1. The Intro: The Illusion of Poverty
The sensation of having no money—Money Dysmorphia—isn’t just a math problem. It’s the visceral feeling that what you spend today isn’t building an asset. It’s just burning away.
Last time, we watched the myth of Public Education Meritocracy and Individual Competence burn. Now, we dig into the deeper root cause of that collapse. It’s the narrative structure hijacking our brains: The Hero’s Journey. Coined by a mystic named Joseph Campbell, this narrative became famous when Hollywood baked it into the DNA of movies like Star Wars.
Let me give you the conclusion upfront. If the Hero’s Journey is the only narrative you know, you are guaranteed to suffer from Money Dysmorphia. This is because the Hero’s Journey narrative lacks narrative leverage, while the broad definition of leverage—a mechanism that achieves a higher level of productivity than one’s own equity—remains identical to that of Parts 1 and 2.
Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero’s Journey’ narrative is a structure that applied only to the pre-modern agricultural era—where uncertainty was relatively low. In those times, one could find salvation by reconciling with the father and diligently tilling the fields within the abyss. But things are different now. Today, it is more crucial to invest in assets with time leverage (such as archives, intellectual property, and Bitcoin), migrate in search of spatio-temporal arbitrage, create innovative content through bricolage, and accurately identify the structures that plunder our wealth. (Note: These are themes explored in the latter half of the ‘Money Dysmorphia’ series.)
If you continue to interpret the world through the framework of the Hero’s Journey, you will find yourself in agony, wondering, ‘I did my absolute best, so why has salvation not arrived?’ The reason salvation eludes us is not a lack of penance, but the disappearance of our economic, social leverage. If a structure exists to plunder our efforts, it is only natural that nothing remains, no matter how much we earn.
In this article, we will examine why Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey narrative actually leaves us mentally impoverished.
Related Articles;
- Money Dysmorphia (Part 1): Working Hard to Stay Broke — The Death of Economic Leverage
- Money Dysmorphia (Part 2): The Collapse of Social Leverage — The Death of Individual Competence
2. Narrative is not for the Hero, But the Survival Manual of the Underdog
Michel de Certeau nailed it. A story, he said, is a subjective interpretation and a record of how we spend our time. Therefore, the ability to construct and decode stories is the ultimate survival skill for the common man. It makes sense. This is because stories transform randomness and uncertainty into inevitability and certainty, thereby conferring meaning and direction upon our lives.
Think about the spaces we inhabit: offices, factories, schools. Their rules of engagement are rigidly fixed by capital, science, and law. In these spaces, your specific context and individuality vanish. You get your paycheck only if you obey. De Certeau was interested in the poaching acts of commoners who don’t own the space. I don’t entirely buy into his liberation theology or romanticization of the public, but his study on how people bricolage their time is fascinating.
The archetypal narrative that moves us is that of David, the underdog who defeated Goliath with wisdom, survived the jealousy of King Saul, and became the king of Israel. Historically, however, once David achieved power, his actions resembled those of a warlord who murdered his subordinates and subjects while extorting protection money. For instance, the atrocities he committed as a man of power—such as committing adultery with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, and orchestrating Uriah’s death by placing him at the front lines of battle—are repulsive.
Contrary to Joseph Campbell’s assertions, David does not move us because he became a hero; rather, we are moved by the courage and wisdom he displayed while he was still an underdog. As Michel de Certeau suggested, a compelling narrative is one that demonstrates how the weak construct subjective meaning in their lives. By witnessing this process, we capture the decisive moments that transform our lives (Kairos) and gain the courage to interpret the world differently. De Certeau’s instruction to poach time was, in essence, a call to reconstruct narrative. Thus, narrative serves as both a survival technique and a tactical manual for the weak.
The tragedy is that modern man only knows one manual: Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. If you can never become that hero, survival becomes a question mark. Without alternative narratives, you lose the ability to adapt when cornered. When the world feels unstable, you simply wander, waiting for a savior to hand you a story of salvation.
