Every Story is the Same 

Yup. And even Jung, the much more original thinker, is disputed by many. I wouldn't take the ideas in this video as gospel.

Alchemy was the birth of carl Jung in the 20th - 21st Cent, A Legend

Nick Toss Yes, this is very true. And on the flip side, drawing connections and patterns between seemingly disparate ideas amd stories creates a new perspective for us - a bigger picture - that allows us to find higher meaning and purpose not only in what is being studied but also in our own lives :)

Or... generalizations lead to the rest of the story to be told. Do you remember eating? Do you remember walking to the bathroom? Do you remember laughing with your friend that one time in grade 2 about his lunch? All generalizations that fill in the narrative of life. Bringing weight to the things you find important. I might be loosing the point? Lol

Is that a generalization?...

amen

great story: the guy saves the women without her permission and defeats all challengers, he gets punished for being cocky, gets lucky in the story.

Holy crap, you're right. Start out with a calm introduction where it explains easy to digest concepts that we might already know. Then it goes to the unknown where we start to understand in greater depth. Then it wraps up with going back to using familiar examples, and easily relatable experiences with the new knowledge on how these are all similar, and why exactly.

DONT GIVE IT AWAY

but if every story follows the structure, it would be really difficult to make a video that doesn't, a video that works anyway. so is it genius or is it just normal?

Teodor, in my estimation all genius is nothing more than the explanation of what is, in the optimal articulation. Thus, it is both.

The video is essentially a linear description of the story arch that it describes, so of course it will. And it’s well done.

Hero's Journey

@@noahfatsi7190 😃

It was an Apple

@@johnnys3576 The amount of commitment...

@@johnnys3576 wonderful! But what about mr. Carrot, how does his journey ends?

TunaSammich I agree the title should be Why MOST Stories Are The Same. A great video similar but more dark is called Illuminati Hollywood Full Disclosure

At the end of Romeo and Juliet though, the 2 families have decided to reconcile - I think that is a change brought upon by all that happened in the story.

According to Christopher Booker, there is at least 7 basic plots: 1. Overcoming the Monster 2. Rags to Riches 3. The Quest 4. Voyage and Return 5. Rebirth 6. Comedy 7. Tragedy The first five can be simplified to Hero's Journey, while the last two is different. So, there is at least 3 basic plots for stories.

Parisan 99 thanks for listing those, now excuse while I spend the rest of the day diving into learning about them all lol

Calvaire 2004. France/Belgium. What is that??

That's a great example! hahaha I couldn't stop laughing the whole episode!

funniest shit i've ever seen

No. Waiting for Godot is. It's an amazing disregard of the monomyth structure.

No its not!

Not evry story follows the heroes journey, but a common story struture that the heroes journey was based on was “the medicine journey”!

Don't forget that the villian doesn'T get killed. He dissapeares.

HappyBeezerStudios - by Lord_Mogul Clayton, Gaston, Maleficent, Dr. Facilier, Professor Ratigan, Queen from Snow White, syndrome, etc. a lot of villains get killed...

Yep

The mothers seem to be killed in Disney shit!

And it works everytime, they are making money lol

Hi loony love youre videos!

Hi Loony

Josh Lincecum Truuuu!!! Love pop pop

Right

A theory that explains nothing, explains everything

He that overcometh all things shall inherit all things

"And the meek shall inherit the Earth."

I agree! I think the fact that most examples of stories fitting the Monomyth in these types of essays belong to actual mythology, children's entertainment or Hollywood blockbusters designed for maximum appeal is significant. Campbell himself didn't have any pretensions to be describing the entirety of narrative arts; I certainly don't think he would have agreed to using the most basic template imaginable for a mythical story as a creative guide for contemporary fiction. The structure is an appealing one, but thank God we've spent centuries imagining new ways of building stories; art as a whole would be pretty damn boring and simplistic if we hadn't.

