Why
We all need a mission. For me, it all became clear in graduate school when discussing punishment (or the lack thereof) in psychology. And I asked exactly why it was that we do not advocate punishment in psychology when it seems to work well enough in athletics, martial arts, military organizations, etc.
The professor said, “Because of the Hippocratic Oath: “Above all, do no harm.”
And I vividly remember thinking to myself, “Oh, my God, I don’t believe in any of this…”
So I asked the professor what to do, and he said, “Well, try to change things. Write a book; become a speaker. Try to change the paradigm,” which is exactly what I set out to do. (As it turns out, “changing the world” is not so simply done.)
My first draft of the solution was my “Heroic Theory.” This was rough, simple, dramatic. However, it contained the seeds of everything that followed; perhaps more importantly, it was through my Heroic Theory that I defined the problem:
We are not designed to live in the world we have created.
The professor said, “Because of the Hippocratic Oath: “Above all, do no harm.”
And I vividly remember thinking to myself, “Oh, my God, I don’t believe in any of this…”
So I asked the professor what to do, and he said, “Well, try to change things. Write a book; become a speaker. Try to change the paradigm,” which is exactly what I set out to do. (As it turns out, “changing the world” is not so simply done.)
My first draft of the solution was my “Heroic Theory.” This was rough, simple, dramatic. However, it contained the seeds of everything that followed; perhaps more importantly, it was through my Heroic Theory that I defined the problem:
We are not designed to live in the world we have created.
Problems of Modernism
We must define “modernism:” For our purposes, we will define modernism as that counter-cultural movement that ignores or abandons what we will refer to as “the classical tradition.” Generally speaking, the classical tradition is that body of art, music, religion, and philosophy that- whether Eastern or Western- advocates for “old school” virtue- that is, the personal cultivation of strength, wisdom, compassion, loyalty, bravery, and so forth. Civilization has largely moved on from these ideals, and they have been replaced with “modern” and “post-modern” philosophies such as Marxism, pacifism, feminism, deconstructionism, etc., and it is this replacement of the old value system that Heroic Theory takes aim at. There is one very simple reason for this: The classical tradition evolved necessarily in response to our ancestral environment.
In other words, we are designed to live in an environment characterized by pain, disease, violence, and brutality. And the classical tradition- the “old school” virtues- developed in order to survive that world. This value system is built into us; we have ancient neural pathways that predate modern Homo sapiens that respond to this kind of environment. And so by abandoning that value system, we create dissonance between the self and the world it inhabits.
This, as they say, is “a problem.”
In other words, we are designed to live in an environment characterized by pain, disease, violence, and brutality. And the classical tradition- the “old school” virtues- developed in order to survive that world. This value system is built into us; we have ancient neural pathways that predate modern Homo sapiens that respond to this kind of environment. And so by abandoning that value system, we create dissonance between the self and the world it inhabits.
This, as they say, is “a problem.”
Towards an Heroic Theory of Psychology
The core purpose of my Heroic Theory was two-fold:
This would require a paradigm shift in terms of psychology. Because the current psychological paradigm tends to be rooted in a kind of hard materialism, which at least implies (knowingly or unknowingly) that free will is secondary- that it is not the driver but rather the passenger. Subsequently, the internal dimension of the early paradigms of Freud, Jung, etc. has been forgotten; this has been replaced by mass pathology and by a culture of psycho-pharmaceutical therapy that robs the individual of his responsibility- and thus robs him of his power as well. Without power, responsibility is impossible; conversely, without responsibility, power is impossible. So the downstream consequences of modernism and hard materialism have been to suffocate the very power to change and to cultivate the self, which was once the mission of psychology.
According to my analysis, modernism has resulted in the following:
As a consequence of these, modernism has resulted in the development of social, religious, and political structures that no longer resemble our ancestral environment and that no longer reinforce the development of the individual psyche. And so the psyche, which has failed to achieve the self-integration necessary for performance and stress-resilience, instead becomes hyper-sensitive- weak, fragile, reactive; finally, it breaks under pressure. Thus we see nihilism, family breakdown, cultural fragmentation, and mass psycho-pathology.
Ultimately, it has become necessary to imagine a new set of principles sufficient to renew the classical tradition such as the following:
This, then, is the foundation of my Heroic Theory.
- To analyze modernism such that its distorting effect on human behavior could be defined and addressed.
- To imagine psychological strategies for overcoming the problems of modernism (which are many), which would leverage our pre-existent neural pathways rather than ignore or abandon them.
This would require a paradigm shift in terms of psychology. Because the current psychological paradigm tends to be rooted in a kind of hard materialism, which at least implies (knowingly or unknowingly) that free will is secondary- that it is not the driver but rather the passenger. Subsequently, the internal dimension of the early paradigms of Freud, Jung, etc. has been forgotten; this has been replaced by mass pathology and by a culture of psycho-pharmaceutical therapy that robs the individual of his responsibility- and thus robs him of his power as well. Without power, responsibility is impossible; conversely, without responsibility, power is impossible. So the downstream consequences of modernism and hard materialism have been to suffocate the very power to change and to cultivate the self, which was once the mission of psychology.
According to my analysis, modernism has resulted in the following:
- First, it has deconsecrated the archetypes of the unconscious, which has made it impossible to forge the psyche; stated differently, it has made it impossible for the individual to develop and to discover himself through the archetypes of the unconscious.
- Furthermore, it has relabeled free will (“spirit,” “consciousness”) as myth, fiction, fantasy, self-delusion, etc.
- Finally, as a consequence of this materialism, it has reoriented the locus of agency from the self to the world; stated differently, it has externalized power and responsibility, and thus enslaved the self via the abandonment of free will.
As a consequence of these, modernism has resulted in the development of social, religious, and political structures that no longer resemble our ancestral environment and that no longer reinforce the development of the individual psyche. And so the psyche, which has failed to achieve the self-integration necessary for performance and stress-resilience, instead becomes hyper-sensitive- weak, fragile, reactive; finally, it breaks under pressure. Thus we see nihilism, family breakdown, cultural fragmentation, and mass psycho-pathology.
Ultimately, it has become necessary to imagine a new set of principles sufficient to renew the classical tradition such as the following:
- Principle of Self-realization: We must re-discover the archetypes of the unconscious- in art, culture, and religion-, and we must recognize that it is self-realization that ensures agency and individuation.
- Principle of Humility: We must adopt a principle of radical humility; stated differently, we must accept that we cannot know or control anything external to the self.
- Principle of Responsibility: We must adopt a principle of radical responsibility; stated differently, we must accept that whatever we can know or control within ourselves is and must be enough for the achievement of personal and spiritual fulfillment.
- Principle of Strategic Pragmatism: Finally, we must learn to think strategically and pragmatically about the world, for we are all in a sense competing against one another for our own ideas of what the world “ought to be”- and that dissonance creates pain, conflict, suffering; stated differently, there is no utopia, and we must act accordingly.
This, then, is the foundation of my Heroic Theory.
