Daily Archives: August 14, 2021

Let me start with a brief story about a nearly lost man and the simple thing that saved him. Three years ago I was on the road for work, and I was picked up at the airport by a young guy who looked like a vet. We had a ninety-minute trip to the speaking venue, and so we struck up a conversation. I asked him if he served. He said yes. I asked him if he deployed. He said yes, to Afghanistan. I asked how he was fitting in after he came back home.

He got quiet for a moment. He said, Have you heard of Jordan Peterson? I said yes, absolutely. In fact, Id just reviewed his book for National Review. Well, Jordan Peterson saved my life.

How? The story begins the way a lot of veterans stories begin. After he came back from war, he felt lost. He had no purpose. In a flash hed gone from an existence where every day mattered and every day had a mission to a world that seemed empty and aimless by comparison. To put it in the words of a cavalry officer I served with in Iraq, I wonder if Ive done the most significant thing Ill ever do by the time Im 25 years old.

The young man I was talking to had no mission. He also had no mentor. He picked up the bottle so much that he couldnt put it down. Eventually he had suicidal thoughts. How did Jordan Peterson bring him back? He told him to clean up his room. Yep, clean up his room. He told him to get organized. He told him to stop saying things that arent true.

It all sounds so simple, so basic. Dont we need transcendent truths to turn our lives around? Well, yes. But sometimes the process starts with direction and with discipline. Especially for young men. The small disciplines led to larger disciplines. Small purpose led to bigger purpose. And there was my new friendworking hard, in a relationship, and saving for a down payment on a house.

No wonder he was choked up with gratitude.

Why bring up that story? Because of one of the most remarkable podcasts Ive ever heard. Its by Mike Cosper at Christianity Today, and it chronicles the rise and fall of Mars Hill church in Seattle and the corresponding rise and fall of its celebrity pastor, Mark Driscoll. The thing thats remarkable about the podcast is that it spends as much time describing what worked about Mars Hillwhy Driscoll and his church became a sensationas it does describing why it failed.

And we cant start talking about either what worked or what failed without talking about young men like the driver in the story above. Driscoll, you see, was a Jordan Peterson figure before Jordan Peterson. He was a Christian celebrity pastor who understood that many millions of young men were lost. He aimed his ministry straight at them, provided them with a unique version of a boot camp Christian experience (hed sometimes browbeat the men in his congregation for hours at a time), but then ultimately burned up his credibility in the bonfire of his own arrogance.

Driscoll resigned from Mars Hill in 2014, under fire for his harsh, domineering leadership and almost a year after Driscoll apologized for mistakes following plagiarism allegations. Mars Hill Church dissolved shortly thereafter.

Its a story worth remembering, because young men are still struggling with modern masculinity, the church is still struggling to reach them, and Driscolls story is one part guide and one part cautionary tale.

I use the word guide advisedly, with full knowledge of Driscolls deep flaws. But he did see something. He did understand that young men were flailing. Theyre still flailing. Heres how I phrased their predicament in my review of Petersons book:

Theyre deeply suspicious of organized religion, yet they cant escape the nagging need for transcendence in their lives. They want answers to great questions, but theyre suspicious of authority. They want purpose, but they dont know what purpose means apart from careerism. Oh, and all but the most politically correct are keenly aware that mankind is fallen, that men and women are different, and that, while the post-Christian West has allegedly killed God, it cant seem to replace him with anything better.

This is the landscape of spiraling rates of anxiety and depression, of extended adolescence, and of a generation of young men whove been told that masculinity is toxic but not taught how to live in a way that recognizes or even cares to comprehend their true nature.

Driscoll stepped into this void with key insightsthat men need male mentors (thats one of the reasons why boys often respond worse than girls to absent fathers), that men often react quite well to direct and confrontational challenges to their manhood, and that men shouldnt be ashamed that they are strong and often full of competitive fire.

So when Driscoll walked into Seattle life and directly challenged men to get a job, to stop watching porn, to stop sleeping around, and to start supporting a family, It worked for much the same reason the Peterson message resonated a decade later. He gave men a sense of virtuous masculine purpose. Shape up. Protect and provide.

In fact, I joined legions of other Christians in appreciating Driscolls message to men. I excused and rationalized some of his excesses, believing he was doing good work challenging men to lead better, more responsible lives.

(I fully recognize, by the way, men are not all the same. They dont all respond to the same kinds of appeals. The Driscoll blunt approach can repel as well as attract. But it attracted hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands of young Christian men as Driscolls star kept rising.)

But Driscoll ultimately failed. My appreciation was ultimately mistaken, and Ive tried to learn from my own failure of judgment. Even worse, Driscoll didnt just fail as an individual, the way so many celebrity pastors fail; his philosophy and approach failed the men and the women in his church. It caused great harm. And its worth exploring briefly whybecause the why also applies to multiple modern Christian efforts to reach young men.

One of the core reasons for the Driscoll failure (and for other failures before or since) is that he met a cultural overreaction with an overreaction all his own. He opposed a specific secular extremism with a Christian extremism that ultimately proved his critics correct.