It's a template for lazy writers. It fits StarWars so well only because Star Wars was based upon it from the beginning. A story that does not fit the monomyth: how about The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I think some people are taking this too literally. The idea is that most good stories or lasting stories can fit this model. The reason for this is because it is ingrained in our psyche. Does every story have to fit this model? No. But in a business it is good to find a solid template that provides solid returns on investment. You might find that the vast majority of successful stories fit this model but not all successful stories do. Nothing is absolute in the real world but you can always calm investors by ensuring a greater chance of success through a proven method. BTW, I am pretty sure the Good the Bad and the Ugly does fit the mono-myth pretty well, but like in the video it is an example of multiple circles applied to multiple characters to drive complexity. If you take the whole mono-myth too literally and forget that it is scalable then you might miss out on some great examples. I don't remember all of the details in the movie but I do remember that if you thought the "you" is Angle Eyes and you are following his circle then you are wrong (this is mentioned in the video). The true circle belongs to Tuco and/or Blonde. 1. Tuco & Blonde could be considered the "you". 2. They both want money to achieve different goals. 3. Complexity is thrown in when they get sick of each other and try to kill each other but opportunity arises when they each hold part of the information required to make a lot of money. 4. They reluctantly work together and, at times, work with Angle Eyes. They also enter the "other world" of the civil war. 5. Eventually they share information during a daring attempt to stop the battle that is about to happen. Tuco thinks he is master of his destiny and shows confidence in this belief while Blonde becomes a true master of his own destiny (although that information is hidden from the viewers). 6. They have to duel each other (and Angel Eyes) for the true name of the grave knowing they all might die for it. 7. The story loops back in on itself into familiar territory as blonde forces Tuco into a noose then things mirror the events of the beginning when Blonde shoots Tuco loose from the noose. (Full circle FTW) 8. Blonde and Tuco part ways, their partnership dissolved but both having the gold to move on with their goals. FYI, this is all off the top of my head. I only looked up the character's names. The "other world" might be the chase as a whole not just the civil war but things return to the status quo once the two armies part ways. After writing this... Blonde might have the stronger circle in retrospect. Angel Eyes might also follow the mono-myth (that would be interesting) but I can't remember enough about his character to think he had anything more than the role of "obstacle with motivation" which is fine. In other words... I think The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is a pretty great example of this model scaled up to two characters.

The Also Person Look, it's not a strict rule. It's purposefully malleable. For example, a tragedy is just half of a story circle. Take a story circle, cut it in half, boom! Tragedy. The rule is best used to describe a character arc rather than a whole story. Many of these can apply to different characters within the story. Some stories, like star wars episode four, revolve around one character's arc, but not all stories do. This doesn't mean that those stories don't use this, they merelyexplore it in a different way, such as applying it to different characters within the story, or cutting it short, as is done in a tragedy

Exactly Maxx Black, i do think that every story use the Campbell circle but in different ways. You choose what to use and when to stop the story. Read the book guys, in there Campbell explain not just the full circle but also variations of it.

You did a great job man!

I think it's a great video! Thanks for making it

Nahh I'm not sure about it dude. There's a Russian filmmaker (can't remember his name, sorry) that pretty much delineates the western mode of narrative as essentially conservative. A return to the same with caveats, essentially. His point is that this monomythic/harmonistic viewpoint is a subliminal redoubling of the status quo. Not sure it works for Grendel, notes from the underground, most of Camus' work. And there's more, much more, it's just quite late here in England and my mind is a bit shot. Regardless of criticism I massively respect the work you're doing and always enjoy your videos. Keep it up my dude.

