(There is a very good explanation to the presence of Xena on my blog)
After taking The Heroic Myth Self-Test (by Carol S. Pearson, 1998) I end up being primary an ALTRUIST. For the purpose of this writing I stayed away from all dictionary and definition and kept the definition from my language, french .To me, an altruist is someone who puts others needs before himself, doing everything in his power to help others wether it affects his life. My choice to illustrate this archetype is a picture of Xena, the warrior princess.
Yes, weird choice. I was looking for characters or image that make me think of this precise part of the Hero in our culture and ended up following a classmate's advice and looking up Xena. But when I saw the picture I realized that all hero have, of course, all the archetypes from the Hero Myth, somehow Xena makes me think of the Altruist. When I think of an altruistic person I think of one of these heroes fighting for the good of a victim in danger, but more specifically, I think of the fact that they jump into danger without even thinking. This to me is the very base of an Altruist. In her adventures, Xena always ends up fighting for someone else's life or right and never for herself, which in the end ruins her own life. She is the extreme example of the altruist who almost lives to help others.
Even though my example is quite ridiculous, this helped me understand what this Altruist archetype was about. Without comparing myself to Xena (I could but it wouldn't be very useful here), I can really relate to this archetype, not only because the test gave me this result, but because I have my whole life tried to be a good man and to me the first step was to help others without any asking questions, it wouldn't be mine to judge. I have realized over time that this side of me was affecting my own life and decided to change. The Warrior as a second result may as well be the result of this change towards being a bit more selfish and focusing more on my life while still helping others.
Again, sorry for the really... special choice of example kindly offered by corpossibilidades.blogspot.com
Thanks for reading!
Hi, don't worry about being selfish, helping yourself does not mean you are selfish, after all, you do love yourself more than others right?
ReplyDeleteI never watched the show,but I heard of Xena the warrior princess(from guys that were in love with her). How did being an altruist ruin her life? Was it because the altruist wants to make others happy without regard to her own needs; or was it because she was used as a door mat? Good post.
ReplyDelete@Ghostface: Being selfish has been a great thing for me, but i have to admit helping other is what keeps me running, even here at LAGCC i spend most of my time making sure my classmates are ok, then i forget that i need to focus on my own work, but i'm working on it.
ReplyDelete@Maria: Xena ended up always fighting for others and at the end of every episode she never found what she was looking for due to being such an altruistic hero. And every little boy that grew up to her adventures was in love with her... i mean have you seen her fighting? ;)
I can remember as kid watching Xena so i know what your talking about, but you couldn't even pay me to make me watch that stuff again. Now even though you made a good Alturist comparison i think you should add the warrior aspect of Xena. Just simply because she's full of it.
ReplyDelete