The Low and welcome to Mythic Mind. We pursue wisdom in the past between primary and secondary worlds. I'm your host, Andrew Snyder, and I am always grateful.
For your company.
Hell and welcome back to what I think is now our third or maybe fourth show without skipping weeks. And I personally really like this model. I like this frequency, and I would love to keep it up, So be sure to check out patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind and lend support if you would like for me to be able to keep this pace. But more on that later. For now, I want to go ahead and move into
this week's conversation. I recently spoke with Chris Jackson, who has drafted a book that deals with the ideas of legacy and the hero's journey, which are definitely important issues for me. I mean, who are we? What's in a name? What is the context in which we lead our lives? And how ought we to see ourselves within the bigger picture of the world around us, as well as of course within our families and the lives that they touch.
When Chris reached out to me to talk about this, I was really glad to set up this time to talk. And now let's go ahead and get to it. All right, Welcome back to Mythic Mind. Today, we're gonna be talking with Chris Jackson, who is well at this point he's drafted a book and I'm dealing with legacy and hero's journey and all kinds of stuff that we often talk about. And so Chris, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much for having me. Andre really appreciate.
It absolutely, and so I'd love to begin by having you just introduce yourself, tell us little bit about who you are, what your background is, and what led you in this direction.
Sure, no, thank you, Andrew.
I mean, I guess, you know, pre starting my career, I I grew up kind of very much introduced by my parents to the great myths and histories of our time, I guess. So you know, I grew up very early on with the fascination for Tolkien, the Lord of the Rings, some of the Greek myths. My parents are both very spiritual. My my mother's a lay preacher within the Methodist Church, so I have that kind of angle as well.
So again I grew up with a lot of C. S. Lewis and the Narnia stories.
When I was a kid, and I took a huge amount of inspiration from those I just found like the magic, the words, the underlying.
Themes just just spoke to me.
I guess I love them, and so you know, that kind of led again. My mother's a historian by training. I did a history degree as kind of a result and kind of following her footsteps. And when I then got into the corporate world, I guess and started my career. You know, I came into it with this great sense of Wow, this is going to be amazing. I can really make a mark on the world. And I guess I worked hard, applied myself, rose quickly, rose into leadership roles.
But throughout the whole period, you know, both for me and colleagues around me, it wasn't particularly fulfilling. You know, we'd always been brought up with this concept of success and a need to kind of if you work hard, you'll be really successful, and you know that will solve
all your problems and things. But the further you got into it, the more and more you realize that actually most people who were successful, or just even working hard towards success, are not very happy, the fairly miserable, the targets.
The life that.
You're leading is you know, it doesn't add any value to be honest, even to the company quite quite often a lot of the time. And so that kind of sparked, you know, I kind of took a step back to my roots, I guess, and started looking at, well, what is it that people that really motivates people, and what
is it actually speaks to people? And by looking at you know, or talking to colleagues, by looking at these old inspirations that I'd had, and looking at some of the names through history, so well, what is it that
actually makes people remembered? And that kind of got me down this path of looking at legacy and why legacy is really rather than looking about yourself, it's about looking at other people and making a positive impact on others, because ultimately, what a reality is nobody cares about your success.
Success is inherently selfish. You're just looking about yourself.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it doesn't have any value to anybody else. It makes no impact, it's
not particularly fulfilling. And yet the people who we remember, whether it's Socrates through to Gandhi or Martin Luther King, they you know, they've really made an impact on what they resonates, and you look back at you know, the Lord of the Rings and things like that and why that resonates, and you start to realize that there might be a bit of a common theme there, and it's not necessarily about the success, but it's about what they've done for other people and that impact, and that kind
of let me down that path, I guess.
Yeah. I talked about this a lot with my students.
You know.
Right now, I'm teaching a course kind of intro philosophy religion called Life, Death and Meaning, which is all about how do you live a life of meaning with the knowledge of the fact that you're going to die? Right that is the fate of all mortals. And so if there's going to be a legitimate answer to that, if we're going to say that life does genuinely have meaning, and I certainly believe that it does, the question has to be what is able to stand in the face
of death? What is the grave not going to wipe out and whatever is left? I mean, that's where we need to double down. And so it definitely seems like you're you're moving in that kind of direction, and so, you know, you've talked about you talked about success and how a lot of people, I think, just don't really ask the question what does it even mean to be successful? And so you kind of already hinted at it with your intro, But how are you defining success? Or what? Yeah,
what is success? I just asked that as probably as I game.
Well, and that's the that's the interesting thing because actually, during you know, as I wrote my book, you start to see that success just means whatever you want it to mean. And you know, I ask when I do mentoring with people or when I when I talk about this topic in general. Now I always ask people, will you know, in today's society, if you become the CEO of a major business, you're pretty successful, right, And they go, well, yeah, cool, So how many Fortune five hundred CEOs can you name?
