I have a college aged son. One of the things I struggle with is that I KNOW he knows right from wrong and politically he is a Democrat. But I worry that his reflex to joking call things 'woke' and having listened to me worry out loud for four years of Trump has made him susceptible to thinking 'mom is always being dramatic'. Recently he said that his group of friends was thinking of going to see Sound of Freedom and when I objected, he was like "how can someone who is saving children be bad" and of course I didn't have all the info. So I forwarded him an article on Ballard from Vanity Fair, and I will send him yours as well. I don't think they ended up seeing the movie, but my ears are up.
Oh Meg - thank you for sharing your story and the Slate article, and this alarming information about Ballard, his organization, and this movie. My heart aches for 28 year old Meg, but I so admire that you use these essays to not only enlighten us, but also as a path to understanding yourself and your journey.
There's so much of this that's alien and baffling to me as a nonreligious person, but it's becoming such an insidious part of our culture / politics that I realize it's important for me to know more about it. You always give me a lot to think about!
Thank you so much for this. I just spent an hour reading this, your Slate article, and the Bond/Christensen piece. I'm saving this post to reread.
I was completely taken in by the PBS series on Campbell when it came out. My data and science brain is attracted to patterns, so the idea was seductive. But I'm also attuned to signs of oversimplification. There's a tendency for those who like to think they are in charge to simplify the real world to fit their mental model of it, and the monomyth was beginning to feel a bit like that for me. You really connected those dots. And you really brought home how pervasive this is in our culture.
I just finished reading "The Chalice and the Blade", by Riane Eisler, recommended by Antonia Malchik, which contrasts partnership culture with the dominator culture that has come to, well, dominate western society. White saviorism and manifest destiny are examples. You make clear that the monomyth myth cherry picks examples from historical dominator cultures and uses them to underwrite the present one.
This one's a keeper.
I'm deeply grateful for your insight and your bravery. Just because the monomyth is a myth doesn't mean that there aren't real heroes.
Thank you for writing both of these pieces. When my conservative dad asked me if I wanted to see this with him, I was skeptical and declined because "human trafficking" is so synonymous with "conspiracy theory" these days. I hadn't heard of the film before that and didn't really have the language to explain to him why I mistrusted it except that I didn't want to see a dramatized, theatrical depiction of such a complex, horrific subject. But this is the background that I really needed, so thank you for this thorough explanation. Also, I am so sorry people are trying to personally bring you and your family into this. <3
Thank you for your brave and insightful writing and research. I remember a time when I, too, felt compelled by OURs story. After reading your piece I understand how I was completely sucked in to the Hero’s Journey myself, both in the OUR case and in other situations.
Your writing is the whole package - passionate, insightful, entertaining, fact-driven, imaginative, momentous, human, ALIVE. I can't say enough about it. I always want so badly for it to get the highest exposure and accolades! Somehow in this moment in history I feel like this writing flies in the face of AI...and with some irony I want it to pick up the Hero's Engine and crush AI like a too-smug chess opponent. I am in awe of how wide-reaching your mind gets to pull in such eclectic concepts and employ them to tease out real meaning from complex and nuanced subjects. Many of us feel bothered at some level by certain "mission" work, but it stays under the skin - I mean how cynical and unflattering is it to show contempt for good people with good intentions doing good works? But heaping another layer of obfuscating exploitation onto an already exploited base is the lowest of lows. And I don't even know what to call topping it off with yet another layer of political exploitation.
My neighborhood groups are PLAGUED with panicked posts about <Suspicious Behavior> and <Potentially Dangerous Activity>. People are convinced that this small town of 17,000 is harboring hundreds of human traffickers and that people are almost kidnapped on the daily. There’s also this extreme black-and-white view on the world where no one can comment “I understand you were spooked by that guy at the gas station, and he was probably being creepy (which is bad!) but you were absolutely, 100% not nearly-trafficked (because that’s delusional!)” without getting piled on by all of the Concerned Parents; if you're not horrified by these stories, you're a pedo-sympathizer. It’s so disheartening that all of these community members are so suspicious of each other. I know there are plenty of people in my community who don't think this way, but seeing so many of them gas each other up about these fears online is really scary. Time to log off I guess!