Diego Cigarillo Just some food for thought from the Q&A on the series of the Story Circle. I often think Western narratives are subliminal redoublings of the status quo, but I'm not convinced it's the structure. I'm more convinced it's the storyteller. "Q: But I'm sick and tired of cookie-cutter stories about good guys saving the day from bad guys. Some of my favorite movies fly in the face of your story model. A: If it's really your favorite movie, I absolutely guarantee you it's structured at least somewhat in accordance with this model. You're hearing "good guys and bad guys," but I'm not saying it. I'm saying "protagonist descending and returning." The very fact that you ARE sick of ordinary movies is evidence that we live and breathe this structure. If you're a subversive punk rock anarchist with a spike through your nose, and you hate "Shrek" because it's a piece of corporate shit, you are craving a descent into the unknown. "You" are expressing a "need" to "go" to an obscure film magazine, "search" for something unique, "find" a gory Japanese horror film, "take" it, "return" to your apartment with it and use it to "change" your friends' minds about cinema. And I think you will find that your "favorite" Japanese gore fest is the one with a recognizable protagonist needing to eat human flesh, going to an orgy, eating everyone there, raping a woman, killing the police and jumping out the window before heading into the night. Schrab has this video we watch all the time: It's an orientation video designed to teach mentally retarded girls about their period. The protagonist is a retarded girl. She starts asking questions about periods. She's led into a bathroom by her older sister, and after a very uncomfortable road of trials, things take a turn for the bizarre. I won't go into detail. Not only is the protagonist going on a journey, the audience is, too. I have taken great pains to avoid any ethical positioning in my observations of structure. Stories are not necessarily about love conquering all, they're not about achieving spiritual balance, they're not about "learning valuable life lessons" and they're not about maintaining order. They're about change. Subversion of order. By the way, "Shrek" had not-so-good structure. Good structure is the best weapon we can use in the fight against corporate garbage because good structure costs nothing, is instinctive to the individual and important to the audience. For all their money, computers and famous actors, the Hollywood factory is constantly being challenged and often buried by individuals like you, people who started by realizing that they were sick of the shit they were seeing and wrote a good story from the deepest level of their unconscious mind. I am trying to show you how to make your own gunpowder. You can use it to make pretty fireworks or you can use it to blow up a building full of innocent babies, it's not my place to care."

You're probably talking about Andrei Tarkovsky, yeah?

Awesome. Why did no one comment on this? :D

@@BrutalGames2013 Because he said everything that needed be said here perfectly :D

@@Sillylittleworld1 Well said

Thank you, sir. I appreciate your appreciation.

Same here

Will Schoder I appreciate you appreciating the appreciation.

@@incomemobile8566 i appreciate you appreciating him appreciating B.055-Bot's appreciation

I know! Where are they?! Lets get 'em

Will Schoder if you build it, they will come

+Will Schoder New subscriber here, loved your video on joke theft! That definitely hooked me, and I feel like you're gonna be getting a lot more subs soon as you pop up near things like every frame a painting, nerdwriter1, and other video essay channels so good luck and don't quit cause these are amazing! Super inspiring to me

Hi Will. New subscriber here! Loving this video.

Of course. Every video that goes up on this channel is meant to help people in some way or another. Thanks for watching.

Or saying that all stories are the same because all they have a beginning, middle and end.

It's natural. We probably absorb it unconsciously from the culture around us. It's like language: you knew how to use it before anyone told you the different parts are called "noun", "verb", and so on. It is incredible, though.

If you have largely written your book already, how the hell could this video be helpful?

@@blaustein_autor She wants to see how she can evolve as a writer.

I think anyone looking at it in the negative way you're describing would be taking it too literally. There is nobody else alive, or who has ever lived, who is precisely the same as you, but all people have the same elements that make them people. All people have the same structure. Their skeleton, their flesh, etc. The differences are what are laid on top of all this.

Copyright law protects expression not concept. For concept you need a patent. This means that this structure can be followed but what distinguishes a work is its expression. _The Force Awakens_ has the same structure as _A New Hope_ but a slightly different expression, just enough to make it feel different for most audiences until the very similar trench run in which those around me in the audience openly started to laugh.

Yep, we wouldn’t have inspiration without it! A great point.

"You talk a lot but don't say anything" really fits to what you just wrote. :/ Everything you said is nothing new. Everybody is trying to sound like a poet. You cleary did not get what this video is about. "The Basic structure" of Stories. And that they are all the same. And they are!