Ive written a considerable amount about the secular war against so-called toxic masculinity, and while I recognize that toxic masculinity does exist, its definition often sweeps way too broadly. As I wrote in one of my first Sunday French Press essays, the American Psychological Associations 2019 declaration that traditional masculinitymarked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggressionis, on the whole, harmful represented a formal manifestation of a misguided cultural trend.

Look at the list of characteristics above. Aside from dominance, the characteristics above can be vices or virtues depending on the context. Stoicism can be harmful, yes, but (as Ive argued before) it can be indispensable to helping a man navigate the storms of life with a calm, steady hand.

Aggression seems like a vice, right up until the moment when you need a good man to stop an evil man in his tracks. A competitive spirit can be harmful, but it can also build companies, institutions, and even nations. It can inspire extraordinary innovation.

No, you dont want to jam any person into the masculine stereotype and demand that they exhibit the characteristics above, but when those characteristics are presentand they are in many, many menthe challenge is to channel them into virtue, temper them away from excess, and ultimately subordinate them to the way of the cross.

So whats the Driscoll sin? Whats the common mistake of so many efforts to celebrate Christian masculinity? Its to functionally take the exact opposite approach of the APAinstead of treating these characteristics as inherent vices, the Driscolls of the world turn them into inherent virtues. They glory in aggression, competitiveness, and achievement.

The end result was a theology that conformed Christianity to traditional masculinity rather than conformed masculinity to Christianity. A theology and community that focused on sex differences created a world in which masculinity and male power was central to the identity of the church and the movement.

The most heartbreaking of the podcasts so far was Episode Five, entitled The Things We Do to Women. It discusses how the churchs extreme focus on empowering men and fostering a biblical masculinity resulted in a culture that subordinated women to such a degree that wives were often treated as playthings for their husbandsencouraged to strip for them and perform sex acts that they found deeply uncomfortable and degrading.

But the smoking hot wife was the reward for the godly man, and satisfaction of his insatiable sex drive was his entitlement.

And thus you see the depravity of a thinly Christianized version of true toxic masculinity. What was first a church that challenged men to restrain their vices (Stop sleeping around! Stop watching porn!) ending up indulging men in modified versions of those same vices (You can still have all the sex you want! Your wife is your porn!) At the end of the day, the Driscoll example for young men was dangeroushe sent a message that with daring and discipline, you could become not just a responsible man, but a dominant man.

Thus, perversely enough, Driscoll sanctified a secular version of masculine toughness and virility. The (sometimes necessary) act of grabbing men by their metaphorical lapels and shaking them out of their stupor ultimately pointed them away from the cross and towards the same will to power that has bedeviled mankind since the Fall.

Lets return to the young vet at the start of the essay. Like Driscoll did to young men a decade before, Peterson woke him up. He gave him a sense of immediate purpose. He spoke to a man in the way that so many men understanddirectly, challenging them to do better, to be better. These kinds of direct challenges, whether they come from dads, pastors, authors, coaches, or drill sergeants, can be immensely valuable. Sometimes theyre the only thing that can reach a mans heart.

When you can understand this reality, you can start to see Driscolls appeal. His ministry did change lives. Others like himbefore and sincehave changed lives. And when you change a mans life, you can inspire fierce devotion.

But pastors and leaders must handle that devotion with great care. When countering a culture that often attacks traditional masculine inclinations as inherent vice, the answer isnt to indulge traditional masculine inclinations as inherent virtue.

In fact, in our efforts to define what it means to be a Christian man, we shouldnt center our efforts on masculinity at all, but rather on understanding a persona person who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Driscoll, in all his toughness and swagger, tried to make men out of Christians. The church, however, should make Christians out of men.

One last thing

The Mars Hill podcast also reminded me of this marvelous song by Sandra McCracken. We had the pleasure of hosting her in our home a few years ago, in a setting very much like this. Sandra is talented and a thoughtful, delightful person as well. I hope you enjoy this song as much as we did:

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Why a Masculine Ministry Rose and Fell - by David French - The French Press - The Dispatch

Rule IX: If Bad Investments Still Upset You, Write Them Down Carefully And CompletelyA REIMAGINATION OF BEYOND ORDER BY JORDAN PETERSON THROUGH THE LENS OF BITCOIN.PREFACE

This writing mirrors the exact chronological structure of Beyond Order offering reflection through a Bitcoin lens. This is chapter 8 of 12. If you read the book it adds a second dimension. All quotes credited to Jordan Peterson. All reflections inspired by Satoshi Nakamoto.

But Is Yesterday Finished With You?

Learn from the past. Or repeat its horrors, in imagination, endlessly.

Americans are notoriously bad at history. As Norm Chomsky hinted, America suffers countrywide amnesia. We forget our atrocities almost as soon as we commit them. The challenge with fiat currency is that the lessons are dispensed over decades, if not centuries. In 2020 we witnessed the Lebanese lira implode inflating by 56% in a month. Dig back a hundred years to the Weimar Republic (modern-day Germany) where their currency became worthless in two years. Rome, one of the most studied historical empires, was also undone by the temptation of currency debasement.