3. Social Leverage: The Collapse of the Hero’s Journey
What if the Hero’s Journey actually worked? Then your current expenses and pain are merely the ‘trials’ on your path to greatness. Soon, you’ll acquire a weapon, meet a mentor, smash the oppressive father figure, and save the village. You wouldn’t feel poor.
But what if it doesn’t work? Then your current suffering is entirely meaningless. You’re just bleeding cash with zero return.
(1) What Joseph Campbell Actually Sold
Mythologist Joseph Campbell analyzed the world’s myths. And he boldly declared: Every story shares a single blueprint. The Hero’s Journey.
The structure is simple:
- Departure: The hero lives in a safe, ‘Ordinary World.’ One day, he receives a ‘Call to Adventure.’ Fearful, he initially refuses, but eventually leaves his comfort zone and crosses the boundary.
- Initiation: Outside the boundary lies the wild. The hero walks the ‘Road of Trials.’ He fights monsters (economic crisis, isolation, failure) and enters the inmost cave (inner terror). After this death-like agony, the hero awakens and grasps the ‘Elixir’ (reward).
- Return: The journey doesn’t end there. The hero must bring his newfound wisdom back to the ordinary world. He is no longer normal. He is the ‘Master of Two Worlds,’ sharing his wisdom to save his community.
Campbell framed myth as an archetype constantly churned out by the human unconscious. So, he argued that all religions (including Jesus Christ) and moralities follow this script:
Birth -> Descent into Darkness -> Death and Resurrection/Awakening -> Return and Salvation.
Star Wars stole this structure. Christopher Vogler turned it into a screenwriting bible, skyrocketing its fame, and soon, every self-help book, startup pitch deck, and brand storytelling manual copied this exact template.
Therefore, Campbell claimed that modern mental illness and alienation stem from the loss of these rites of passage. Instead, he observed that young people had become addicted to drugs or consumerism, though he failed to pinpoint the exact root cause. (The truth is that life has become far too safe and comfortable thanks to democracy and the welfare state, making rites of passage—like rebirth through a symbolic death—no longer necessary. People now believe the state should become God and eradicate all individual suffering.)
In my view, Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is logically flawed. He traces the origin of suffering through a psychoanalytic mix of Freud and Jung, yet arrives at the absurd conclusion that one awakens through external assistance to live a life akin to the public ministry of Jesus. Because the diagnosis is incorrect, such heroic lives do not exist, and the hero’s ultimate goal must be presented as nothing more than a mystical ecstasy.
Campbell famously said: “Follow your bliss.” This is a spiritual transcendence where the boundary between pain and pleasure vanishes. Simply put: It’s a psychological high. How the hell do you actually reach this state? It’s hilarious if you read Campbell’s interview book with Bill Moyers (The Power of Myth). Moyers keeps pressing him: “How do we reach transcendence? What exactly is this bliss?” Campbell constantly dodges. He filibusters with random mythological trivia—the Garden of Eden, snakes, Oedipus. His answers are worse than a low-tier cult leader’s.
From this perspective, the very drugs and consumerism that Campbell despised might actually be a more honest path to achieving a dopamine-induced ecstasy.
That’s why orthodox academia, including Lévi-Strauss, ignored Campbell. Campbell’s story was nothing more than the Western myth of individualistic success, repackaged as cosmic truth. Pure American romanticism. But the masses ate it up. Because they harbored a desperate desire to be heroes, they were mesmerized by Campbell’s narrative. “If I just awaken, a mentor will magically appear from the outside world holding a magic elixir!”
Sure, in Hollywood movies, the timing clicks into place right on cue. Reality doesn’t work like that. You have to build a survival structure, endure, and forge your own narrative and meaning. But this narrative programs you to sit around waiting for luck and plot twists. Reality is agonizingly boring. No one knows when—or if—the answer will come. Yet, we still view reality through a Hollywood lens. And that is the fatal flaw.