Just how a writer must think.

whynottalklikeapirat this comment is long enough for a hero to go on a journey and come back.

@@areyoujelton xD well played. In all fairness though - so is Campbells bibliography ... and he would say it's more of a mainstay of western mythology to actually feel compelled to come back.

@Ravikul Rao talk about missing out. The Skywalker time-line (original and prequels. I'm not a fan of the sequels tbh) is well put together. You don't have to watch them in chronological order to enjoy them either. You can go 4,5,6 then 1,2,3. Vice versa. You can even throw Rouge one into the mix, which can connect episode 3 and episode 4.

Because it’s a great story in multidimensional ways

Fixed! Thanks for pointing that out.

There are no such things as rules. Even Harmon acknowledges this.

At least you get it.

Good argument. Of course, one could cite that the absurdist and surrealist literature does not have the same impact as traditional stories. That they are often not even perceived as "stories". I know people who think a pretty generic movie is "pointless" when the usual happy ending is missing. So you have to first determine, whether the genre you mentioned or literature types are even "stories". However, I also think that this video simplifies matters too much, even if the core is perhaps true. In addition, one can also recognize, in my opinion, that this core develops or changes over decades, centuries, millennia. So, also the understanding, the perception of these stories is subject to some kind of evolution.

It doesn't even apply to british comedy and bad endings in general

This form satisfies the masses aka sells the most

I don't think any good story really *conforms* to this circle. But this circle can be used to create good stories. Also, I'd say Django Unchained seems closest to this structure as far as I've seen. 1. Django, a slave who is freed by a german bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz, who uses his assistance for bounty hunting. 2. Django wants to free his wife, Broomhilda, from a slave owner, Calvin Candie. 3. Django and Schultz go to the plantation where Candie resides. 4. They try to play it cool and make a deal with Candie for Broomhilda (and 2 other men) 5. The deal is nearly completed, but Candie, with info from his personal slave Stephen, finds out their trick. 6. Schultz shoots Candie after Candie insists they shake his hand. After a shootout, Django is captured and sent to a mining company. 7. Django escapes and kills his captives, then heads back to Candie's residence. 8. Django frees Broomhilda and destroys Candieland.

Thank you, thank you!

I think my favorite recent nonconventional story lately has been The Martian. He is a hero. He goes through difficulties. He returns. But the story is not mythical, especially in the book. Like real life, it's just one damn thing after another. And there's no character growth or change - he was a highly skilled, irreverent, self-possessed badass at the beginning, and he is a highly skilled, irreverent, self-possessed badass at the end. Instead of yet another origin story or hero's journey, it shows someone at the top of their game operating at a high level.

You think he was unchanged throughout his journey? His first objective was the mission he had on mars, but then shit hit the fan and he was left behind. He had to change from having a successful mission to successfully having to survive a deserted planet. He was scared, but he didn't have time for that because he had to survive. And so he learns how to survive on mars through his ingenuity and skill set, he gets off the planet which was the original objective since things went bad, he pays the price having to endure for that much time, his team pays the price not being able to be astronauts anymore. They return home. He changed from Mark Watney the botanist to cptn. Mark Watney, the first space pirate and Mars colonist, and most importantly from asumed dead because no one would ever live that, to a hero.

That's true, but even then I think it could be argued that stories like "The Stranger" use their unconventional structure as part of their message. So while the single story "template" is not universal to all stories, all stories still draw from or contradict it in some notable way

Good point

WordsAreLikeRivers 100 Years of Solitude also comes to mind

No need to "just say". Literally everyone knows that.

@@ShawnTheMidget sometimes the easiest concepts are hardest to recognize at the moment. That comment was worth it.

