"24" and Haiti

The Hero's Journey has an unfortunately masculine nomenclature, but if one simply looks at the question "what is human?" the tiny differences between male and female life experience pretty much fades. And I'd guess that those who are most likely to believe there are huge differences are those least likely to have had satisfying bonded relationships with the opposite sex.

Differences? Sure. But I would bet anything that there are greater differences, on average, between any two men chosen at random, or any two human beings, in general, than there is between the group "men" and the group "women" when it comes to (at least my version of) the Hero's Journey.

1) Confronted with a challenge. Ah...both genders, easily. One might well suggest that male stories more often deal with violent external actions, while feminine stories more often deal with internal or personal events. But there is huge overlap.

2) Rejection of challenge. Fear stops men and women. There are different reactions, and different cultural judgements about the reaction to fear. I've never seen women shunned for being cowards, but I'm sure it happens.

3) Acceptance of challenge. Again, there may be some differences in the nature of the typical threshold challenge, but not enough to make a real statement.

4) Road of trials. Male stories are more likely to involve travel and danger, female stories more likely to explore social webs. Both deal with internal struggle, however.

5) Allies and powers. The need to gather and refine them is universal. Our ability to make the next "leap" will depend upon our capacity to understand the "gap" or obstacles that hindered us last time, and the clarity with which we compensate.

6) Confront Evil--lose. Dealing with loss, shattered self-image, etc. Again, pretty universal stuff. We all lose. I think that there may be some differing mythologies in male and female communities about what such losses ultimately mean.

7) Dark Night of the Soul. Men and women have some different common patterns for dealing with despair and depression, but ultimately it's all about death or ego-death, really. Again, if you concentrate on the differences, you miss the truth.

8) Leap of Faith. While religion can establish serious barriers between the genders, and encourage the perception of differences, spirituality generally embraces the concept of connection, unity, blending. Yin and Yang together composing the Tao. So to the soul, faith is faith. Human minds create separation.

9) Confront Evil--victorious. In "over-structure" stories the obstacle is often outer (male) and in "under-structure" stories the obstacle is generally internal (female). But again, there is so much overlap that it would be stereotyping to try to shoehorn the genders into one category or another.

10) The Student becomes the teacher. Or: the return to the village with the elixer, or movement to the higher level (grandmother or grandfather's circle, etc.)

It seems to me that vaster by far are the similarities here, and it serves little purpose indeed to concentrate on the differences. Any thoughts on this, or any of these steps, and how they have applied in your own life, or the lives of men and women you have known?

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Loved 24 last night. The female FBI agent (rather sexistly called "Rack Bauer" by the guys at Ain't It Cool News) has been driven slightly nuts by her association with Jack and her use of torture. Looks like they're trying to have it both ways: to play into the revenge fantasy that makes the series work (a perfect hero who uses Whatever It Takes! He never makes a mistake, and always saves the day, so we have No Guilt!), while simultaneously giving a nod to reality: this behavior is insanely corruptive, and only approved of when people believe it's happening to "them," the "others." Across racial, social, religious/national lines, it's entertaining and satisfying, in a tribal way. I'd bet that the capture and torture of an enemy brave was big entertainment among the Apache. Humans are like that. As long as you can be pretty darned sure YOUR kids will never get caught up in stuff like this. I suspect profiling is much the same. When it's the "other" group, why, of COURSE we should differentiate by race, religion, or whatever. So far, I've yet to hear anyone approve of profiling if it is "their" group. Which suggests something pretty universally hypocritical about human beings.

At any rate, there are two basic competing life philosophies. Most people are somewhere in the middle, but it's the:

1) We are all alone, and separate from each other and the world. It's every living being for itself, and damn the hindmost.

2) We're all in this together, and all thought of separation is just illusion. You can't sink half a boat.

Clearly, one position is more "lower chakra", and the other more "higher chakra." And no pejorative is implied by "higher" and "lower"--the root is not less important than the leaf. Clearly, each political wing considers the other to be in the foolish end of the opposite spectrum.

My attitude about "24": I enjoy a good revenge/perfect hero fantasy as much as the next person. More than most. I can even ignore that they killed off their two best black characters by shooting each through the throat on an MLK day. As King was shot. Coincidence, of course. Ahem.

But my biggest complaint is that there are people who seem unaware that no justice system is perfect. That the innocent will inevitably be caught up in the system. And that using people as "things" is insanely corrupted to all, especially the men and women whose responsibility it is to peel away the ego shields and leave the squirming human animal naked and vulnerable, like a Mexican Jumping Bean worm peeled out of its shell. I can't imagine anything that would be more damaging to the human psyche--on either end of that exchange.

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Fifty Cent wants to do a duet with Susan Boyle? Somehow I can't quite wrap my mind around that one.

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Love the wide range of people from around the world committing to helping Haiti, where the death toll seems to have soared above 200,000. The horror. Hard to even imagine that level of devastation. But...how did Iceland and China get there before us?