And the answer is almost none. So these people who we kind of aspire to be, they're making no impact on us on a day to day basis. And then you can look at but the ones that they can name, you know, might be Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Henry Ford. If you go back far enough there, you can argue the toss about whether it was it's a positive legacy they're building. But and again we can unpack positive and
negative legacies shortly if you want to. But the fact is that they've made an impact on her lives because they set out to do something bigger than just make money. And then it's the same. You know, you can look at CEOs and why we can name so few of them. But then I'd also like to give you know, a probably extreme example. Well, yet we all know Rosa Parks, and Rosa Parks did a huge amount in terms of her life. You wouldn't necessarily call her successful in the
traditional sense of the word. Yet she changed the world by you know, an action on a bus. I mean she did more than that, but that's what she's mainly remembered for, I guess, or what she's most famous for. And so success to me means whatever you want it to be. You can wake up and say, yeah, I'm I had a successful day to day. I put my clothes on so cessfully. But it's it's very personal. It's
just what you want it to mean. Whereas I think legacy, by contrast, is something that's lasting and it actually takes it relies on other people. Other people have to see value in it and have to want to pass it on. And I think you mentioned it in one of your articles or episodes back in April. I think it was Andrew where you said, you know, for something to endure for so long, it has to has more than simple entertainment value. It has to speak to us on some
kind of deep level. And that to me is legacy.
Now.
It can apply across lots of different areas, you know, if you're looking at from a business perspective or a humanitarian perspective or a philosophical perspective, but it has to resonate with people, and it has to has to be something that people kind of feel at a deeper level.
I think, yeah, I think I think it's a good point, and I like you emphasizes the fact that success divorced from legacy really become self referential. You become isolated. And I mean this is exactly how C. S. Lewis portrays Hell in The Great Divorce, right. It's radical isolation where even the home in which you live is nothing more than a projection of your own thoughts. It doesn't even keep out the rain. It's just sort of this illusion
of security. And that's really what self referential success only ever, is it's a kind of an illusion of meaning. It might be meaningful to you, but again you're still caught up in yourself. You have to have that broader What impact am I actually making in the world around me? Now? I mean, obviously we don't see a lot of the impact that our lives have, right that the majority of
our impact is going to happen after we die. That it's just as the things that we do reverberate throughout time moving forward, And so.
How do we.
How do we create a positive legacy? How do we work toward that recognizing that, like we don't know what the consequences of our lives are really going to be in so many levels, Like how do we keep that in mind?
Yeah, I mean it's a great question.
And I think the way that I've chosen to explore it in my book, or the framework that I've given is this concept of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. And I think I've chosen that one because it resonated with me and I could make sense of it.
But I think also if.
You look at a lot of the great stories that we love, you know, whether it's the Lord of the Rings, whether it's Star Wars Harry Potter, or if you look at something like the Odyssey Gilgamesh potentially, and then I guess if you look into into scripture as well. You know, one of the more famous ones would be Jonah and the Whale. But I use that as a framework to say, well, look, there's a there's a these stories really resonate with us.
There's something about these stories that really speak to us more deeply that you know, whether they're a fantasy story like Lord of the Rings or whether they're a myth, or even if it's a person's life. You know, if you can take that arc, they really resonate. And so
why do they resonate? And so I kind of use that, you know, backed up by a number of articles which I cite throughout the book from modern psychology, even that they resonate with us because there's something there that we can and potentially should unpack ourselves and use to inspire us. You know, the Lord of the Rings shouldn't just be inspiring because it's a great store and it speaks to us,
speaks to us on that manner. The reason it speaks to us in that manner to me is that there is action that we can take through that, and I guess the hero's journey kind of underpins that.
Okay, Now, I'm sure a lot of people listening are at least vaguely aware of Campbell and the hero's journey, and I admit that I'm only aware through secondary sources. I haven't actually spent a lot of primary time with Campbell, And so can you just tell us what does he mean when he talks about the hero's journey? I know that's important for your book, So can you just kind of give a summary or to kind of unpack that a little bit?
Yeah, of course, And again I'm I'm a real specialist in Campbell, have not done any thesis or anything like that. But essentially, Campbell wrote about this idea. His concept was of what he called a mono myth. So it was an idea that resonated. If you unpacked stories, religious and otherwise from around the world, a lot of the most famous stories and a lot of the key tenants within them, you could ascribe what he called the hero's journey to them.
Whereby there was a start of a journey, someone would, you know, potentially feel a call to action or adventure, as he put it, they might resist that call. So again with Jonah, you know, he calls it the belly of the Whale potentially where Jonah is refusing to do what he's asked and he's kind of swept along anyway through to what he calls a road of tryals. You'll find a mentor who will help you, so you know, again in the Lord of the Rings it might be Gandalf.
In Star Wars it would be Yoda, who will help you kind of develop as you go, but they can only take you so far.
There will be.
Huge obstacles to overcome along the path, and then you know there's a major challenge towards the end, there's a moment of transcendence and then you kind of come back down to Earth. I guess to share the value of what it is that you've that you've learned, and I think you know again you you've kind of unpacked this in certain episodes before, but you know, the task is made to be difficult because it's only difficult things that kind of inspire you to to really find out who
you can be and really push yourselves. And that's kind of where the nobility lies.
I suppose yeah, and so that that monomouth idea, and it's basically this idea that that is the basic framework of nearly any great story. Correct exactly, Yes, Okay, So why do you think, like on the psychological level or theological or wherever you want to go with this, Like, why do you think that is the case that you know, you can look at all these great myths, even from you know, disconnected cultures, disconnected times and places, and this seems to be the basic structure of myth of a
good story. Why how do we account for that?
Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a really interesting question. I mean, I think probably it comes down to something that you say a number of times yourself, is like that there's a there's a kind of a central truth
about that. People understand that in order to really live a fulfilling life and to really grow as a per and to add value and do something heroic, not necessarily a sword wielding sense, but you know, kind of heroic has in a kind of really valuable, courageous way for society demand something demands you stepping out of your comfort zone. And I think there's a real degree of truth within that that just resonates with people a kind of spiritual emotional level.
Yeah, you know it. As far as modern relatively modern psychologists go, I definitely appreciate young who plays a part in some of these conversations, who would say that they're you know that basically the miss the Greek mythologies, even just today modern stories, that they are really the sort of like the waking dreams of the geniuses, right, the people who are able to make these great myths that just as dreams, you know, they don't don't come from nowhere,
that they come from something. It's mostly our you know, unconscious kind of working its way up and trying to make sense of what we understand without understanding it, and that in large part that's kind of what these great miss are. So it's what Homer was doing. And so when he's you know, spinning out these great miss he's consciously or unconsciously sort of tapping into something real about
the human experience. Which is why these great stories of the past indoor till to today and we can still look back on them and recognize that there's something genuinely true here. And this isn't something that I really understood until I mean, relatively recently. The last few years. You know, I was not in a voracious reader growing up as
a child. It really wasn't until I was nearly finished my doctoral degree that I finally recognize that there's truth in fiction, like I just as so like Indy dated with this modern idea of well, fiction is just make believe in non fictions true, And that's just that's just a total misunderstanding as to what stories are, what literature is. And so that realization I just shifted the whole trajectory of my life. And and so a lot of what you're saying here I still consider to be like fresh
and exciting. Now you talk about that there are some different pathways to legacy. I mean, obviously we aren't all going to achieve the same legacy in the same way, and so what are some some of these different routes to legacy or if it forms that building a positive legacy, what can that look like.
Yeah, it's one of the things I talk about before we kind of jump into that is a scale of legacy as well. Right, A lot of people can't, oh, I want to change the world, But you can leave a legacy on your local community. You know, you can leave a legacy on your family obviously, but you can leave a legacy on your local community rather than having
to be national or internationally in scope. And a lot of the time, you know, it's it's those small, humble deeds that don't necessarily get noticed that far more valuable than the greatest intentions that never get enacted. And so, you know, one thing I would always encourage is, you know, to think about the some of the architects of legacy that I kind of will talk about in a second, but you know, they don't have to be huge grand ideas. You can change the life of a person, you can
change the life of a group. And I think sometimes people get too caught up on the grandiose and then don't take any action, which is I think that the biggest failing of all.
Right, yeah, and that's just I think, in many ways, the grain and I'm going to go change the world, it's really just a way to you hide from our actual immediate responsibility because we say I'm going to go change the world. Well, that's such a grand objective that there's really no specific entry point, and so we don't actually do anything other than maybe rouse up some heroic sentiments and you know, post something on Twitter, if you like,
wal accomplished something. But it's a lot harder to actually just take care of your immediate responsibilities in the world around you, which is how we're meant to live. Right. We are localized creatures. We despite the illusions that we get through social media, and you know, just the constant connection we have to the world like we are local creatures.
We are not omnipresent. We are not omniscient. And so the path of legacy, I agree, it starts with right where you are, clean your room, put your life together, take care of your immediate responsibilities.
Well, and anything else then becomes just ego.
Really, if you set out change the world, that's that's you and you want to look good as opposed to saying, well, actually, there's a need here, there's a need there, And some people will have those grand ideas. You know, I want to land on Mars, I want to create an electric car.
Cool But a.
Lot of the time did those didn't start out as well? Bang going to make a rocket that goes straight to Mars. There's still steps that have to be taken. And if it grows, you know, if it if it's ripples in a pond and out they spread superb but it doesn't have to be that. And I think you know, to go answer your answer your your initial question Andrew that the first step.
Is is courage.
Frankly so, and I guess to take a step back again, I'll talk about four archetypes. I'm not saying they're the only ones, that they were the four that I managed to come up with for the book. I'm sure there are. You know, people will argue that I argue the value of some of them, but some of them will overlap. So I think from my perspective, if you have you can leave a legacy with a single a single archetype.
But the more the more attributes you show or you're able to to develop, the more likely you.
Are to leave a legacy.
In my mind, in in some shape manneral form. The first one, as I say, is courage. And I think without without courage, you're not going to leave a legacy at all. Because the difference with legacy as as opposed to success, which is why it's harder to leave and create, I guess is that it needs to be different, and almost by definition it takes some courage to be different.
And again, whether that's doing something crazy, physically brave on a battlefield, or whether it's just doing something like Rosa parks and refusing to give up a seat on a bus, all of those things take courage. And I think the what resonates with people first and foremost is often courage. It's the courage to do something that other people know is the right thing to do, but they know deep
down they wouldn't do themselves. And so if you're unable to live your life with courage, you know, when you get to these difficult noble ideas or challenges that you have to go through, most people will shy away from them, as Joanah did with with the whale.
You know, I don't really want to have to do that. You kind of leave it for somebody else.
And so I think that anybody who is able to step above that and kind of transcend the mass, it has already taken a step in the right direction. Does that guarantee legacy? Absolutely not.
But I don't think you can leave legacy without without courage. First.
Now, courage is obviously not easy to come by. I mean, most people today don't want to answer their phone in a ringu, especially with a number they don't know, and so you know, in a I mean I can't speak to all cultures, but definitely in our culture, I think courage is a rare commodity. And so how do we go about cultivating courage? If you know, we're just kind of afraid of the world, right, we're all wound up in anxiety, how do we step out of that and start to cultivate real courage?