@wonder mike But since when has it been to appeal to the masses? If you're true to yourself and your story regardless of the structure and the message it should not matter. It all comes from the message of the story and what you're trying to convey, not based upon following a structure just because everyone else has and it's worked for so long. Which is why I feel writing has became so dull. Understand the meta and break it. Don't follow the same old structure just because it's been the most appealing; which the whole point of postmodernism. Looking at things from a different perspective.

wonder mike Oh so The Simpsons, and the whole wave they started of satire comedy ridiculing the “perfect american family” in the 90s was trash? That was postmodernism for television at the time and completely changed and redefined television. (funny because the simpsons later became that which they satired but that’s besides the point) What about all of Christopher Nolan’s movies which all follow a different movie structure compared to other blockbusters yet are considered genius by many? All of his movies were completely different Following norms doesn’t make you stand out it makes your art dull and repetitive What you’re not understanding is that even masters at one point had to defy their own teachers to accomplish their biggest achievements. For example, jazz players in the 20-30s, when the only “good” music was classical music. Jazz redefined all those definitions at the time because of structure and composition, but to this day a lot of modern music has jazz influence in one way or another. Make your mark following your own path, not what people tell you to follow. But like you said it’s important to know the rules and fundamentals before you break them. That’s what meta game is. Game inside a game. Now go out there and be yourself.

@wonder mike If people are thinking about what the viewer wants to see before thinking what THEY themselves personally want to see, they will make a bland safe movie. It's why most people I know haven't seen a good movie in years.

@wonder mike I never think of copying anyone's methods, or what the act is. I just tell a story that I myself could find enjoyable and it's working out fine since the people I show my work to enjoy it too. Even if some of the Marvel movies were decent, the fact they were all leading to something as childish as the "infinity war" film weakens them considerably. An alien that simply looks like a large purple human that wants to "kill half the universe" - any sort of fiction that mentions doing anything to the universe prove the writers have absolutely no idea what the universe even is and I can only see them as comedies, unfortunately unfunny ones.

Postmodernism is the rejection of structure, thus plot itself. Boris Vien is the only one I know who would qualify. But thats not really revolutionary either. Realism is a century older and did much the same thing, and even before that comedy mostly fell outside the journey with mostly static characters.

Watch the movie again, she is clearly called Lee-ah not lay-a..

Well I was referring to the pronunciation, note the inverted comma; and you were replying to me.

Organon She years of him from her father

Right????!!!!

She didnt. The transmission goes: "Help me obi wan kenobi, you are my only hope!"

These theories are like dream interpretation. You might find something that feels true to you, but that doesn't mean it's there. The circle and the monomyth both seem like a load of confirmation bias to me, and they aren't very useful to someone doing literary criticism. On the other hand, "Rick & Morty" has some of the best writing on TV, of any show, cartoon or non, and so if thinking this way helps artists like Dan Harmon, I won't kill their fun.

Ackshully......!

I think the best, most lasting mythological stories -- especially those that are films or books in a series or trilogy like Star Wars -- have multiple points of application, like a geometric, circular drawing. I also think the video specifically misunderstands some of Harmon's story beats, and doesn't do a very good job explaining that, in something like Star Wars, there is more than one circle. In something like "Community", for example, in basically every episode script, there is a story circle for the episode, AND one for each of the characters. The same can almost be said for Star Wars, which is why there are so many in-points for some of these.

YVZ STUDIOS Then that neglects the whole point of the theory...

But that's not the way Campbell's theory is generally applied. The first thing the video itself says is that there is only one story.

I agree with you. Its like learning the fundamentals of art. Just learn the fundamentals, and you can make art any way you want to within the fundamentals. Same thing here. Theres a really basic template. Learn it, then work off of it as someone sees fit.

Cyberpunk stories sometimes don't follow this cicle, because by definition there should show change or happy ending. But as some did point out the hero's journey is the most mainstream way of storytelling, that doesn't make it bad by any means

Everything start in "the order" or "confort zone"? What happen with the peapole who born in a disaster, or war? This theory have a first world bias, really. For example a typical news about the Palestinians, o Syrian war, or Afghanistan, is exactly the inverse structure. In a classical narrative, Moses for example don't born in a "confort zone", born in a slave jew family. Jesus , is the same, who born in a chaotic situation. With my bad english , i want to say, this theory is wrong.