America is especially vulnerable because many of us lack an appreciation of history. The moral of monetary debasement is a 100% mortality rate. The citizens of those societies did not have the benefit of opting into bitcoin, but I am willing to bet if it was available it would have been feverishly popular. Currencies are diving headlong into a concrete pool like three blind mice saying, so and so did it so why cant I? Learn from history, to avoid repeating the horrors of fiat currency.

If you do not know what roads you have traversed, it is difficult to calculate where you are.

Bitcoins hard-cap supply is 21 million. The entire blockchains history can be viewed from a full node. More fascinating is the precise knowledge of bitcoins inflation rate over the next hundred years. This historical and forward-looking clarity is insanely useful for everyone to make economic calculations especially in a world navigating through immense turbulence.

In the 1500s Geneva was the epicenter of Swiss watchmaking. Its metronomic accuracy and dependability set the highest standard that lives on in reputation to this day. Its hard to show up for a meeting when you dont know what time it is. Money should have the same steady heartbeat found in a swiss watch. Bitcoin is to money in the 2000s what Geneva was to watches in the 1500s.

We must recollect ourselves or suffer in direct proportion to our ignorance and avoidance.

Weve kicked the can down the road since 2008s Great Recession. A reckoning is coming. We have always complained about the debt but people have had no tools for recourse at our disposal until now. Our government has exhausted all of its tools for a true recovery, focusing on maintaining inflation in a technologically-driven deflationary world. Our government is simply out of touch with the reality that technology is changing everything. What our leaders brand recovery is simply the waning stages of a shipwreck with all hands on deck pretending to prevent capsize. Jeff Booth details our predicament in his book The Price of Tomorrow.

But the body knows what the mind does not yet grasp. And it remembers. And it demands that understanding be established. And there is simply no escaping that demand.

Americans will have a harder time with this new reality because this is our first time confronting the fact our country is bankrupt on multiple dimensions. Getting pushed out of the nest of comfort into the realm of the unknown is fragmenting America. We act in desperation playing a zero-sum game forgetting that a positive-sum game is what took America to the top.

Your instincts tell you that we are deep in a bad place. Theres too much information for your mind to make sense of it. But we are entering a massive paradigm shift. There is no escaping these long-term cycles. Luckily, Peter McCormacks interview with Brandon Quittem, titled Bitcoin is Fourth Turning Money, helps us make sense of these huge macrocycles to better prepare ourselves for the road ahead.

Do Not Fall Into The Same Pit Twice

The memories my client brought into my office had remained unchanged for decades. The memories she walked out with were markedly altered. Which, then, were real?

Secretary treasuries and Federal Reserve chairs have all repeated the same act for decades: increase debt, ignore and avoid debt repayment, and tell everyone that everythings going to be okay. We were told they needed to print more money for economic recovery, for foreign invasions, and to fight the war on drugs. But life on Main Street U.S.A. was good in the 80s, the 90s, and the 2000s, so we all went along with it. Today we look back on our actions in 2003, 2008, and 2020 with horror. Our actions put us in a financial straightjacket. Yet here we are repeating the same cycle again, in part because our government does not have an alternate strategy.

Like every drug story gone south, it felt great then and it feels terrible now. The more we delay the inevitable the worse this all gets. When will we stop repeating the same mistakes with our money? When will we come to terms with what is real? The most real aspect of fiat currencies is their primary role in digging ourselves into insurmountable debt. It is baffling how fiat currency caused such self-inflicting wounds yet so many continue begging for more.

Possessed By Ghosts

Schizophrenics lose the ability to monitor themselves effectively

Schizophrenia is the breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior. Inability to find healthy integration causes a schizophrenic individual to seem out of touch with reality. Similarly, society is struggling to properly integrate technology, money, and humanity. We are all out of balance. To make matters worse all three change fluidly and rapidly.

Bitcoin maximalists know its not about the U.S. dollar price because the U.S. dollar is a moving target. Its about how much bitcoin you own, because that denominator is absolute. If you sell apples and the government prints $10 trillion new dollars and then the price of an apple increases, what changed? The dollar or the apple?

The dollar denominator changes fluidly because no one knows how many dollars exist or will be printed tomorrow. In a world exhibiting increasingly schizophrenic behavior, bitcoins predictable supply curve is the sanity check. When you measure life in bitcoin, everything around you gets more affordable. It is technological money that saves humanity from fiat insanity. Id prefer a less schizophrenic world, and bitcoin may just offer the integration that leads to sanity.

His face had hardened They no longer had the habitual look of deer caught in the headlights. They looked like people from whom decisions emanated, rather than people to whom things merely happened.

Bitcoin is hard money and the community is biased toward taking action because thats the demand of responsibility. Bitcoin maximalists tend not to sit around waiting to see what others do. Fiat currency happens to you because you play the reactive role of the innocent bystander. Bitcoin is an open system encouraging active participation. Its a major difference.

He now understood and admitted enough of the potential dangers that surrounded him to make his way in reasonable safety through the world.

