The Hero's Journey

Today, in fairly idle conversation I referenced a comment I had made on the About Atheism forum which I thought to be particularly insightful which was in response to another remarkably insightful post I had made which referenced the Hero's Journey. This in turn, derailed the conversation of how brilliant I am and moved it to a conversation of the Hero's Journey.

You would be astounded at how easily topics about 'how brilliant I am' derail. We can talk about this or that for thirty minutes at a time... but when the central topic is me and my brilliance everybody takes the first topic exit ramp available, in this case: The Hero's Journey. This tangentially allows me to wax on about a specific topic which I undoubtedly have indepth knowledge of, thusly demonstrating 'how brilliant I am', it is still not actual topic of conversation. I can quickly draw the topic back to the brilliance I possess, but it quickly derails again. I can only assume that either other people don't want to talk about how brilliant I am, or they are too stupid to recognize it as a fascinating topic. Either way (though, clearly the latter) I might as well blog about the Hero's Journey:

All stories tend to have the same basic outline with a number of different bits. There are other formulations of the Hero's Journey (about as many formulations as there are OF the Hero's Journey). The basic Gospel story meets this general criteria and the more in depth tellings of the myth are also well established. However, many feel that because the Gospel story is similar to other stories that it must be borrowed from other stories. I think that, because of the Hero's Journey and the general sameness of all fictional hero stories that considerably more evidence and better evidence is needed. I think the argument for the Homeric Epics is well made in this regard, in that it explains some odd minute details of the gospels which otherwise fail to make any sense.

1. A call to adventure,
2. A road of trials,
3. Achieving the goal or "boon",
4. A return to the ordinary world,
5. Applying the boon,


The Hero's Journey in Film




Damn... I'm brilliant.