Ryan Leader Thanks Ryan :)

you mean, bestsellers... i can't imagine Point Counter Point by huzley, or Rayuela (Hopscotch) by cortázar with a three act or the joseph campbell theory

Tyler Smith Interesting. Thank you for taking the time to demonstrate through analysis. I definitely understand it better now.

Patrick Bateman realizes that he does not exist because no one recognizes him. He wants recognition but no one cares. At the end he reflects the same apathy that Society has for him.

actually, just Hollywood and the rest of USA follows the hero's journey, the rest of the world just made movies. Some of them has the three act, other simple ignore it and don´t follow nothing... It is good to know the "rules", but is better to break it.

Matt Gilbert Music (even those with no lyrics) can also tell a story. One that we usually aren't always psychologically aware of.

mushroomdude123 Well, yes of course as a musician I do realise this. But I'm thinking more abstractly, I'm considering the possibility that these forms emerge from the substrate of human neurology and are, therefore, expressions of those forms. I'm NOT going to call them archetypes or even Kantian "faculties" because that seems wrong to me. They are more like universal grammar. Just a speculation, but not an idle one.

mushroomdude123 Even though I don't accept the universal grammar theory in linguistics, but maybe something "like" universal grammar.

mushroomdude123 The circle of fifths is just the circle of fourths from the opposite direction

E B F#, You, change, return, take, find(Passing tone), search, go, need, cadence, drum roll. Encore!

Very, very interesting stuff. I'll have to check out this Grof fellow. I do think it's built into our DNA for survival purposes. As Harmon says, if we just didn't go out and look for ways to change things (in caveman voice: you, need, go, search, find, take, return, change), we'd probably perish.

For me it's more an inheritance of the cycle of season per say, or day and night, with which we have became so intricately connected, not only on a physical level like all being but a symbolical one. Then the sun becomes the bringer of consciousness over the unconscious when he rises, then the night becomes dissolution of boundaries and frontiers. I do think the universe is looking for such type of consciousness, repetition is call learning, diversity is call learning faster, etc. When the nights comes and we can only see what is far we dreams, we see everything merging with each other and dancing like shadows, I can't help but seeing it connected. if nature put out there a molecule that accelerate this process it would be amazing. It's also about the shape of our body, it's all so precise. I can't help but think deep dreams and learning is mimicking the psychedelic experience for the computer, it's telling him "see more" and so he start dreaming, if there is a substance that have such a drastic effect on creativity and consciousness with this very process of leaving the ordinary and returning with the elixir, it's safe to base it has a big part in the evolution of our consciousness. (and maybe, hoho, the plan's of the universe)

holotropicbreathwork.ning.com/xn_resources/research/archambault2010.pdf I think it's the most complete I have found, though, yet not read. If you look for perinatal matrix+ hero's journey you can find some other stuff