Before bothering with Bitcoin you need to understand how the dollar works. The only understanding you can possibly arrive at is that your society is now a 100-story house of cards, the mother of all Ponzi schemes. Once you recognize the danger your life is steeped you will freeze, fight, or flee. Most people freeze and play possum hoping their daddy will fix everything. Bitcoin is both a fight and flight to reasonable safety from an unsustainable system.

He made what he now knew part of his personality part of the map that would guide him henceforth in his actions and freed himself from the ghosts that possessed him.

Bitcoin is a community made up of strong-willed, independent, free-thinking individuals. And a small, strong group of individuals under constant threat can thrive when each member possesses willpower and competency individually. This is possible because we do not suffer the tragedy of commons. Strength comes when you call bs within your community. We dont need blind yes-men. There is no bottom to the Bitcoin rabbit hole so there is no expectation to know everything. There is united energy in pushing to grow our personal map to free us from being possessed by rules we did not vote on.

Uncomprehended Malevolence

I had another client, a young man who was terribly bullied in his first year of vocational college. When he first came to see me, he could barely talk, and was taking a high dose of antipsychotic medication.

America has become a country of overly-medicated lost souls looking for the next pill to miraculously solve problems. Ironic how the systems that generate products based on infinite growth suffer cancerous outcomes. Society peer pressures us to keep up with the Joneses and when everyone is playing a materialistic game of everything you can do I can do better we all become insecure. But we are addicted to the next fiat solution to dig us out of our shame. Fiat currency has systematically given Americans Stockholm Syndrome. And we all keep falling for it. Bitcoin is the only known vehicle offering citizens around the world the ability to snap free of fiats spell without leaving their country.

he had the right to defend himself He realized that he had taken far too much insult at school without reaching out for help He could have confronted his tormentor directly

The latest report shows 17% (46 million) Americans hold bitcoin. These are certainly encouraging signs. Yet that also means the majority of Americans are yet to confront their tormentor directly. Its telling that legendary investor Stan Druckenmiller is one of the 1%, yet even the 1% are publicly sharing the truth.

We walked through his life, developing a particularly detailed account of everything he had suffered at the hands of his tormentor. He became sophisticated enough to articulate some initial understanding of her motivations.

If you are not able to articulate the problem with national currency then you have no reason to own bitcoin. If you develop a detailed account of what inflation has done to your net worth you may be open to exploring new ideas for the sake of your own survival. Start by understanding fiat currency. Heres insight from Stan Druckenmiller.

Potential Into Actuality

We literally make the world what it is, from the many things we perceive it to be.

Do yourself a favor and listen to Robert Breedloves Saylor Series. It is a crash course on the history of engineering and energy networks. Understanding from first principles makes you impervious to FUD. Energy is prosperity. This weak talk about Bitcoin being an ecological disaster is literally fiat in nature: a juicy clickbait headline with no substance or proof. Michael Saylor easily disarms this FUD with reality.

Not only do our choices play a determining role in transforming the multiplicity of the future into the actuality of the present, but more specifically the ethics of our choices play that role.

Critics love calling Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme full of whales waiting to dump their bags on greater fools rushing in to make fast money. The irony is that the sheer number of HODLers goes to prove the exact opposite. Maximialists understand that only the Bitcoin tourists get washed out with each dump. It all boils down to time preference and those with high time preference lose in Bitcoin. There is something that goes beyond price. It speaks to honest, ethical money. That is why it is so hard to shake. Bitcoin is playing the central role in restoring ethics and honesty to money.

The Word As Savior

we are so captivated by people who can tell a story and who get to the point the moral of the story Such information is irresistible to us all.

The story of money is as old as time. Its often said that money makes people do immoral acts. I believe it depends on the quality of the money. Desperate short-sighted money makes desperate people. Money carries a dirty connotation because most people alive today are living in a monetary experiment and have never tasted sound money. It takes a creative open mind to imagine the positive opportunities that sound money offers humanity. A good story is what people want but Bitcoin tells a story incomprehensible by people tainted with fiat brain.

The Word the tool God uses to transform the depths of potential is truthful speech.

Terence McKenna said, The world is made of language. Bitcoin is language, speech. And it is designed with one purpose: to inscribe an immutable truth to its scroll every 10 minutes. Bitcoin is a tool that transforms the depths of moneys potential.

If Bad Investments Still Upset You, Write Them Down Carefully And Completely

This is a guest post by Nelson Chen. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Learning From Bad Investments Will Lead You To Bitcoin - Bitcoin Magazine

AUGUST 12, 2021

PASTS IMPERFECT IS a new column that explores the impact of ancient pasts on the present. Begun by Sarah E. Bond, Joel Christensen, and Nandini Pandey, Pasts Imperfect is a space for addressing forgotten, manipulated, or misunderstood histories of the ancient world from South America to the Indus Valley and the ancient Mediterranean. We will also highlight how narratives about the past influence the world we live in today, from books and movies to executive orders.

In an interview with The New Yorker in 1965, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke discussed a working title for a screenplay that would eventually become 2001: A Space Odyssey. Called Journey Beyond the Stars, this screenplay about the future had deep roots in mythologies of the past. Kubrick had given Clarke a copy of Joseph Campbells 1949 analysis of mythology, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The journey in their working title was a reference to Campbells book, one which proposed the existence of a singular heros journey (also known as the Monomyth), as experienced by ancient heroes such as Odysseus in Homers Odyssey.

