The Hero's Journey
The Hero's Journey is a framework made famous by Joseph Campbell, summarizing a pattern which is found in the myths of many cultures. The Hero goes through a series of challenges: the call, the refusal of the call, the mentor, the cave of desolation, the defeat of the enemy, and the return to society with a magic elixir.
At AHA, we want to adapt the Hero’s Journey for the modern age, and enlist the assistance of AI to make it relevant and powerful.
We create what we call mini-hero’s journeys because they are small compared to classic conquests like the adventures of Ulysses, or the exploits of the Indian warrior-Goddess Vishpala. Most of them exist entirely online.
We have different requirements for our Hero’s journeys than the classic Joseph Campbell ones. With the old ones, you COULD return as a Hero having only improved your family or tribe in some way, without affecting society at large. With ours, there must be a measurable effect on some agreed-upon societal or cultural, or scientific problem.
Here is an example.
The condition of women and girls in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover in August of 2021 has gone from bad to worse. Women are not allowed to attend universities or secondary schools, and are forbidden from serving in the government. In several areas they are discouraged from leaving home at all.
Meanwhile, Taliban officials, who write and enforce these restrictions, have been legitimizing themselves by purchasing blue checkmarks for their X (Twitter) accounts. According to Abdirahim Saeed of BBC News:
"The Taliban have started using Twitter's paid-for verification feature, meaning some now have blue ticks on their accounts.
Previously, the blue tick indicated "active, notable, and authentic accounts of public interest" verified by Twitter, and could not be purchased.
But now, users can buy them through the new Twitter Blue service.
And the people who buy them in Afghanistan are the Taliban.
Afghan Women Rising seeks to counter this movement by the Taliban by purchasing blue checks in the names of accomplished women both inside and outside of Afghanistan.
A popular pastime in Afghanistan is the 'Sher Jangi', or 'Poetry Battle'. One person writes a verse, and the opponent, or second player, must respond by writing a poem which begins with the last letter of the first verse.
We are in the midst of an online 'Sher Jangi'. We use ChatGPT to write a traditional Afghan verse about the virtues of Afghan women. Then we have the program translate it into Pashto, Farsi, and Uzbek.
Here is a winning submission, from Fatima H. of Herat:
"Women, strong as mountains,
Enduring through trials and tribulations,
Their courage never falters,
Their spirit never breaks,
They raise families and build nations,
Their strength is the backbone of our society"
The same verse in Pashto (the language of most Taliban):
"Zanana, pa de pukhto pa tawagawal,
Pa zama ghara da tawonka da taswira,
Da darwaza kawom da kam da kam,
Da ruh kawom da kam da kam,
Da zama ghara da khwendo khwendagal,
Da tawagawal da zama ghara da asase"
in Farsi:
"زنان، قوی مثل کوهها،
در برابر آزمایشات و دشواریها، صبر میکنند،
شجاعتشان هیجانی نمیشود،
جانشان هیچگاه قطع نمیشود،
آنها خانواده را تحت پوشش میگذارند و ملتها را بنا میکنند،
قدرتشان پایه اجتماع ما است."
in Uzbek:
"A'zolari, tog'lar kabi qattiq,
Imtihonlar va muammolarga sabr qiladi,
Yaqinlari hech qachon yo'qolmaydi,
Ruhlari hech qachon qattiq emas,
Ularning oilasini quradi va millatlarini yarata boshlaydi,
Ularning qattiqligi bizning jamoatimizning asosidir."
More about the project:
In 2022 one of our colleagues from South India, came from a family that experienced ritualized violence from neighbors who belonged to a higher caste. She noticed that many of her townspeople were barely literate, and had no idea of the legal resources available to them. So she created something called the Indian Justice Project, which started with a simple website that was in English, Hindi, and Tamil, and had links to free legal resources, government help, and ombudsmen who specialized in assisting marginalized communities.
https://sites.google.com/site/indiajusticeproject/home
This alone was fine, but what really made it unique was what AI told her when we asked it to create a Hero’s Journey out of this. The AI said to send a bulk email to the local magistrates and district attorneys asking them to post the Indian Justice Project on their websites and social media. Only about 15% of them did so, because they didn’t recognize her as a boss or important authority. But the AI also told her to post it to the websites of all the local Bar Associations. When this happened a lot of attorneys who had been responsible for logjamming cases of violence against women decided they couldn’t do so anymore,
and many cases got resolved.The AI generated text, which was in Hindi and Tamil, was powerful enough to convince these guys to do the right thing, even though the Indian Justice Project had no legal authority of any kind. So the next time someone tells you that AI generated text is of lower quality than human generated text, be reminded that sometimes an AI knows exactly what to say and how to say it.
Because of the power of AI, we get better and better at making Hero’s Journeys more impactful and easier to set up. Here’s a new example. A group of Inuit tribes in the Canadian Arctic created a social network called Siku, which is at siku.org.
You will see here that unlike social media sites like Facebook, a huge portion of what people post here is about their trips across the ice where they live. They go on goose reporting trips, fishing trips, and what is most interesting, ice reporting trips. These Inuit are on the leading edge of climate change, because they are witnessing their way of life being threatened by melting ice in the Arctic. So when they go on these treks to gauge the depth of the ice, they are literally going on real Hero’s Journeys!
So eventually we want to do what we did with the Afghan women, which is to celebrate their heroic deeds in sagas and odes. But for now, what we’re doing is this: When some tribal member completes a journey, we commemorate their accomplishment by using AI to create a new image of an Inuit God or Goddess who is congratulating them on their accomplishment, just as Virgil honored the Roman hero Aeneas, or the ancient Indian writers celebrated the exploits of Rama.
Our efforts are directed at getting the Inuit kids excited about their history and mythology by depicting these legendary figures, but also about AI itself, since it’s intruding into their world whether they like it or not.
Creating Hero's journeys today can be done quickly and efficiently with the aid of AI. What's required is focus on a particular problem, and the imagination to derive unique approaches.