Maitrī xp +

It's essentially the Buddist wheel of suffering, called samsara, the only difference being with the 4th quadrant represents birth/rebirth where the cycle repeats. IMost stories with the happy ending stops just after the main character attains what was desired but before the proverbial "death" that comes from realising they're still not satisfied. This suffering goes on for a time until a new desire is formed and a new quest begins, represented as rebirth. You can see the cycle of samsara on various levels/dimensions, on an individual level psychological perspective and from a more meta level sociological and biological perspective. The sociological perspective being the desire to achieve a certain sociological change to achieve a state essentially the same as our personal desire to escape suffering from our own personal psychology. Societies can easily be seen to go in cycles, around the wheel in various forms taking on various trends of more left wing, more ring wing, more liberal, more conservative, and back again. Ultimately it's all an attempt to straighten out chaos, to arrange everything so reality is all "up", which is why it will never work. You can only achieve a state of non-suffering for a limited time before it naturally leads back to dissatisfaction and suffering. You can think of this as an expression of us trying to fight the reality that all things are falling apart constantly, that things eventually tend towards disorder. It's possible to introduce energy into a system that can achieve a perception of stabilisation and creation, but this doesn't last forever. The true interpretation of "nirvana" involves at the core a deep recognition of how futile it is to think we can escape the cycle of samsara. To put it in another way, it's the difference between understanding the second law of thermodynamics intellectually, and "feeling" it. The strongest forces driving social forces around the wheel back and forth from the left and to the right and back in different forms, comes from those who are convinced the most that we can stabilise this state of decay, that we can achieve a perfect state. What we allow ourselves to ignore is the reality that if a particular idea of the perfect society is achieved, even if it were perfect at that moment would longer seem perfect once achieved, because individually we're still on the wheel. It's the same mistake of thinking some new technology will make our lives so much happier, but then when we get it we rapidly or even immediately feel something missing and then we're back to reaching for the next thing. It's the fallacy that comes from thinking that the more power we have the happier we'll be and the more we'll escape the disorder and chaos of suffering. Essentially it's a way of thinking that leads logically to believing that to be God would by definition solve the whole thing. Except it's clear that the more power people achieve it doesn't make them much happier necessarily than those with nothing, and we resent them for that because we feel they aught to be. And there comes the point right back around to the topic of the video. Story and drama. Hinduism sees the Universe itself as God, but not as God as a ruler like a King and enforcer of law. There is no God outside the Universe (or what we call reality) it means we're all aspects of/incarnations of the same reality, "God". If you're God you know everything and you're all powerful, which means existence would be very boring as there's nothing worth doing. We can imagine this when we think of a game like chess, where it's not fun playing a game of chess with yourself. Great chess players don't play to win they play for the challenge, and for that there needs to be the chance they'll lose. So the idea is that God needed to split himself into an infinite multiplicity of forms, and so there could be truly this sense of drama and excitement he would need to forget who he was. In order to create a rock too heavy for God to lift, God needed to take away his own power. So with this idea the Universe is seen as a cosmic drama and we're all part of it, we're all playing a role we think of as us, but who we really are is God, or the "higher self". In other words, the wheel of samsara on every level - personal, sociological, etc, is the source of all our problems and suffering but it's also the source of all the drama, excitement, and happiness and beauty. It's the force of creation driving the human mind to create. It creates peace and it creates war, it creates heaven and hell, and you can't truly wish away one without wishing away the other. The irony is that if we desire to eliminate the cycle is exactly the same as any other other desire to eliminate suffering, which is itself a desire. We know that all good stories need conflict. If there's no conflict there's no story, hence the videos subject matter. We can't get excited at beauty unless we have the contrast of ugly, and what we consider beautiful completely depends on our perception of that contrast to ugliness. We can't perceive beauty at all if there is no ugliness, which is why we live at a time where most us take completely for granted living conditions that for most of human history would have been unthinkable. Suffering and death is really in a sense the act of creation, because creation can't come from anything else. Out of the chaotic inflation of a single sub atomic spark that we call the event of the Big Bang created a Universe of ever expanding complexities. Out of what we call nothing and can't define created everything, both order and chaos. Our lack of knowledge in another players decisions makes a game worth playing, and our suffering that the world isn't as we'd like it to be allows us to experience all the beauty of the human experience. The fairy tale that ends "and they lived happily ever after" is boring and that's why we never care about telling that story. We don't truly want to escape suffering, it's why even we could do it, we'd choose not to. If you analyse stories deeply enough, you analyse human psychology, and you can take that deeper still.

yes it did have you seen that movie?

Asummersdaydreamer14 it is gengar's face

It is just a scary face to represent the unknown because human evolved to be afraid of the unknown and the subconscious for most people is unknown so this is how they represent it.

@@TheVariableConstant Except it's Gengar.

Thanks, Jamie.

Thanks, Joe. I will!