My son's class just did Odysseus and, with it, the heroic journey.
Porting a diatribe from elsewhere here -- where it's obviously private because no one EVER comments on anything I write, I realized that my issue is of society's perception of Generation X as being full of anti-heros.
However, there's a different way of looking at it, which is how I actually do look at it: that they've (we've? Full disclosure: 1962, interpret as you will) had a Hero's Journey but their Return to Society has been aborted. From my child's handout:
After Transformation and Atonement, we face the final stage of our journey: our Return to everyday life. Upon our return, we discover our gift, which has been bestowed upon us based on our new level of skill and awareness. We may become richer or stronger, we may become a great leader, or we may become enlightened spiritually.
The essence of the return is to begin contributing to our society. In mythology, some heroes return to save or renew their community in some way. Other mythological heroes return to create a city, nation, or religion.
Sometimes, however, things don't go smoothly. For example, we may return with a great spiritual message, but find that our message is rejected. We are ostracized or even killed our for our ideal. We also run the risk of losing our new understanding, having it corrupted by putting ourselves back in the same situation or environment we left earlier.
In some cases, the hero discover that her new level of awareness and understanding is far greater than than the people around her. She may then become disillusioned or frustrated and leave society to be on her own. On the other hand, many great heroes such as Buddha and Jesus have sacrificed the bliss of enlightenment or heaven to remain in the world and teach others.
Doing other research, I ran across Zygmunt Bauman (b. 1925 in Poland), author of Wasted Lives: Modernity and its Outcasts among other things (see the Wikipedia site), who is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds and the University of Warsaw. Having lived through rather a bit himself, he had this to say:
The so-called 'Generation X' of young men and women born in the 1970s, in Britain or other 'developed' countries, knows ailments of which older generations were unaware; not necessarily more ailments, or ailments that are more acute, distressing, and mortifying, but ones that are distinctly different, novel -- one could say 'specifically liquid modern' maladies and afflictions. And it has novel reasons (some replacing, some added to the traditional ones) to feel ruffled, disturbed and often aggrieved ....
One of the diagnoses most commonly on offer is unemployment, and particularly the poor job prospects for the school-leavers who enger fresh on a market concerned with raising profits through cutting labour costs and asset-stripping rather than creating new jobs and building new assets. ... One of the most commonly offered recommendations to the young meanwhile is to be flexible and not particularly choosy, not to expect too much from jobs, to take the jobs as they come without asking too many questions, and to treat them as an opportunity to be enjoyed on the spot as long as it lasts rather than as an introductory chapter of a 'life project', a matter of self-esteem and self-definition, or a warrant of long-term security.
Comfortingly, therefore, the package-idea of 'unemployment' entails the diagnosis of the trouble complete with the best available cure and a list of straightforward and reassuringly obvious routines to be followed on the way to convalescence. The prefix 'un' suggests anomaly; 'unemployment' is a name for a manifestly temporary and abnormal condition and so the nature of the complaint is patently transient and curable. ...
How different is the idea of 'redundancy' that has shot into prominence during the lifetime of Generation X! Where the prefix 'un' in 'unemployment' used to suggest a departure from the norm - as in 'unhealthy' or 'unwell' - there is no such suggestion in the notion of 'redundancy'. No inkling of abnormality, anomaly, spell of ill-health or a momentary slip. 'Redundancy' whispers permanence and hints at the ordinariness of the condition. ....
To be 'redundant' to be ... unneeded, of no use - whatever the needs and uses are... There is no self-evident reason for your being around and no obvious justification for your claim to the right to stay around....
A feeling that redundancy may signal such 'social homelessness', with all the attendant loss of self-esteem and life purpose, or a suspicion that it may at any moment become their lot even if it has not yet, is part of the life experience of Generation X that it does not share with the preceding generations, however acute and resented the misery of those generations might have been. ... Unwelcome, tolerated at best... treated in the best of cases as an object of benevolence, charity and pity (challenged, to rub salt into the wound, as undeserved) but not of brotherly help, charged with indolence and suspected of iniquitous intentions and criminal inclinations, it has few reasons to treat 'society' as a home to which one owes loyalty and concern.
So my point is this:
As people bemoan the lack of leadership now that Boomers are entering retirement (cf. SSRI article), how does one convince those older people who would be seeking to mentor others to cease the negative stereotyping and rationally examine the lessons that a group of people have managed their way through? Is a poor urban child's journey heroic only if the end result is that they identify as suburbanites? Is an African-American's journey heroic only if they identify with being a part of the European-derived racial majority? Why should a group of people, whose time-location gave them a unique informal education, be considered on an heroic (not anti-heroic!) journey ONLY if the end result is that they identify with being of a different time-location? Why are some influential Baby-boomers looking for mini-me's, and how can those who are doing so be persuaded to cut that out?
In other words: how does Generation X "Return"?
What gameshow or reality show would you kick butt on?
Friend or Foe
Go listen to the mix by Justin Perry of AKA.
Do you play any musical instruments?
Sure, though not recently (enough).
Piano, viola, bagpipes, voice. I want to learn bass.
Again, why ask this question, and not, say, "what do you wish you played?" or "if you play or could play an instrument, what would be your favorite song to perform?"
