“The modern hero…cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to caste off that slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. ‘Live’ Nietsche says, ‘as though the day were here.’ 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 tribes great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.”
Joseph Campbell – The Hero with a Thousand Faces, quoted in an epigraph to Scream of the White Bears
Do we all think ourselves so heroic in those tribal victories, of wars and strong arming, of mutual fear and aggression, let alone human contempt, the protection of our jobs and pockets of power, or is there something else that unites the world again? Perhaps it just means reaching out in the dark.
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