(2) Problem 1: The Narrow Reduction of Rites of Passage and the Distortion of Religious Essence
To Campbell, a hero is someone who breaks through their inner self to achieve self-perfection, then returns to save the community. To achieve this, the “rite of passage” is crucial. A rite of passage is the turning point where the relationship between the world and the individual flips. Campbell, however, demoted the rite of passage to a mere mechanism for resolving repressive impulses. This leads directly to Freud’s psychoanalytic prescription: you must be liberated from inner repression.
However, this is an excessively narrow understanding. A closer look at the actual history of ancient religions reveals that the rite of passage was a religious ceremony presided over by a priest whose divinity was recognized; its purpose was to guide the initiate to interpret and understand the cosmic order. Thus, it was crucial to recite specific creation myths and offer sacrifices to prove to the gods that one was ready to be severed from the profane world. The rite of passage was a process of unifying human presence with the cosmos by understanding the origins of the world through a return to that sacred time (In illo tempore).
Originally, the rite of passage was a leverage point. It presumed that the individual and the world were intimately integrated, and its goal was to fundamentally alter one’s perception of the mundane through mental and physical awakening. In other words, the basic premise of ancient religion and phenomenology is reciprocal: the world makes you unique to the exact degree that you subjectively comprehend the world. A priest who underwent a rite of passage perceived the world differently from the masses, which made his very existence unique.
Campbell, however, assumes an a priori world that exists solely to oppress the individual. This inevitably leads to the conclusion that one must perpetually wage war against the world to change it through sheer individual force. Yet, if one understands that the meaning of the world is subjectively constructed from the start, the very concept of the “hero” is revealed as a philosophical illusion. By subscribing to Campbell’s narrative, human beings doom themselves to eternal suffering.
The goal is not to become a “fake fighter” (a hero) who views the world as an enemy to defeat. The goal is to become an artist and producer who recreates the world’s meaninglessness into utility through subjective values. Campbell’s philosophy fails to offer a solution to this.
(3) Problem 2: The Production of Fatalistic Helplessness
Along with his misunderstanding of rites of passage, Campbell’s flaw is the asocial nature inherent in Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis takes the oppression and frustration caused by social structures and reduces them to individual family dynamics and sexual or mythical symbols. Take a guy who is humiliated at work and financially unstable.
The correct approach is to analyze this as a problem of labor market structures and job security. But Campbell interprets it like this: “The repression formed in your relationship with your father is unresolved,” or “Your unconscious fear of authority makes you project your father onto your boss.” In an instant, The structural contradictions of society (such as the labor environment and employment insecurity) were suddenly replaced by the abstract concepts of ‘inner awakening and archetypal trials.’ Consequently, those who blindly subscribe to the hero’s journey narrative end up sinking into a deep sense of helplessness. Because they are fighting an internal ghost rather than the external system, they feel that nothing changes no matter how hard they try. Because their epistemological framework—their narrative for interpreting reality—is so constrained… Because their epistemological framework—their narrative for interpreting reality—is so constrained, the Money Dysmorphia caused by the death of economic and social leverage (which we examined in Parts 1 and 2) feels as heavy and unalterable as a fatalistic destiny.
(4) Problem 3: Hero Worship of Mass Society and the Paradox of External Dependency
Another critical flaw in Campbell’s work is his haphazard mixing of Freudian individual psychology with Jung’s concepts of the collective unconscious and archetypes. It is presumed he did this to force a logical link explaining why ‘individual awakening’ inevitably translates into becoming a ‘hero who saves humanity.’ He was so intoxicated by the word ‘hero’ that he attempted to blend two entirely different mythologies: psychoanalysis and Greek myth.
Campbell said, “Luke Skywalker’s (the archetype of Oedipal patricide) most rational moment was when he found the inner resources within himself to handle his destiny.”
