Abstract: Our civilization is under the spell of an illusion of heroism causing a collective hubris and fixation on principles, to the detriment of the personal values of the heart. As portrayed in myth, the hero must be allowed to die.
Keywords: sun-hero, suicide bomber, terrorism, Icarus, hubris, individuation, Carl Jung.
Introduction
Western civilization suffers from an obsession with the hero archetype, causing a collective hubris. It is depicted in the myths of Icarus and Bellerophon, and in the fairytale of the death of the sun-hero. An Icarian heroism permeates our whole culture. It implies an obsession with daylight consciousness and its values, which causes the irrational burgeoning life of the unconscious to be burnt off. The scourging sun melts away the wings of Icarus so that he comes crashing down, and a lightning from Zeus makes Bellerophon suffer the same fate. Faster and faster, higher and higher, expansion at all cost, and a relentless search after career, money, and status. Hardly anybody can listen to the faint voice of the unconscious, anymore, but become obsessed with the Icarian premises of career, political correctness, and scientific rigour.
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They have in mind to kill the chaotic forces of the unconscious, and aim to remove any sign of the spontaneous from religious or daily life. The politically correct elite in Western countries have much in common with this programme. They are fixated on principles of consciousness: any signs of burgeoning life originating in the heart and the unconscious soil, must be rooted out from society. For instance, one of the foremost hubristic moral principles is that mankind must be maximated on this earth, and the world's poor must be sustained at all costs, without regard to environmental costs.
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