to the way we once lived, is challenging even the hardiest of us. In the absence of things outside of this world to hold on to, life continues to require us to run the gauntlet in order to merely survive.

But history has a way of showing us that out of chaos comes order. It is through this process when creative pursuits break through. After all, we humans are adaptive. When authorities clamp down on us, we push back on them in ways they least expect – through our creative genius!

There is a common misconception that the Dark Ages was “dark” in every way. On the contrary, that tumultuous period – which spans roughly from the 5th to the 15th centuries, inclusive of what historians break into Early, High and Late Middle Ages – gave rise to some of the most spectacular architecture, paintings, music, literature and the eventual birth of modern political thought.

It is my view that we, too, will see the birth of wondrous things created by many young people who are watching our world burn – in the metaphorical sense mostly, but in not too few cases, literally. Just like their forebears who endured suffering under tyranny, they will rise to their own occasions to create lives that matter, and which is the right of every human to enjoy if they are prepared to work, fight for, and defend it.

Heroes are never lost to time.