This is what Campbell intends to convey through the example of Star Wars: An individual trapped in a fatalistic archetype, walking toward a predetermined ruin, submerges into their deepest inner self. This is akin to wandering through a psychological labyrinth where Freudian repression and Oedipal tragedy are intricately entangled. This painful process of confronting the subconscious wounds and the harsh reality of fate, which one has long avoided, becomes in itself a powerful rite of passage that completely shatters and realigns the trajectory of one’s life. At the absolute precipice of destruction, the moment they finally achieve a re-cognition of their true essence, the chains of tragedy are broken, and the soul ultimately welcomes a spiritual rebirth.
Why on earth did Campbell forge a fusion between concepts as fundamentally incompatible as an individual’s infantile sexual repression and humanity’s collective prescience or archetypes, while simultaneously advancing the illogical premise that emphasizes individual enlightenment yet claims the trigger of salvation must come from the outside? As mentioned above, this is because he desperately wanted to position the concept of the ‘hero’ as the very core of mythic structure.
However, the concept of a hero itself is merely a byproduct of mass society, not an archetypal concept. According to Mircea Eliade, ancient religions and myths do not contain narratives of an individual hero saving the world. It has been revealed that the archaic humans depicted in those contexts were infinitely weak before the Absolute Other, seeking only to obey and unite with the established order. In the ancient world, there were only priests striving for union with the divine and an anonymous multitude; the individual hero did not exist.
Even during the Medieval Christian era, which believed in linear history and the Second Coming of Christ, individual heroes were branded as heretics and executed because they posed a threat to institutionalized divinity. Considering how Gnostic currents—such as Philip, Mary, Thomas, Valentinus, and Marcion, which emphasized individual spiritual awakening—were treated in orthodox Christian history, it is clear that the individual hero did not exist in the Middle Ages either. The glory of salvation was dedicated solely to the Savior, Jesus Christ, while humans were restricted to the role of admiring and worshiping this divine power.
It is more reasonable to view the longing for a ‘preeminent individual leader’—as a product of mass society. Paradoxically, the ideology of the individual hero spread precisely because the authority of the aristocracy and clergy, who once bestowed divinity, had weakened. In conclusion, because the individual hero was merely a secularized version of the immortal divinity, Jesus Christ, Campbell sought to anchor the individual aspect within Freudian psychology, while anchoring the hero aspect within the concept of the collective unconscious and Greek Mythology.
The contradiction to his glorification of the individual hero is the premise that the catalyst for awakening must come from the outside. For instance, did Luke Skywalker suddenly attain enlightenment all by himself in his bedroom? No. Obi-Wan Kenobi, the magical external mentor, had to appear. R2-D2 had to deliver a hidden holographic message. Only after these external events took place did his journey finally begin.
This contradicts Campbell’s persistent emphasis on individual awakening. If the initiation of a rite of passage can only be triggered by something external, the individual is left with no choice but to perpetually wait for that catalyst. Much like a patient waiting for Dr. Freud, the individual is degraded into a passive being. This perspective breeds a dangerous passivity, leading individuals to perpetually look out only for ‘a fateful timing or a destiny-bound savior to rescue them,’ instead of acquiring the tangible skills needed for real-world survival and fostering self-reliance. What we need is not a hero’s narrative, but the insight to pierce through the structures of survival.
(5) Problem 4: The Tyranny of Dogmatism
The fourth flaw in Campbell’s theory is dogmatism. Relying on a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, he repurposes mystical symbols arbitrarily to validate his own arguments, insisting that the hero’s journey is the only valid mythic structure. This effectively erases all alternative narratives that could give meaning to human life.
There are many kinds of stories in the world.
- Why the monk drank sweet water from a human skull.
- How a random act of kindness to a swallow returns as a blessing.
- Tolstoy’s vision that the world is sustained by the quiet altruism of ordinary individuals, not a lone hero.