Campbells synthetic, undeniably alluring model presented a hero who reluctantly accepts the call to adventure, using the tribulations of his odyssey to reshape himself into the savior humanity needs before returning home. Campbell claimed his theory, which has gone on to influence everything from Star Wars to Disneys Aladdin, arose from a universal structure inherent in the global myths of antiquity. The problem is, thats a lie. Campbells theory is as mythological as the stories from which it borrows.

Lets go back to 1949 to trace Campbells own origin story.

In the wake of World War II, Campbells Monomyth, a theory about myth and folktales, presented an attractive, simplified narrative pattern as a prescriptive tool to the public with a global spin born in part from Campbells early interest in Native American mythology. Unlike many of his predecessors, he engaged with numerous non-Western sources, shifting some focus from Greece and Rome. Patrice Rankine, a Classicist at the University of Chicago, tells us that Campbells book emerged in the context of the American and British Great Books movement. So, its right in the sweet spot of a Western canon. In this context I actually like Campbell because he elevated non-Western myth. Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and others gained an entry point or foothold through such flattening.

Rankine recognizes that the Monomyth created a more inclusive model, but one which came at the cost of complexity. Most myths with monomythic patterns can be analyzed in different ways for many different functions. To create his hero, Campbell had to depend upon the fallacy of incomplete evidence otherwise known as cherry-picking.

These sins of contextual omission allowed Campbell to weave an attractive narrative that found particular favor with his white midcentury audience. Echoing the ethical egoism of Ayn Rands The Fountainhead, published only a few years earlier, Campbell sold the public on a vision of the individual hero, unfettered from community or history. He gave a postwar readership a seemingly timeless archetype for Americas unique brand of rugged individualism. He also helped to create a niche for the intersection of pop culture and pop psychology, paving the way for less savory exploitations of narrative by people like Jordan Peterson. Peterson has latched onto Campbells use of archetypes and gender roles and interprets them as the means for saving humanity from political polarization.

To demonstrate the ubiquity of the heros journey, Campbell plucked what was useful be it from the myths of the East African Chagga or the tales of the ancient Near East then fit the elements into a prefabricated frame, often, as Kent Huffman notes, without giving the elements proper consideration:

Campbell passingly cites the stories of Buddhism, Aztec myth, and Ovids Metamorphoses as examples of virgin birth, then goes on to recount in detail a Tongan folk tale he calls queer about a mother giving birth to a clam, which in tum becomes pregnant from eating a coconut husk and gives birth to a human boy. Campbell never specifically explains exactly how the image of virgin birth fits into the heroic cycle as he sets it up.

East Asian, South Asian, African, and Native American myths were often reduced to archetypes or misunderstood in service of Campbells thesis. Even his embrace of the Sanskrit word nanda as an inspiration for his famed follow your bliss message was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of its meaning in Hindu philosophy.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces was light on bibliography. But Campbell wasnt actually telling a new story. Less than a century before his book, writers and scholars like Lord Raglan and Otto Rank published observations on the core details common to heroic myths. Indeed, the beginning of the 20th century was a time for typologies of storytelling: Vladimir Propp followed the work of Raglan and Rank with his morphologies of the folktale, ranging wider and farther than his predecessors. Campbell also integrated Sigmund Freuds family drama and Carl Jungs archetypes to wed folktales with psychology. Like a midcentury Malcolm Gladwell, Campbell aggregated these theories and presented a compelling story to new audiences.

Monomythic elements do appear ancient and widespread. We find them in several overlapping cultural narratives, from Gilgamesh in ancient Babylon through Moses, Jesus, and the Homeric Achilles. The fatal flaw in Campbells blueprint is his failure to recognize that the heros journey does not exist in a vacuum. Campbell took little interest in theory or context and was particularly averse to growing fields like sociology or anthropology, and certainly to doing fieldwork. The Hero with a Thousand Faces may have not been wholly Eurocentric, but it plucked at will from global traditions and was definitely crafted for Western consumption.

Campbells theory made the leap from influential thought to universally accepted fact in part thanks to the wild success of George Lucass Star Wars franchise and, later, the PBS series The Power of Myth (1988), filmed in part at Lucass Skywalker Ranch. As Classicist Brett M. Rogers has observed, such cultural validation has inclined storytellers and audiences alike to see this pattern everywhere.

Like many tales of compulsion, Campbells Hero brings dangers to those who put their faith in it. The first is a serious misunderstanding of how myth works. Myths and traditional stories function in specific environments for reasons bounded by time and place. Common traits are interesting, but the differences what we might call variations or multiforms cannot be ignored.

The second is the existence of an ideal form in myth. How we talk about and choose to accept differences is important. Calling one version of a story a variant implies, wrongly, that there is an authoritative and original form. This is a top-down version of storytelling that often misses the significance of the differences themselves. Famous things we think we know about ancient myths are mere possibilities contingent on their time and place. In many stories, Medea did not kill her children. In a majority of tales, Oedipus had children with someone other than his mother.