Yeah, and it's something that I talk about.
I actually spend a chapter trying to unpack it within the book in terms of you know, how might you do that?
And here are some simple things that you can take.
And actually I draw quite heavily on a martial arts instructor who I've been privileged to work with a little bit. I spend a lot of time doing martial arts growing up, and he talks a lot about fear management. Is a guy called Tony Blauer, and he really kind of unpacks it, like you need to start small. I mean, there's a whole concept that he talks around, but at a very simple level. You know, he talks about like just indoctrinating
yourself slowly on a day to day basis. So it even gives the examples of like you know, you're a restaurant, you don't really like the meal that you've got, did you say, oh, yeah, it's lovely and keep eating. We actually, no, I'm going to send that back because it's just, you know, created a little bit of friction there that a.
Lot of people like to turn away from. I'm British.
The Americans are much more, much more comfortable at sending things back than the Brits are. The Brits would would eat almost something inedible before they would try and make a fuss.
So it's certainly something for me to work on.
But little things like that, or you know, if you see something that you don't feel is right at work, politely challenging it back rather than just accepting.
It for what it is.
It's some people are more naturally brave, I would imagine that than others.
But it's not something that you can.
All that most people can just jump into and go, oh, well, I'm going to do this crazy, wild thing. You need to kind of get used to it and build up. You know, it needs to be trained in the same way that most things need to be trained, and that that to me has been very useful and realizing when you're when you're scared, and what to do about it. You know, again, you're going to find situations where, oh I wish I wish i'd done that differently. I got scared, Fine,
be aware of it, move on and try again. You know, coming on this podcast to a degree is slightly nerve wracking because it's something I'm you know, I'm talking about my book for the first time with somebody who is you know, talking about it and critiquing it, and so you know, you have an egoes, so well, I want this to be good.
I want this to be good. So start small and.
Just push a little bit outside of your comfort zone and that's where you'll start to find the growth. And most of the time you find out that it's not as bad as you think it's going to be. Blower also talks quite a lot about the concept of fear as an acronym false expectations appearing real. You know, a lot of the time you get an idea in your head about how something is going to turn out, and
usually it doesn't turn out like that. And there's a big distinction between danger, which is very real, and fear, which is largely psychological. And you know, realizing that when you push yourself outside of your comfort zone. Most of the time, it wasn't as bad as you think. Will allow you to kind of get some growth and start in the right direction in a slightly easier manner.
I guess, yeah, and that makes sense. I mean, you're basically treating your general fear as a lot of times, how horphobians get treated, right, it is through incremental exposure. And so you start to get more comfortable with yourself in new environments, and you know, it's kind of work
your way out from there incrementally. And also, I mean, I think that this is where myths and stories can come into view, whether you're reading nonfiction or fiction, read about heroic things that's set your gaze on courage, and then you'll see that reflected back into your own life,
I mean, in my life, death and meaning class. In addition to have them reading some classical philosophy, also have them read stories like Beowulf, which you know, in that story, like you have this hero who doesn't spend a lot of time asking himself like how he feels about doing things. It's just there's a need. He jumps and he does it.
And I think that looking at that kind of heroism and then just sort of almost I think if you're mentioned a good story, that's going to become to some level part of who you are, where you know, you're so used to looking at what heroism looks like, then eventually you recognize that you are becoming something like what you're seeing, what you're being involved in.
And so yeah, no, I was gonna say that goes back to what you were saying earlier, where where myths are often more real than.
Science.
So because it creates that role model and it doesn't matter whether that person was real or not, or if you look at something from history as a legend, it doesn't matter whether they did it or not. It's inspiring to you as an individual, and it's like I want to be more like that person. Yeah, so I totally agree with you. Yeah, and I think it's that to me was the magic of something like Lord of the Rings. You know, I wanted to be Aragon when when I when I grew up, that's someone who I want to be.
And now you're kind of looking a well, actually maybe
Frodo was the better person to want to be. But you know, it's it's interesting, but as you say, you take that inspiration, and that to me is where myths can be and stories in general can be so much more valuable than reality because reality, particularly if you had like the modern way of looking at it, which is often very scientific, and you can't well, it wouldn't be like bad or whatever, You're right, but it removes all of the magic, the romance, Like there's no inspiration or emotion there.
It's the these stories that really spark that.
And the reality is that anything we meaningfully call reality ultimately is it's a narrative. It's a stringing together of facts and data. You know, even in the scientific realm that we're stringing together these ideas. We're viewing these different ideas with meaning, with a narrative structure, and so narratives
are real. This is why I like how C. S. Lewis talks about the value of myth in that the what's true in a myth is eternally true, as opposed to the myths of particular things that we experience in the day to day world given over to change. And so you know, while we when we look to what is eternally true, that then gives some grounding to the particular truths that we encounter on a primary world level.
And I think that, I mean, I don't know how, you know, abstract and philosophical, we need to get with this, but I think that we need more being to anchor our becoming and having that kind of rest in unending realities, like recognizing there is something like goodness. I think that that is what gives us confidence, recognizing that even the
word confidence, you know, confide with faith. Right, it's this idea that we are able to rest in something that is stronger than ourselves, and in so doing we gain more strength. In other words, like we're not living for ourselves, which again brings us back into that legacy model of we're not just looking for personal success, but we're contextualizing ourselves within a bigger reality and in so doing we ourselves become bigger. And I don't have a conclusion of that monologue.
