Life, especially for our educated classes, means a journey of exploration, the exploration of the inner self. Call it a Hero's Journey. But what does that mean?
Let us recapitulate. The reason that God is Dead for the Gentry and the Creatives is that they do not believe in a God that made Heaven and Earth and then created a divine law for humans to live by. In their lives it is not God but they that are in charge of creating. Ergo, per Nietzsche, they must go through decadence, nihilism, and the horror of eternal recurrence. During that eternal recurrence, like Phil Connors of Groundhog Day, they must go on a Hero’s Journey, to learn the hard way about the meaning of life through an endless encounter with a life insurance agent or, if they are lucky, with the dragons of the unconscious. This creative journey will not be the journey of today’s conventional-wisdom-breaking “creative artist;” it will be something more challenging, and more terrifying, because it will culminate in a sacrifice upon the border between Order and Chaos, as the archetypical Sacrificial Hero.
It’s OK if you are not up to that, but then you must accept that you are just an ordinary Responsible with attitude. You had better stay within the guard-rails, because you don’t really have it in you to venture into the Beyond, let along the Underworld.
Still, the Hero’s journey is not just for Creatives; it is waiting for all of us, if we choose to accept it. In the Subordinate it is offering the way out of underhood, from the Slave of the Master into the dignity of the responsible life of the citizen in the market economy of the city. But if the Subordinate chooses not to make the journey, out of fear, or even laziness, then that is his decision. It is not the business of Responsibles to force him into the responsible culture of the city.
In the Responsible the journey is a path out of the fixed universe of God's Creation and his divine plan towards the border of Chaos that may not have a Redemptive end to history as its reward. But if the Responsible chooses not to make the journey, out of fear, or even laziness, then that is his decision. It is not the business of Creatives to force him into the glorious culture of creativity.
For the Creatives, again, the choice is different: every Creative must submit to the sacrifice of the Hero’s Journey or he is nothing but a fraud. It ain’t gonna be easy, but if you don’t try you ain’t a Creative, and you won’t end up helping to figure out the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. And if you opt instead for Ego Heroism, chances are that you will help add to the lefty mountain of skulls.
The larger meaning of a three-layers theory like Yarvin’s or my Three Peoples theory, is not just to provide meaning to privileged People of the Creative Self, but also to confront educated and conceited people like you and me with a world view that, after it sets forth the real challenge of the creative life, concedes that there is a world full of people outside our privileged creative bubble that are not called to be creative gods and that have a less lordly understanding of life, the universe, and everything than our own, and that the beginning of wisdom is to concede to the nincompoops that are less educated and less evolved than “us” the right to live their cramped and deplorable lives in peace. But above all, it is to establish that the world was not created merely so that educated Gentry could strut and fret their hour upon the stage to the delight of themselves and their Twitter followers.
To recapitulate, for the humble Subordinate, God is on Mount Olympus or luxuriating in an earthly palace as the local lord that once protected him against the Mongols and now protects him from the bosses or the white supremacists. That is his reality. Who are we to tell him to get a life and get into the modern age?
For the responsible Commoner, God has set the rules with his divine plan and it is up to the Commoner to make the most of the world He has given to the common man. Who are we to tell him to get out of his deplorable rut and get creative?
But with the modern Creative, God is Dead, and many of us are brimming with not-very-creative ideas for making the world anew, in our own image, just like God. So are we Creator godlings so familiar with the things-in-themselves that we deserve to preside over Creation as the God that can save the climate in 12 years and issue orders to the lesser breeds without the law -- in their own best interest, of course -- how to live their lives? We, the ignorant heirs of those that developed the settled science that could teach humans how to make LEDs with quantum mechanics: we that couldn’t design an LED if our lives depended on it and certainly don’t have a clue what is going on with that fly inside that Uncertainty Principle fly-bottle?
There are all kinds of Hero's Journeys out there. But whatabout Hero's Journeys that work?
Next: The Meaning of Life: Making it Up
We humans really don't know anything
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