"Destiny" (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Wednesday, September 27, 2017, 13:54 (2694 days ago) @ Cody Miller

fostering the strength that he/she did, could not help but achieve greatness.

This is narcissism. You can't help but achieve greatness because of who you are. Exactly what I don't like about so many modern stories :-D

No, it isn't narcissism. I didn't say that the hero in question believes that they cannot fail or do wrong. The argument is that "heros" in all stories share common traits. They are the same traits that we admire when we look at people around us. Inner strength. Dedication to the truth. Willingness to sacrifice. Desire to make things better for the world as a whole. Generally speaking, a true narcissist shares none of those traits.

Not the narcissism of the hero. The narcissism of the storyteller!

While Neo is very selfless, the Matrix is a very narcissistic story. It’s not you that’s wrong… the world is wrong.

That's not what narcissism means at all. And what I'm talking about goes beyond storytelling. You could think of it as the reason that we tell stories at all.

We know that there is a process that humans go through on their way to "understanding" something. You can see this on an individual level (by watching the process of a child grow up) or on mass cultural levels over time (by watching the way our stories started vague, then get detailed, then get fleshed out into full-blown religions, then codified into articulated law).

Hero mythology comes from an early point in that process. Humans couldn't quite articulate what they were trying to say, but they could tell stories that illustrated what they were trying to say. On what subject? The subject of "how to be the best person you can be, and live in the best manner that you can". That is what hero myths are trying to tell us. "Be this kind of person and the challenges of life won't stop you."

It has nothing to do with narcissism. It is the illustration of a moral code.