But no, I completely agree with you.
It's you know, if you if you only focus on yourself, you can't really grow. And if you're really looking at as you say, that foundation, it goes all the way back, like there's that there's that one single stand of truth.
Everybody resonates or understands the concept of those stories, and we're in a yeah, very very different society now than we were two thousand, four thousand years ago, and yet there are stories that still persist all the way through or that we've essentially rewritten into another story with this kind of hero's journey concept that just speak to people. And they would have spoken to people four thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, just as they would would do today.
And as you say, it's.
That that single truth, and there's that understanding that there's a single truth, there's a single goodness that kind of runs through this that that people just inherently understand.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's evident to anybody who's been engaged with minds of the past that human nature fundamentally is not changed, right, culture changes, technology changes, but that people are people anywhere, anytime. And that's why, as you said, in these stories from thousands of years ago
still resonate today. And even when people haven't read some of these ancient myths, they've encountered them without recognizing it in the various ways they've been appropriated throughout our culture. They have enduring value because well, again I think they speak to eternal realities. Now obviously not all legacies are good. So, yeah, you talk a little bit here about the dark side of legacy. I mean, what do you mean by that? And how do how do we end up in that place?
Yeah, I mean it's it's a good one. I wanted to call it out because you know, as you as you go through or as I went through my writing process, you're always aware that will you want to write this is from a positive perspective, and that there are you know, I think there are archetypes the underpin why people get remembered, but there are just as many people who get remembered for for terrible things.
And how do you therefore account for that?
You know, Hitler, for example, would be would be a fairly obvious one, but you can you can kind of take your pick throughout history, and I think again it's the counterpoint to the good in my perspective. So you know, you remember Hitler because we know that there is We know what good is, and therefore, by definition, you know what evil is. And therefore Hitler becomes that cautionary tale of well, this is what happens if good people don't act,
you end up with with evil. And so I think for you know, each of the archetypes that I look through. I mean, you, Hitler was probably brave. I mean he did something. You know, it took some kind of warped courage to go through what he did. But there's a very bad flip side to that. And I wanted to call that out because again, it's very easy, I think, to just say, well, I want to leave a legacy, Yeah,
but at what price? Do you want to leave any legacy or do you want to leave a specific legacy that's positive, that resonates, Because again Hitler will always resonate, but as a cautionary tale about what not to do in the stock is possible sense. So I think, you know, there will always be that flip side. If there's good, there's evil.
Now surely Hitler, I mean we all agree he was an evil man did evil things. But that being said, surely he didn't see himself as such. You know, the road to hell is paid with good intentions, So how do we how do we guard against that? And you know, how do we know that whatever it is that we see as the positive legacy we ought to lead, that's not going to be you know, condemned in you know, a couple hundred years, like, how do we actually know what we're doing is good?
Well, and it's even that last question Andrew is interesting, right, because legacy changes through time. You look at Winston Churchill and you know, at the time I think it was it was probably when when we hit the year two thousands and they were doing all kinds of stuff like across the last century, and I think Winston Churchill was voted the greatest ever Britain at that point. Now you look at it and people are saying, oh, yeah, but you know, he was a misogynist, he was an alcoholic,
he was quite possibly racist. So legacy is going to change over time, which does make it tricky because you can only act within your time based on the reality that you live in at that point. People will change their own reality as you go. But for someone I mean, Hitler's an extreme example, because I think you would probably end up saying that there are psychological issues at play
there and things too that need to get tracked. But if you bring it back to a more slightly more manageable level, I guess I think it's making sure that you don't get divorced from reality and staying in touch and listening to what other people are saying in the widest sense, not just a little clique of people around you, but actually paying attention to that.
So there's.
There's an interesting example I gave in the book, might even be in the first chapter where I talk about Alfred Nobel. And Nobel is obviously known really today for his work with the various Nobel prizes that he does not least the Peace Prize, but he became incredibly successful
and incredibly rich during his lifestyle designing weapons. Essentially, he was doing various forms of developing various forms of dynamite and explosives, and in his mind he was building a positive legacy because the weapons that he was creating were so terrible that nobody in their right mind would ever want to use them. It was his argument, and that was how he kind of, you know, tricked himself, I guess, talking about the road to good intentions.
But it was only when.
He read an article in a newspaper where his brother had died. And his brother was pretty well known at the time as well and very successful in his own right. But the journalist who wrote the article obviously confused the two of them and led with the art with the headline that the merchant of death is dead, and it was so essentially Alfred Noble ended up reading his own obituary while he was still alive and suddenly realizing, well,
is this actually how people view me? And then basically he spent the whole of his life being successful, or he spent the vast majority of his life being successful. Then he had this epiphany when he read the article and spent the rest of his life trying to undo the success that he'd built and.
Completely changed his legacy, which I guess to rade or lester extent he managed to do so. Again, I think it's.
