The Heroes’ Journey in Politics
Josef Lentsch
Political Entrepreneur and Book Author, Founder and CEO Political Tech Summit
Why Political Intrapreneurship is about the We more than the Me
I recently had a very interesting conversation with Nicolai Str?m-Olsen , the founder of Startup Migrants . We talked about my book project on how to reform established political parties. He read my synopsis and gave it to me straight: "Your book needs heroes!"?
No more than five, he added. But people need heroes with whom they can identify. Heroes can be people, but maybe also parties, he mused. That got me thinking.
Post-heroic politics
Post-war European politics can be seen as an attempt at post-heroic politics. After the great catastrophes and disillusionment with "great men" in the first half of the 20th century, dull became the new sexy. While US politics celebrated heroic figures like Kennedy or, later, Obama, most of Europe, and Germany in particular, liked its leaders to be boring - France's love-hate relationship with its mercurial presidents being perhaps a peculiar exception to the rule (or maybe not).
The age of the anti-hero
In the early 21st century, even if Europe's political elites are still largely operating in a post-heroic mode, citizens have moved on. With heroes in short supply, many of them now support anti-heroes: anti-establishment, anti-system populists (it must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero, but then again, most of them are not going to listen to Taylor Swift.) Is the implication that European party politics must return to heroic politics?
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WE could be heroes
In team sports, individual performances ideally add up to more than the sum of its parts - and the whole spectacle would not be complete without an engaged audience. Just as sports teams can be heroes, so can perhaps political parties.
But political parties also need their own heroes - if they want to really renew themselves, not just one, but a few good (wo)men. In an earlier blog I wrote that the magic number for a team of political intrapreneurs is 4-5 . Not all of them are visible, in fact most of them will remain unsung.?
Just like in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey , this team needs to take a journey together. But since they really need to act as a band of brothers and sisters, the more appropriate narrative would be The Heroes' Journey. And in established parties, many of which have been in existence for 100 years or more, that journey needs to be made not just once, but again and again.
This is what post-post-heroic politics could look like: a focus on the We instead of the Me. An open and inclusive We that gives a real role to members and the constituency, not just for one election day. And at its heart, the strong and resilient We of a Fellowship of a small group of people with different backgrounds, skills and abilities.?
But I think I have packed enough cultural references into one blog for today.
Do you disagree? Let me know in the comments.
Great post, Josef! I think it all comes down to the question of what is a hero. Or: Who can be a hero? Heroes cannot exist without their story, it's their story that makes them a hero. And any story needs challenges and change. A mistake that I often see in political marketing is that candidates or parties are portrayed as ideal and perfect versions of themselves. But no hero is perfect - a hero can only become a hero by fighting against something. Unfortunately, populists understand this all too well.
The anti-hero concept is something I reflect on vis a vis the prominence of conservative heroes over any liberal or left champions. Sadly, Liberals in the US (and maybe more broadly in Europe) have not enjoyed the same kind of success in recent years finding and elevating our public heroes.