Transcendence of dichotomies
This summary of the monomyth has on purpose omitted three of Campbell’s [1949]
stages: “meeting with the goddess”, “woman as temptress”, and “atonement with the
father”. As indicated by the names, these stages are of a psychosexual nature. Their
interpretation seems strongly influenced by (the now dated) Freudian psychoanalysis
with its Oedipus complex, together with Buddhist philosophy. They assume that the
hero is a sexually mature man with an ambivalent relationship to both his mother and
father. As such, they cannot be applied to other agents, such as women, children, or
animals, and therefore do not fit into the general “life is an adventure” paradigm.
However, Campbell’s analysis may be salvaged by moving to a more abstract
plane. In Campbell’s view, the hero’s contradictory emotions (e.g. sexual attraction to
the female figure combined with fear for its powers; anger at the father figure’s
harshness combined with admiration for its wisdom) are elicited in essence in order to
be overcome in one of the later stages (“atonement”, “apotheosis”, “freedom to live”,
...), where the hero reaches peace with himself, attaining some form of
enlightenment. If we make abstraction of the psychosexual nature of these emotions,
we are left with a process of transcending inadequate dichotomies.
Dichotomies or distinctions are the basic elements of all cognitive processes
[Heylighen, 1990]. Distinctions function to categorize the encountered phenomena
into different classes that require different actions. The most fundamental distinction
is the one between positive (affordance) and negative (disturbance), as this determines
whether the subsequent course of action will be one of approach or one of evasion.
The first thing any agent needs to know is which diversions are likely to enhance
fitness (opportunities) and which are likely to reduce it (dangers). Initially, an agent
will perform this classification using some rough and ready rules, such as “small
animals with many legs (e.g. spiders, scorpions) are dangerous; those with few legs
(e.g. birds, frogs) are potential food”. Through experience, such rudimentary
distinctions normally become more subtle and precise, e.g. when the agent learns that
some types of frogs are poisonous while some spiders are harmless.
This is the general process of cognitive development, maturation, or learning,
which can succeed only through extensive experience with a large variety of
situations. Exploration is the best strategy to quickly gather such diverse experiences.
Therefore, the hero’s journey, in the sense of an adventure wandering through a
diverse and as yet unknown domain, will by definition increase the hero’s level of
knowledge. Initially, some of the hero’s distinctions will be inadequate, in the sense
that classifications either turn out to be erroneous (e.g. perceiving a witch as a
desirable princess, or a prince as a repugnant frog) or lead to inconsistent guidelines
for action (e.g. being both attracted to and afraid of the dazzling goddess). However,
by experimenting with possibly inadequate actions, the hero will be able to observe
what works and what does not. Through this experience, the hero will develop more
adequate distinctions, and therefore a more accurate model of reality. If this process
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