Keeping your head up and not just not just focusing on yourself throughout this. There's always a danger, right when you're trying to do good for other people and you're trying to the ego takes over and that it becomes about well, are you actually doing this for other people
or are you doing this for actually for yourself? You just kind of want to look good and it sounds cool, and so being able to take those steps where you can stay plugged into society in such a way that you can accept criticism and say, okay, yeah, you know, I'm not going to listen to all criticism because you
just you don't want to be a pleaser. But finding that balance where you know, if you're finding enough feedback that you have to be able to process that and consider that you may not be right and that you
may need to change change direction. And I think something that I try and unpack at a certain stage later on in the hero's journey, where you know you've you've done all the difficult stuff, as it were, You've fought the bad guys, you've been triumphant, you've succeeded against the odds, and then you.
You've made it to the other side.
But there's a huge temptation at that point, Oh yeah, I've done it, and I'm gonna I'm going to cash in on that, and I'm gonna I'm going to take the fame, I'm going to take the glory, I'm going to take the girl, rather than continue that journey and make sure that it's you know, now imparting what I've learned to other people and actually finishing the journey, as opposed to just getting distracted by the beautiful trappings that
that go with earning the treasure. You know, if you you can find the treasure, but you've got to take it back to other people to share. Otherwise, you you know, you've you might leave a legacy, but you've stopped. You've not really your legacy is open to to interp rotation. There, and you see that, I think you know quite a lot.
You'll see people like Henry Ford is one as an automotive person invests an incredible legacy, but you could there are certainly large parts of his legacy that you might look at and say, well, they were quite quite dark. You know, you don't have to look very far to find out some of the things that he some of
his opinions on race, for example. And so it's it's about maintaining yourself as a as a rounded human being rather than just focusing on well, this was the one strand that I wanted to to unpick and that's all I'm focusing on because I think you can become self obsessed at that point.
Yeah, and to speak to part of that hero journey you're just laying out about bringing the victory back home. I mean, you've talked about Lord of the Rings a good bit. I mean, and this is why we've got the Scouring of the Shire. Is the end of the book, it's we need to bring that the battle back home. We need to you know, cleanse the evil in outside our own front door into you know, it's not just when you go destroy the ring, but we need to undo the effects of the less of power back home.
It's not until you go back home. It is the journey over, and even then it's not really over because that point you have to very least maintain that victiority or more likely go out and start winning the next whatever you have to do now as part of this, you know, not getting lost in your own intentions. You talk about the importance of having a mentor. Practically speaking, I mean, how do you go about finding a mentor and what should that relationship even look like?
Hmm.
It's It's an interesting one because I think people have a certain idea about what a mentor should should be, and I try and simplify it in the book as far as I can, by talking about almost anything or anyone can be a mentor. You can go to your library and pick up an inspirational book. You know, you can read Lord of the Rings and to a degree and go, well, if I want to be more like Aragorn, how do I go about doing that. That's only going
to take you so far. And so I think you do need people in your lives, but again, there are lots of different ways to do it. You can listened to podcasts, you don't have to spend a huge amount of money on actual formal formal structure. I'd check in once a week and they give me work to do. You know, I've been lucky enough to have mentors in my life, whether it was my parents and my family, obviously my wife, so you can certainly use them for advice.
And again, if you look at people like Rosa Parks, I think she would say that she leant very heavily on her husband for support and advice. Not that she was beholden to him, but it was, you know, having someone you can use as a sounding board. It could be a good friend, It could be an acquaintance who you trust. It could be someone at work. Yes, it could be paid a paid ment, but it could just as easy to be a martial arts coach or a sports coach.
Or whoever.
I don't think you have to overcomplicate it that those people are out there if you want to pay for them, but you know, starting out, they tend to. I don't think you have to just sit there and wait for yoda. That's not realistically going to happen, you know. I think this concept of you know, the when when the student is ready, the mentor will appear take some action from you.
But you if you go out.
Looking for a mentor, you can you will find a mentor, and you just have to be open to what that person may look like at the same time, you know, I think in reality there's no harm in having multiple mentors. You know, you might have a mentor to to help you with fear management, for example, and you might have a mentor to help you with public speaking and not.
The the fear side of public.
Speaking, but becoming more polished. So that there are different ways to look at it. But I think if you're open minded, and if you know at the start what you feel called to do, and you feel that you can you want to set out on that adventure, you
will find the right person for you. And it's why I think you get the call to adventure, then you get the refusal of the call, and then the mentor comes after that because you realize that actually you can't do it on your own, and you become a bit more open minded to well, okay, who might be the people around me in my life who I could seek out and have helped me.
Yeah, it's seems like a relagis comes down to humility, which you will necessarily have if you're pursuing something beyond yourself, because well, that requires a humble disposition. And you know, if you're recognizing that, you know you are serving something beyond yourself, something bigger than yourself, then well you're going to want to seek out the best way of doing that. And naturally that leads to looking for wisdom from those who know more than you, at least on some aspect
of the journey. And so I think this is another area, probably like a lot of these things we're discussing, where people tend to overcomplicate the process, where they think to have a mentor is to like have that Yoda figure, like some kind of devoted like I need some sage to tell me what to do. It's really just you asking the question, how do I find out what I need to know in order to do this thing?
Exactly exactly that, And I think, as you say, people people are waiting for someone to open the door and go come with me We're going on a starship or I'm taking you on a crazy adventure hits a sword.
It doesn't really work like that.
It's a it's a motif, it's not you know, that's where the you have to bring them myth into reality.
I guess now.