These stories enrich our interpretation of life. They open paths where, even if you don’t become a hero, you can be a sage. Even if you don’t become rich, you can be a good neighbor.
But as Campbell’s hero narrative merged with the self-help industry and Hollywood, these alternative paths vanished. It accurately pierced the psychology of individuals desperate to be heroes, but it amplified their misery just as much. It left behind no Survival Skills, true structure, narrative for those who fail to become heroes, breeding only the helplessness of watching others achieve greatness on a screen.
Capitalism eagerly stepped in to commodify the external catalyst required to become a hero. This happened not because capitalism is inherently evil, but because the masses were already passively waiting for a trigger to awaken them. Instead of enduring a genuine spiritual trial, the public now purchases the illusion of being a hero on a ‘special journey’ simply by consuming luxury brand products and flaunting them on social media. Because Campbell demoted the rite of passage to a personal level through his Hero’s Journey narrative, modern individuals have come to believe that they can become a new person simply by purchasing a new brand. A society where everyone believes they are the main character is a massive, lucrative market. Coming-of-age ceremonies are the prime example. Parents buy their adult kids cars or laptops. Lavish party videos flood social media. Backpacking trips across Europe. Those who can’t afford to consume these events brand themselves as immature, stunted beings. “Why can’t I do that?”, “Why doesn’t my family have money?”
This agonizing pain is Money Dysmorphia. It is not a numbers problem. It is the visceral sensation of being evicted from the standard narrative. But you don’t have to be a “consumer” to become an adult. Zhuangzi said that the true adult who knows the Dao is the one who properly carves a chariot wheel. Managing an apple orchard or holding a knife in a commercial kitchen—these are also valid ways to become an adult. The adult is the one who controls the field as a producing agent, not a consuming livestock.
Campbell’s narrative refuses to acknowledge this. To the one who fails to become a hero, it offers only one cold answer:
“The flaw is within you. BUT wait for a wizard coming”
It is a structure engineered to brand you with a sense of ontological failure. We need a discourse that proves another path is possible—a narrative not for the consuming hero, but for the producing survivor. Campbell erased that language.
4. Conclusion
The reason I have criticized the Hero’s Journey narrative at such length is that its harmfulness, toxicity, and the sense of alienation it breeds are so powerful that they are nearly impossible to erase from the mind. If, while quietly reading this piece, you felt that ‘an alternative narrative is necessary,’ then my purpose has been served. In the next article, I will return with various engaging topics entirely unrelated to the Hero’s Journey, such as time-leverage investment strategies, the Bricolage narrative, and the Barbell strategy.
Let’s summarize. The sensation of having no money is a problem of social leverage. It is a question of which narrative you use to read your life. You need the internal conviction that the pain and costs you endure today are building your future assets.
But Campbell’s Hero’s Journey fails to provide that conviction. It only hands a sense of failure and self-loathing to the individual who cannot become a hero. Why? Because Campbell fused a single narrative with mysticism to forge a cosmic truth. Compared to the fact that it has become an irrefutable dogma, the scope of interpretation is extremely narrow and theoretically contradictory. According to his narrative, you are either a hero, or a hero-in-waiting. There is no other path. Every other possibility for life is blocked. Failure is no longer a structural problem; it is reduced to your personal lack of Freudian awakening.
Those waiting for an Freudian awakening obsess over external validation—likes and view counts. Those who fail to pay for the standard rites of passage brand themselves as immature. That is how your mind become poor. Your narrative goes bankrupt long before your bank account does.
There are more diverse narratives in the world than you might think. You must hunt for alternative narratives without drowning in the toxic swamp of heroism. The meaning of life is something you build yourself. If you fail to realize this, the mental suffering will only intensify, as the feeling of having ‘nothing left to show for it’ caused by money dysmorphia is compounded by the perceived meaninglessness of a life where ‘I can never become a hero.’
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