The Hero's Journey and the Maturation Within Our Financial System
In his landmark work, The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell identifies a theme common to humanity throughout history—the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey begins when an individual feels a significant deficiency in some aspect of the status quo. This person is then compelled to embark on a search of a new design that reveals a resolution. The result is a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover an essential aspect of inner experience or a technical solution that has been lost to the community. In facing fears and limitations, the hero discovers a pathway towards greater personal understanding, which in turn leads to the betterment of society.
The linking of the individual’s inner transformation with the progress of the community is what makes it a hero’s journey. The hero archetype, far from being a historical myth, is an ever-present dynamic between individual and society.
In the current moment, lest any of us doubt the need for a heroic response to creating a more sustainable economic model, just look at the economic shock waves of the first two decades of the 21st century: the tech wreck of 2000–2002, the mortgage-induced meltdown of 2008–2009, the collapse of Silicon Valley bank, and the debt & deficit explosion and resulting inflation that was required to get us through the Covid pandemic. Integral to this economic uncertainty are the challenges we all feel in the face of accelerating technological change—not to mention the upsetting geopolitical implications of the Ukrainian war.
Thankfully, corresponding to this rise of uncertainty, we are also seeing the rise of heroes among us. These individuals—and even entire companies—are deepening their inquiry into the root economic causes of our social and environmental imbalances. They’re discovering innovative solutions for a more comprehensive financial model.
One of these solutions, Impact investing, expressly seeks to balance the very practical need for financial profit with clearly defined social benefits and regeneration of natural capital. To achieve this, Wall Street is increasingly using Environmental, Social, and Governance analysis (ESG) to inform investors about the impacts and risks associated with a given investment. Using the ESG toolbox, investors are now able to measure specific outcomes of a company’s activities beyond the financial profit metric.
This is the culmination of a near 50-year hero’s journey that has helped move the financial industry away from measuring success exclusively through the lens of financial profit (the reductionist single bottom line) to a more comprehensive triple bottom line metric driven by ESG data. This maturation within our financial system can be seen as a systemic response to our outdated colonial “command and control” cultural roots, which can be traced back to the Papal Doctrine of Discovery of 1493. This doctrine laid the groundwork for an economic model based on unlimited natural resource extraction and labor exploitation. Driven by a profit first mandate, this doctrine in turn evolved into a prevailing business model of planned obsolescence and marketing campaigns promoting a materialistic, consumption driven economy. Finally, the capstone to this unsustainable economic design is that it is all driven by ever expanding debt under the weight of compound interest.
Thankfully, Wall Street and society at large now have a functional ESG toolbox to evolve beyond the debt driven single bottom-line paradigm. Widespread use of ESG data will support the heroes among us in moving away from the unsustainable consumerism model towards a more regenerative design of civic participation and planetary accountability. The choice on how to direct our investment and consumer dollars has never been more actionable. Choose wisely.