The hero with a thousand faces

Shame-faced sportsmen have been queuing up lately to apologise for their offensive behaviour, both on and off the sporting arena.

We have seen cricketers, motorcyclists and football players saying sorry for the way they’ve abused officials, slurred opponents, groped women, exposed themselves, fought in public, smashed property, taken illicit drugs and turned up drunk to training.

The list of red faces reads like a who’s who of modern Australian sporting greats – Andrew Johns, Mark Gasnier, Craig Gower, Gordon Tallis, Dean Jones, Mick Doohan and Wendell Sailor have come to grief for ill-chosen words and actions.

But sports pros aren’t the only ones who get bad press for their poor form. In recent times politicians, judges and screen stars like John Brogden, Jeff Shaw, Mel Gibson, and Russell Crowe have been scorned for their sins.

But they are not alone. Today there is a failure of accountability and a breakdown in integrity at the highest levels of male leadership -- in government, business, policing, the military and in the judiciary.

It reveals itself in dishonesty, sexual exploitation, bullying, drug abuse and emotional delinquency. Time and again we see leaders like Bush and Blair and Howard refusing to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

Scandals like the children overboard affair, the deceit over missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and AWB’s wheat for weapons imbroglio saw ministers ducking their responsibility. Incredibly, the investigation into the bungled repatriation of Private Jacob Kovco’s body to Australia concluded that in the end, no one was to blame.

In stark contrast, heroic leaders that lead lives of integrity and service like Nelson Mandela, Jose Ramos Horta, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the Dalai Lama, seem all too few.

In his 1949 book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell argued that heroes were vital to humanity because they convey universal truths about how to live one's life.

By analysing myths and stories and legends down through the ages, Campbell noticed a thread in these heroic tales that was common to every civilisation. In poetry and literature, across cultures and languages, he saw the universal message in what he called the “hero’s journey”.

In high culture, we see heroic journeys in the works of Shakespeare and Goethe and Dante. In popular culture, we see the same message enacted by super-heroes, such as Batman and Superman.

In life and in art we revere those who seek heroic journeys because they reveal what we want most: to live a life of integrity that has meaning and purpose.

While heroes, both real and imaginary, might give us some hope in a world so devoid of heroism, this isn’t their primary function. Fundamentally, they challenge us all to stop living small, ordinary lives and to start living heroically.

Each of us is called, said Campbell, to make the journey from ignorance, to knowledge, to wisdom. On a personal level, the consequence of living unheroically is that we don’t know what we want from life, or how to get it. As a result, we’re likely to feel unhappy and unfulfilled.

Our lack of purpose and integrity eats at us so that privately, we feel worthless in a way that corrodes our sense of self worth. From time to time, this worthlessness bubbles to the surface, and gets expressed in all manner of “bad” behaviour.

On a personal level, the hero’s challenge is this: unless I “grow up” and accept the knowledge and responsibilities of an adult I will become stunted, and destined to behave childishly in my capacities and moods and relationships.

On a societal and global level, our challenge is to demand much higher levels of integrity and accountability from those we charge with the responsibility of leadership.

Failing to do so means that we will get more of the same: wars, terror, environmental vandalism, and a world driven by fear and hatred.

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