The Monomyth is the ultimate example of this simplifying of narrative patterns. It reminds us in a way of the Greek myth of Procrustes, the criminal hotelier who cut guests up or stretched them out to fit the bed of his choosing. Campbell started with a thesis and a fictive metric and then cut global myths to fit his Odyssean bed.

Another challenge comes from what audiences know and expect. As defenders of Campbell will argue, much of what he suggests is meant to be allegorical. The heros journey is not supposed to be a simple narrative pattern; it is instead a psychological, even mystical, exploration of the self. But his language, which is derived from myth, is slippery and due to its outsize influence it affects how people understand ancient traditions. Modern notions of the word hero, for example, assume essential goodness or imply selfless deeds on behalf of others. Ancient heroes and figures from myth are anything but essentially good. Within ancient myths, heroes are young people in their full strength; they are part of a generation before the iron age of modern humans, marking the transition from a time when gods and people shared the earth. They can also be exceptional figures who follow a pattern of withdrawal and return to their communities, suffering pain and inflicting suffering in turn.

One of the most troubling things about Campbells Monomyth is its omission of the truth of Greek heroic myth: heroes hurt people. They threaten families and cities. Herakles goes mad and kills his wife and children (even if Disneys version of Hercules lived happily ever after with Megara), triggering his famous labors as punishment. Achilles prays for his own people to die to pay for a slight to his honor, and his beloved Patroclus gets caught up in this. Odysseus returns home after losing his entire army only to kill 108 of his people and hang the enslaved women of his household.

The Monomyth encourages audiences to see themselves as protagonists in a great struggle and all others as either helping or hindering their journey. The use of the Monomyth is in a way nearly perfectly narcissistic. It invites audiences to focus on just one character, to see the world as serving the interests of one singular point of view. In the stories themselves, all other characters are helpers, objects, or obstacles in a heros tale.

The hero with a thousand faces turns out to have a depressingly constant appearance. He projects a toxically masculine, heteronormative point of view that often marginalizes other voices and bodies. Despite some heroes of color in recent years, Campbells narrative offspring have generally been white and male. When we make heroes of women, we often sidestep or mute their sexuality and capacity to give birth (as in the case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and render them essentially masculine. When we cast Black stars as classic or new heroes, audience rage and rejection show that racism is a feature and not a bug of the heroic game.

It is not enough to put the heroic narrative through a diversity, equity, and inclusion workshop. Its structure itself assumes a particular worldview as dominant and casts socially derived personalities as natural. Campbells hero is ruggedly individual; it uses weaker people as instruments; and it has no room for collective action, for families, or for bodies that fail to conform: the aged, the disabled, the sick.

This is not to say there havent been challenges to Campbells universalism. There are plenty of examples of heroic narratives that run counter to the Monomyth: Frank Herberts Dune, for example, presents Paul Atreides struggling against the force of fate and propaganda; Robert Jordans Rand alThor spends 14 books exploring the madness of being a hero; Philip Pullmans Lyra in His Dark Materials tries to undermine gender roles and the marginalization of sexuality.

In recent years, entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) have also looked hard at heroic personalities, just as the danger of heroes has been explored on shows like The Umbrella Academy, Amazons The Boys, and Netflixs recent Jupiters Legacy, which dramatizes the psychological and parental trauma of being the child of a superhero. But we are only at the beginning of the reflective turn. The Randian and Campbellian model still holds sway, both in art and in life. Perhaps the most disturbing recent example of the latter is the way critics went after gymnast Simone Biles for thinking about her health rather than following the dangerous template of the hero they wanted her to be.

Myth does indeed provide a framework for thinking about life, for engaging with it and learning how to live. Heroic myth actually functions to highlight the dangers of violence and war; to outline the importance of families and cities; and to help us think about that most ineffable of mysteries, death. The Monomyth leaves little room for growing old, for having families, for learning to live once the fight is over.

We wont side with Plato and ban stories we think are dangerous to the republic, but we need to acknowledge that stories can do damage. The Monomyth sets up unrealistic expectations. It harms people who dont see themselves represented and it traps people in roles based on the bodies they inhabit, on skin color, race, sex, gender, and ability.

The virus central to the Monomyth is who and what it centers. It is predicated on a view of life that validates using and profiting from other people. Campbellian simplification is a natural complement to American capitalism and the pursuit of individual bliss: it emphasizes the individual and personal over community. The Monomyth is about privileging one kind of story and profiting from it.

In the newly unveiled MCU offshoot Loki, the plot centers on an institution called the Time Variance Authority (TVA). The TVA is tasked with protecting peace within the multiverse by hunting down renegade time variants that may cause chaos and disrupt the Sacred Timeline the primary timeline of the past, present, and future dictated by the mysterious triumvirate known as the Time Keepers. TVA agents think they are helping humanity by preserving, pruning, and policing the singular Sacred Timeline, but the peace offered by maintaining it comes at the cost of the true unifying feature of humanity: the freedom of choice.