You know, as you start to move on this path, you gain more confidence. You talk about the temptation to become overly confident in what you're doing in your hero's journey. I mean, how how do you guard against that? Because it's easy to do when things seem to be going well. It seems like your actions are bearing the kind of fruit you're looking for. Lady Fortune spinning her wheel in your direction. You know, it feels like you are really
doing it. How do you maintain humility and shirk away from that temptation?
Yeah?
So I would say if look, obviously you expect to make some progress, right, but.
If if it's too.
Easy and you never encounter any hardship, you're not doing.
It the right way.
You know, you read any of these stories, you know, BeO Wolf as you say, or Lord of the Rings, whatever it might be, the hero never just turns up and wins.
Just oh, here we go.
So if you're going in that direction, you're you're heading in the wrong direction. As far as I'm concerning, you might need to reconsider who your mentor is because you need to find a mentor who's prepared to speak truth to you, not just tell you what you want to hear. There needs to be development with within that. And therefore, if you're if you're not struggling, you're either heading in the wrong direction or you're not really trying very hard.
You're just kind of kidding yourself. And that's why, you know, if you look around, you know.
It's it's very easy.
If I take my own examples, you can write a book. You know, Oh, I felt called to write a book. I'm going to write a book about legacy. I've written a book about legacy. Well that was easy than I expected. I mean, it took me a long time and I had to think about it, but you know, I finished
the book. It wasn't crazy challenging. But you haven't shown it to anybody, like you know, you're you're using your you're hiding behind your fears to feel that you've achieved something which you've just taken one step of a considerably longer journey, and so I think either either you're heading in the wrong direction or you're you're not really you're you're hiding behind something and you're you're kidding yourself that
you're growing. And you might, you know, probably grew a little bit writing a book, but it's when you start putting it out there and asking for criticism and even asking for attention, and people go, I'm not really very interested. That that's where the challenge really starts to kick in.
And that's why you know you'll see you often see one of the motifs with the hero's journey is the betrayal of a friend or something like that, because it's often the people closest to you, who you think are going to be really appreciative and really going to give you that lift, who say I don't find that very interesting, or I don't find that very inspiring, or I'm just not interested.
And you see it time and time again. In business.
You'll see people, generally speaking, your set up a business and you think all your friends have been really supportive, and you say, cool, let's come and buy something off me, and nobody really does. And it will be people who you weren't expecting to get support from who will suddenly come out of the woodwork. And so I think that that would be my advice there is, look, you've just are you really growing? Or again of you hidden behind your fears? Are you heeading in the wrong direction?
So the other side of that question, how do you guard against the temptation to despair when it seems like things just aren't working out well?
And that's why I kind of draw on the concept of the hero's journey, because the idea there is that if you can take a step back at those points and reframe your life or this phase as rather than all I'm just I'm just losing, I should just give up and despair, you know, drawing on this story and go we actually, no, this is this is like X in Lord of the Rings for example, this is what was happening, and just that No, this is this is part of the process, Like you have to accept that
when things get really difficult, that's meant to happen. It's part of the growth cycle. It's part of that. You know, anybody, anybody can be brave when there's nothing to be brave about. Anybody can live nobly when you're not challenged to do anything different, you know you can. It's only when you find things are difficult that you really find out do you really believe in this? Is this actually the journey I want to go on or not? And I think if you can reframe it, it's like, well, yeah, it's
supposed to be difficult. That that's kind of part and parcel of growth and the journey that I'm supposed to go on. And if you're not, if it's not difficult, then it's not really very heroic. And if you can reframe it in that person and say, yeah, this is where I'm supposed to be, this is what's supposed to happen. At least you're pre prepared for that, and you can kind of accept that you're on the right path because it got difficult.
Yeah. I often go back to Boetheis's the Consolation of philosophy, in which you said, is that for the good man, for somebody who is centered in goodness, all fortune is good fortune? Because if you know fortune seems to spinning in your direction, everything's going well on a circumstantial level, then you can hold that with an open hand, recognizing that no particular state of events around you is stable. Because we live in a moving world, things change. So
many things are simply outside of our control. You know, it doesn't matter how well you take care of your body, you exercise, you eat well, you can still get hit by a car exactly. So you know, when things are going well, we hold out with an open hand and we can use those resources to do good things. But when things aren't doing aren't going well for us on a fortune level, well that's still good fortune because now we can still just double down on the things that
don't change. We can become more grounded in what is good, become more grounded to what is enduring, and then so doing gain more strength for the hero's journey in whatever form that looks like. And I think that what are heroism, what our legacy is? I mean, our vision of that very well could change over time, and if it doesn't, and then we're probably not being authentic because you know, as you said, our vision for how things are going to play out, very often is not how things play out.
And maybe that's because well we need to just keep going and learn how to overcome the obstacle. Or maybe our vision wasn't right to begin with, and maybe we need to amend that as well, yeah, and so a great quote.
I think it might be Douglas Adams where he says I didn't arrive at where I intended to, but I think I arrived at where I was meant to, or something like that. And as you say, a lot of it is just setting out. You don't know where it's going to lead. But if you feel that, no, I want to. I want to make a positive impact on other people. See where that takes you. It doesn't really matter where you end up. By the end of that journey.
You may or may not leave a legacy. And I kind of jumping the gun a little bit here, but that's ultimately my conclusion is you set out with the concept of making a great difference and living for other people.
Doesn't really matter where it takes you. You'll find challenges all the way. Along the way. People are going to try and tear you down. People are going to tell you that you're living for yourself.
