Hero's Journey

Description

Joe Corbett:

"In cultural and social systems, the hero’s journey functions as a similar Cosmo-Autopoiesis subsystem pattern within a complex adaptive system. Myths, legends, and ritual templates migrate across communities, diets, technologies, and institutions, yet retain a recognizable shape: an ordinary world disrupted by a call to growth, a sequence of trials that yield new competencies or perspectives, and a reintegration that reshapes social meaning. The journey is not a fixed script but a playable pattern that cultures adapt to their own histories, moralities, and technologies. Just as the Krebs cycle channels energy and builds a metabolic network, the hero’s journey channels collective meaning and social memory, producing cultural “fuels”—shared values, innovations, and institutions—that empower communities to face new environments. Both systems depend on the interplay of constraint and creativity: rules that guide the cycle, and flexible narrative motifs that sustain relevance across time and place."

(https://holo.substack.com/p/spiritual-biology-and-cosmo-autopoiesis)