Moving out of the MCU and back into reality, there are gains to be made from deconstructing the Monomyth. The idea of an individual but universal path that can lead to redemption, unity, and heroization is undeniably magnetic, but even in Campbells cosmos, it is not available to all. Critiques of the heros journey can show us how to embrace the messiness of myth and accept the inevitable variances in our personal and collective journeys.

Sarah E. Bond is an associate professor of History at the University of Iowa and the director of Undergraduate Studies.

Joel Christensen is professor and chair of Classical Studies at Brandeis University and serves as senior associate dean for Faculty Affairs in the School of Arts and Sciences.

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The Man Behind the Myth: Should We Question the Hero's Journey? - lareviewofbooks

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For the last four years, deepfake videos have challenged reality, turning empirical evidence into an artifact of the past. Can you really trust what you see online?

The technology soon spread out on sites like Reddit, with mainstream media featuring headlines ever more alarming we chronicled the major happenings here.

No matter what you feel about deepfakes, this tech is here to stay and these are the best deepfake videos you should know about. From the funny to the alarming or downright unsettling, we compiled the best deepfake videos through the years and chronicled the rise of this technology.

Deepfakes take their name from the deep learning AI technique and the word fake, so this term means fake images created through deep learning.

Of course, photo manipulation is nothing new, but the academics behind deepfakes brought the concept to videos and changed the world as we know it.

An AI technique that combines existing images and videos to create new images and videos, usually clones indistinguishable from reality, deepfakes came to prominence in 2017 with a viral video of former US President Obama.

As we said in our previous report on this tech, the main techniques used to make deepfakes are based on deep learning, training generative neural network architectures or using generative adversarial networks (GANs).

The first notorious example, the original Obama deepfake, demonstrated a very advanced lip syncing technology where the subjects say whatever the computer tells them to say, without needing to be in the studio and record the voice.

This viral video came after other computer scientists played with images of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin but, back then, the tech was still considered innocent.

In that project, the researchers envisioned their tech being used for better foreign language dubbing in movies and even accurate live video chat translations.

Fast forward a couple of years and the US president is saying whatever is fed into the program, we have deepfake pornography, deepfake voice scams and deepfake apps anyone could use to become their favorite actor. In a very short time, this tech took over the internet.

Indeed, you can make your own deepfakes with just a couple of clicks or taps.

The Zao deepfake app lets you upload an image of your face and turns you into your favorite actor or superhero. While the app was branded more like a face-swap app, the accuracy with which Zao superimposes faces on pre-selected videos is more akin to deepfake technology.

It was the start of the face-swap apps madness and even social media giants jumped on the trend.

First, there were the filter makers of Instagram, who offered premium AR filters to add regular peoples faces into existing videos.

Then, the Snapchat Cameo feature, the first official one from a major social media platform, used deepfake tech to let users add their own faces to different activities and turn the result into a shareable gif.

While these apps were used to create cute, shareable content, the deepfake tech does have a dark side to it.

Privacy experts around the world sounded the alarm on deepfakes and how they could be used to generate fake news. Even actor Jordan Peele took over Barack Obamas face in a deepfake warning about how this tech could impact the social and political landscape.

However, according to one report, this tech could have a more immediate negative impact on regular Internet users.

According to the The State of Deepfakes study authored by cybersecurity company Deeptrace, the majority of deepfakes floating online are porn deepfakes, and not videos used to support fake news. And the numbers paint a very sketchy picture.

The researchers found a total 14,678 deepfake pornographic videos online. Alarmingly, 96% of them were non-consensual.

Deepfake pornography accounts for a significant majority of deepfake videos online, even as other forms of non-pornographic deepfakes have gained popularity, warned the experts, and the broken down numbers look no better.

Deepfake pornography is a phenomenon that exclusively targets and harms women, said researchers, who found the content on deepfake pornography websites to have an 100% female content, unlike on YouTube, where women were deepfaked in just 39% of the videos.

According to their report, all but 1% of the subjects featured in deepfake pornography videos were actresses and musicians working in the entertainment sector.

The authors chose to not publish the names of women targeted by deepfakes but they did provide a breakdown of the most popular categories.

While the entire world was focused on the dangers of deepfakes on the political scene and the effects of disinformation, this tech was quietly spreading as a destructive social force at the most intimate level.

A report called The Double Exploitation of Deepfake Porn focused on revenge porn and IP theft as the more pressing concerns.

First, unsuspecting women are fetishized by the making of a deepfake video, humiliated or subjected to blackmail. Then, the videos used to create those deepfakes are actually the livelihood of sex workers online, who make a living from their original content.

In some cases, deepfake technology has been used as a tool to emotionally manipulate and shame.

In one report, a mother used explicit deepfake photos and videos to kick her daughters cheerleading rivals off the team. She combed through her daughters social media friends, took their pictures, and then used one of the popular deepfake apps to portray daughters colleagues naked, drinking and smoking. A new and troubling case of cyberbullying, this incident highlights the need to create tools to identify deepfakes.

Currently, there arent any apps to detect deepfakes, at least no apps dedicated to regular Internet users.