I started following you after reading your slate essay originally. I admired your ability to examine your ignorance, your desire to believe a story of good vs evil, and your willingness to ultimately admit it had been a lie. It gave me a way to start talking to people about what's wrong with the child trafficking narrative and poke holes in the ideas, alongside information from Michael Hobbes from You're Wrong About podcast.
Thank you for all you do and please know there are so many people who believe and support you, even if they aren't yelling it every day like the haters and bot farms.
This resonates strongly with some thoughts that have been rolling around in my brain the last few weeks, as I've been doing a re-watch of the FX series The Americans. In so many ways, it's a feminist-coded Antiheroes' Journey. No one has superpowers (...well, ok, except for being Keri Russell. Or Annet Mahendru. Or Alison Wright. Can we at some point talk about Alison Wright??). The characters are all grounded within in a form of reality (it's still a TV show, after all). The series of Campbell-esque trials and tribulations the 'protagonists' face never have straightforward good or bad guys, and rarely work out well for anyone involved. And it's usually the women who are venturing out or taking risks: the male characters, while involved, tend to be more static. It's layered and emotionally resonant and simultaneously wonderful and terrible to watch, deeply enjoyable and deeply unsatisfying.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, I loved your piece. And I wish we lived in a world where the extant themes of The Americans received anywhere near as much as attention as The Sound of Freedom.
Meg, this is so damn good. The hero's journey, just like saving children, sounds like something to laud and aspire to--and you nailed it, how the throughline of that comforting type of myth leads to what we see with conspiracy theories and hero worship to the point of Trump and Jan. 6. And how soaked the culture has become in it. I so admire you sharing your experience about all of this--it's so needed and necessary and just brava. I only wish we could all protect you from the vitriol from people who are still blinded by this kind of rhetoric. 💜 Truth telling is such vital work.
WOW. I had to come back a few times to finish it but it was absolutely worth it. Thank you for writing this! I also want to read your Slate article (and learn more about O.U.R, whoa). You've connected the dots beautifully and I'm stunned as always at the connections your amazing mind makes. Thank you for sharing your experiences (even when they feel regretful) and what you've learned from them, and I hope you feel safe in your home tonight ❤️
I have a college aged son. One of the things I struggle with is that I KNOW he knows right from wrong and politically he is a Democrat. But I worry that his reflex to joking call things 'woke' and having listened to me worry out loud for four years of Trump has made him susceptible to thinking 'mom is always being dramatic'. Recently he said that his group of friends was thinking of going to see Sound of Freedom and when I objected, he was like "how can someone who is saving children be bad" and of course I didn't have all the info. So I forwarded him an article on Ballard from Vanity Fair, and I will send him yours as well. I don't think they ended up seeing the movie, but my ears are up.
Oh Meg - thank you for sharing your story and the Slate article, and this alarming information about Ballard, his organization, and this movie. My heart aches for 28 year old Meg, but I so admire that you use these essays to not only enlighten us, but also as a path to understanding yourself and your journey.
There's so much of this that's alien and baffling to me as a nonreligious person, but it's becoming such an insidious part of our culture / politics that I realize it's important for me to know more about it. You always give me a lot to think about!
Last night I saw the *best* superhero movie ever: Ponyo. Strong girls, strong women, strong children, and the elderly have a part too.
And it’s not black&white good-guy-bad-guy
Thank you for writing and sharing this research and your experiences. This is frightening. Take good care.
Thank you so much for this. I just spent an hour reading this, your Slate article, and the Bond/Christensen piece. I'm saving this post to reread.
I was completely taken in by the PBS series on Campbell when it came out. My data and science brain is attracted to patterns, so the idea was seductive. But I'm also attuned to signs of oversimplification. There's a tendency for those who like to think they are in charge to simplify the real world to fit their mental model of it, and the monomyth was beginning to feel a bit like that for me. You really connected those dots. And you really brought home how pervasive this is in our culture.
I just finished reading "The Chalice and the Blade", by Riane Eisler, recommended by Antonia Malchik, which contrasts partnership culture with the dominator culture that has come to, well, dominate western society. White saviorism and manifest destiny are examples. You make clear that the monomyth myth cherry picks examples from historical dominator cultures and uses them to underwrite the present one.
This one's a keeper.
I'm deeply grateful for your insight and your bravery. Just because the monomyth is a myth doesn't mean that there aren't real heroes.
