The Nomadic Alternative – Page 41

The heroic scenario obsessed de Gaulle, who followed it with painstaking obstinacy, grandiosely selecting France as his female in distress - exile, return, exile, return and final departure to an unknown destination, though in retrospect his multiple appearances do have something of the character of the 'opera bouffe'. Mao Tse-tung, even more conscious of his heroic destiny, led the Red Army on its Long March, before returning victorious to the Centre; the Cultural Revolution tried to revive the spirit of the initiatory journey without the actual disappearance of the hero. The Wonder-Voyage is the indispensible component of eventual success - the white wake of the Mayflower for the New England colonies, the Indian-infested Oregon Trail for the settlers of the Far West, the Voyage of the Beagle for Darwin's Theory of Evolution.

Most cultures - and all successful ones - recognize the need for their young to go out of their minds a little and face an ordeal by chaos. Integral to the process of growing up, they make a descent to Hell, a deliberate 'dérèglement de tous les sens'; for the idea of the infernal journey corresponds to a configuration within the minds of all. As well as protecting his people from an outside menace, the true hero also cures their ills. And if danger does not cloud the future of the young, or if they are physically and morally incapable of killing other men, they internalize the journey and thus use up the information programme contained within. Instead of fighting an actual monster, they invent one.

Missionaries, doctors, psychic healers, many writers, artists, actors and dancers are frequently those people of restless temperament who, for reasons beyond their control, find that their sexual drives are blunted or redirected and cannot adjust themselves to the usual pattern of family life. But the 'creative' or healing process itself seems to stabilize their own difficult position and takes the heat from sexual drives. Medical missionaries, for example, who treat the diseased and wounded in the infernal conditions of war or disaster find within themselves a power to continue and a joy leading them in near ecstasy to inner calm. The rewards