All of the things, some of them are going to help shape you, some of them are can help redirect you, some of them are going to help you grow. At the end of it, whether you leave a legacy or not, and whether you're remembered in a hundred years is kind of by the bye you've if you've lived positively for other people, it would be more fulfilling both for you and for society. And it was a worthy worthy trip to start out on. Whatever happens at the.
End of it, yeah, fair enough, And I think that if we're looking to just be remembered, I mean, we don't know what's going to happen in the future. We're not guarantee any of that. But what we are guaranteed is that we have present responsibil and the better we execute them, the more impact that we're going to have. That's going to reverborate, you know, into how many years are left and ultimately into eternity. Like, our actions have
so many consequences that we simply can't perceive. But when we perceive what we can set our vision appropriately, then the journey kind of lays itself out to the extent that we're responsible for taking it. I mean even in you know in Lord of the Rings, right that Frodo was never providentially his task actually to destroy the ring. He was supposed to take it as far as he could take it. Then that was it. Well, is there
anything else that we have not discussed that. You feel like we should discuss.
I don't think so. No, I mean we could.
I mean I could talk about this probably for hours, as you'd probably guess, But no, I think this has been.
Very good kind of overview. And as I say, I think that the key point to remember is.
Really if you have the courage to start, and you have the courage to live in a different way to the way most people will live because they don't live with that courage, and you let yourself see where it goes. Ultimately, legacy is a great reason to set out. But at the end of the day is yeah, when you come to breathe your last breath, does legacy really matter? I mean, it might matter to other people, but it was the it was the reason you left. But beyond that, it
doesn't really matter. That there's a great quote. In fact, I've got the poem the end of the poem because I was looking at it earlier, which I think sums it up beautifully. I don't know if you've come across the poem Ithaca, but it talks about Odysseus essentially. But the end of the end of the poem says, arriving there is what you're destined for, But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years, so.
You're old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you've gained along the way, not expecting Ithaca to make you rich. Ihaca gave you the marvelous Without her, you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now, and if you find her poor, Ethaca won't have fooled you. Why is as you have become so full of experience, you'd have understood then what these
ethachas mean. And that, to me is what you're trying to achieve in legacy in life, and that's that's the way to lead a good life as far as I'm concerned.
Well said, and it's a great way to wrap it up. I feel like this was a good general conversation about legacy and the various things that you've been writing about. And maybe at some point in the future we can dig into maybe some particular example you talk about and kind of dissect that in a more particular form, But for now, good conversation. I appreciate you coming on.
No likewise, thank you so much for having me, and best of luck. With the rest of the show. Thank you, Thank you.
I hope that you enjoyed that, and be sure to keep up with Chris at his website, a legacylived dot com and you can find that link in the show notes. And if you've recently written or otherwise made something that you would like to discuss on the show, maybe even have a podcast of your own, well let me know.
The odds are that if you are someone who listens to the show, it would be a good fit here most likely, and so if you want to set something up, then send me an email at mythicmindpodcast at gmail dot com.
And now, as a reminder, I've made all content from the fiction and philosophy of CS Lewis course available for Tier two patrons in higher and that's ten dollars a month, and once we hit the goal of another ten patrons at that level, I'll start releasing content from the Beywolf and Bowethia's course at that level as well, and until
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for you. I've been reading pretty extensively in preparation for the upcoming Lord of the Rings course, and I would like to plug The Philosophy of Tolkien by Peter Craft and The Flame Imperishable by Jonathan Macintosh. Now, the philosophy of Tolkien is great. If you've not studied philosophy extensively, it's pretty an intro level when it comes to philosophy, or if you just want to get jazzed up again
about how awesome Tolkien is, how good he is. Not just that he's good at writing, although he is that, but his writing itself is actually good, and Craft does a great job of demonstrating that and so regardless of
your level of philosophical study, this is just a great book. Now, if you want to take a deeper dive into Tolkien's philosophy and particularly regarding his metaphysics, then you should check out The Flame Imperishable, which Jonathan demonstrates the metaphysics of Tolkien's universe, particularly drawing on his creation account in the Delay to connect Tolkien's thought with that of Thomas Aquinas.
This is definitely a more dense text than the Grave Text, but that's going to be a good thing for many of you, and so none of you would really go wrong with either option here. You could buy one or the other, or ideally both that they're both definitely worth your time. All right. Well, that's it for now, and so until next time, godspeed. The Mythic Mind Fellowship presents a new study led by doctor Andrew Snyder, The Wisdom
of Middle Earth, The Lord of the Rings. This will be the first study in the Wisdom of Middle Earth series, which seeks to bring an array of companions together with the common desire of growing in wisdom while enjoying the heartening tales of the Great tale Weaver. J. R. R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings is a profound tale that has literally changed lives, as it has for mine. And what is it that makes this story so powerful and
so compelling. It is because Tolkien's stories are fundamentally true, and those who engage with it know exactly what I mean. They speak to the way that things are. As Peter Crest said in the Philosophy of Tolkien, the Lord of the Rings is infused with the same light that illumined the man who wrote it. And that light is true, for it reveals the reality of the world and life.
So join us on this adventure. Let us grow in wisdom together through immersion in the tale, not through cheap allegorizing, but by getting a better understanding of the ideas and the movements of the heart that bring a tale such as this to life. This twelve week study will begin with Tolkien's creation account, the Iwindulay, and then move to
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