There is however a project made by a couple of University of Washington scientists, which aims to help you spot images that are actually computer-generated. WhichFaceIsReal.com puts actual photos of people side by side with deepfakes generated by Nvidias AI algorithm StyleGAN, which is able to create almost-perfect portraits of humans.

This exercise can teach you the tell-tale signs of AI-generated portraits, from weird backgrounds to teeth details.

You can also achieve the same results by watching some of the best deepfake videos released so far.

Thanks to Reddit, which was one of the first and biggest deepfake communities since the beginning, there is a wealth of Nicolas Cage deepfakes and each is funnier than the previous one.

Thought this actor had incredible range and a very long IMDB portfolio? Thats nothing compared with what the fake Nic Cage has been up to.

The same goes for the variety of Tom Cruise deepfakes. In one famous video, the fake Tom Cruise is discussing an encounter with the former Soviet-leader Mikhail Gorbachev. In another, hes playing golf.

All of them were viral sensations thanks to the @deeptomcruise account on TikTok. Theyre created by Belgian visual effects artist Chris Ume, who combined deepfake technology with a professional Tom Cruise impersonator to create some of the most convincing deepfakes yet.

Then, theres this impressive use of deepfake technology in documentaries. Director Morgan Neville deepfaked Anthony Bourdains voice to create a narration for the Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain documentary.

When you hear the late chef saying You are successful, and I am successful, and Im wondering: Are you happy?, its actually a computer-generated voice.

Deepfake voices are actually among the first applications of deepfake technology and some of the hardest ones to detect from reality.

In 2019, author and academic Jordan Peterson, a controversial figure online, was targeted with this technology by a website that let anyone create a deepfake Jordan Peterson voice.

The neural network called NotJordanPeterson was trained to mimic the voice of Peterson and released online for anyone to use. Anyone could type anything and have the fake Peterson talk out loud, so the project had plenty of potential for misuse and could be arguably categorized as a very damaging form of cyberbullying. He responded by warning that deepfake artists and the misuse of this technology could make it so that we can no longer tell whats real and whats not.

In another, cuter project, a Jordan Peterson AI model was taught to sing Lose Yourself by Eminem.

Eminem was also the star of another popular deepfake project, one which took a social stance.

The same group who used AI to create a deepfake Eminem diss for Mark Zuckerberg, called Calamity AI, made a deepfake Eminem rap against the patriarchy, featuring a deepfake Kanye West. Notably, the lyrics were also created by AI. The project used Shortly.AI, a text generator based on the OpenAI GPT-3 project, and produced some pretty hilarious lyrics.

But if youre looking for the absolute best deepfake video, it belongs to the Star Wars universe.

With such a large fandom, it makes sense that Star Wars deepfakes would abound but this particular project stands heads and shoulders above all of them.

The Mandalorian Luke Skywalker Deepfake created by a famous YouTuber was so jaw-dropping, LucasFilm actually hired him.

Shamook, the creator of this Lucas Skywalker deepfake, demonstrated the full potential of de-aging technology and made a fake Mark Hamill indistinguishable from the real actor.

Certainly, deepfake technology is capable of transcending the limitations of space and time. It can de-age actors, bring beloved voices back from the dead and turn public personalities into whatever your imagination dreams up. As youve seen so far, its also a disruptive technology that has been misused time and time again, sometimes with scary consequences.

So, what do you think about this technology? Are you threatened by its implications or amazed by its potential? What types of safeguards or deepfake legislation should be created to distinguish the real from the computer-generated?

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What Deepfakes Can Do: The Best Videos And the Deepfake Apps Changing Reality - TechTheLead

Patrick Peterson had previously spent the entirety of his career with the Cardinals, and apparently, he really didnt want to leave, which is why he seems to still have a bad taste in his mouth regarding how management handled his contract situation.

Peterson was the fifth pick in the 2011 draft, as he was viewed as a shutdown cornerback who could also spark explosive plays in the return game. And while both were true at the time, NFL teams eventually realized its not wise to have superstar-caliber players on expensive contracts on special teams duty. But he did return a few punts in late-game scenarios when the Cardinals were in need of a big play.

And while Peterson was a great player for the Cardinals for roughly a decade, his coverage skills have declined over the past few seasons. Hes just not the same player he once was, which isnt surprising, as he turned 31 last month. And thats probably why the Cardinals chose not to re-sign him during the offseason.

Instead, the Vikings inked him to a one-year, $8 million deal with the Vikings. And while Peterson is focused on the future, he clearly hasnt forgotten about how the Cardinals treated him during contract negotiations.

I was just frustrated and upset at how upper management handled the situation, Peterson said, via The Athletic. You tell me one thing, then when its time to talk, you turn your shoulder on me like its cold shoulder. Ive been in this league a long time. Thirty years old. Grown man. Talk to me like a grown man, not like a child or your side piece.

He also explained why he settled for a one-year prove it deal.

Im willing to bet on myself for this season knowing the salary cap is going to go back up, and I can have opportunities to come back to the table and get more than what I got this year, Peterson said.

It sure looks like Peterson will be motivated to stick it to his former team this season.

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Patrick Peterson shares frustration with Cardinals over past contract negotiations - Yardbarker