Thank you for writing both of these pieces. When my conservative dad asked me if I wanted to see this with him, I was skeptical and declined because "human trafficking" is so synonymous with "conspiracy theory" these days. I hadn't heard of the film before that and didn't really have the language to explain to him why I mistrusted it except that I didn't want to see a dramatized, theatrical depiction of such a complex, horrific subject. But this is the background that I really needed, so thank you for this thorough explanation. Also, I am so sorry people are trying to personally bring you and your family into this. <3
Thank you for your brave and insightful writing and research. I remember a time when I, too, felt compelled by OURs story. After reading your piece I understand how I was completely sucked in to the Hero’s Journey myself, both in the OUR case and in other situations.
Your writing is the whole package - passionate, insightful, entertaining, fact-driven, imaginative, momentous, human, ALIVE. I can't say enough about it. I always want so badly for it to get the highest exposure and accolades! Somehow in this moment in history I feel like this writing flies in the face of AI...and with some irony I want it to pick up the Hero's Engine and crush AI like a too-smug chess opponent. I am in awe of how wide-reaching your mind gets to pull in such eclectic concepts and employ them to tease out real meaning from complex and nuanced subjects. Many of us feel bothered at some level by certain "mission" work, but it stays under the skin - I mean how cynical and unflattering is it to show contempt for good people with good intentions doing good works? But heaping another layer of obfuscating exploitation onto an already exploited base is the lowest of lows. And I don't even know what to call topping it off with yet another layer of political exploitation.
My neighborhood groups are PLAGUED with panicked posts about <Suspicious Behavior> and <Potentially Dangerous Activity>. People are convinced that this small town of 17,000 is harboring hundreds of human traffickers and that people are almost kidnapped on the daily. There’s also this extreme black-and-white view on the world where no one can comment “I understand you were spooked by that guy at the gas station, and he was probably being creepy (which is bad!) but you were absolutely, 100% not nearly-trafficked (because that’s delusional!)” without getting piled on by all of the Concerned Parents; if you're not horrified by these stories, you're a pedo-sympathizer. It’s so disheartening that all of these community members are so suspicious of each other. I know there are plenty of people in my community who don't think this way, but seeing so many of them gas each other up about these fears online is really scary. Time to log off I guess!
I started following you after reading your slate essay originally. I admired your ability to examine your ignorance, your desire to believe a story of good vs evil, and your willingness to ultimately admit it had been a lie. It gave me a way to start talking to people about what's wrong with the child trafficking narrative and poke holes in the ideas, alongside information from Michael Hobbes from You're Wrong About podcast.
Thank you for all you do and please know there are so many people who believe and support you, even if they aren't yelling it every day like the haters and bot farms.
This resonates strongly with some thoughts that have been rolling around in my brain the last few weeks, as I've been doing a re-watch of the FX series The Americans. In so many ways, it's a feminist-coded Antiheroes' Journey. No one has superpowers (...well, ok, except for being Keri Russell. Or Annet Mahendru. Or Alison Wright. Can we at some point talk about Alison Wright??). The characters are all grounded within in a form of reality (it's still a TV show, after all). The series of Campbell-esque trials and tribulations the 'protagonists' face never have straightforward good or bad guys, and rarely work out well for anyone involved. And it's usually the women who are venturing out or taking risks: the male characters, while involved, tend to be more static. It's layered and emotionally resonant and simultaneously wonderful and terrible to watch, deeply enjoyable and deeply unsatisfying.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, I loved your piece. And I wish we lived in a world where the extant themes of The Americans received anywhere near as much as attention as The Sound of Freedom.
Meg, this is so damn good. The hero's journey, just like saving children, sounds like something to laud and aspire to--and you nailed it, how the throughline of that comforting type of myth leads to what we see with conspiracy theories and hero worship to the point of Trump and Jan. 6. And how soaked the culture has become in it. I so admire you sharing your experience about all of this--it's so needed and necessary and just brava. I only wish we could all protect you from the vitriol from people who are still blinded by this kind of rhetoric. 💜 Truth telling is such vital work.
WOW. I had to come back a few times to finish it but it was absolutely worth it. Thank you for writing this! I also want to read your Slate article (and learn more about O.U.R, whoa). You've connected the dots beautifully and I'm stunned as always at the connections your amazing mind makes. Thank you for sharing your experiences (even when they feel regretful) and what you've learned from them, and I hope you feel safe in your home tonight ❤️