How Do You Go Home After Doing Evil?

The first move is to take the epic out of adventure mode. The Odyssey is a sequel to the Iliad, but the wound is domestic Source trail 0:003:42 Today, we start the Odyssey, and the Odyssey is a sequel to the Iliad, and it's a family story. It's a story about a homecoming, and there are three main characters, right? There's Odysseus, sorry, Odysseus, who is the...And he wants to prove he's better than his father. He wants to become a hero himself, but he's being burdened by the legacy of his father. The other issue is that unless his father is dead... He cannot inherit his fathe... . Odysseus is trying to return from war with PTSD. Penelope cannot admit that the love of her life is probably dead. Telemachus cannot inherit his father's house, reputation, or role while his father remains both absent and legendary.

The ancient word for this damage is soul. The modern word is worldview. Jiang treats the old word as richer: the soul has layers, streams, family, culture, history, and gods moving through it Source trail 5:54 It has almost infinite dimensions. There are different layers to the soul. And there's really... Okay. There's really a part of the soul that is you, okay? That is you, the person. But who you are as a person is ultimat... . Worldview is the stripped-down modern version, the structure that tells a person who they are, where they come from, and what can be done next.

Trauma breaks that structure. A painful fact becomes too central to identity and too painful to see, so the mind refuses it. The result is not just sadness. It is inability: inability to act, to think, to want, to trust desire, to know what judgment means. Depression is the lived form of a broken world-picture Source trail 8:31 is fundamental to your identity, but because it is so painful, you forget about it, or you refuse to see it, and this causes a rupture in your identity. In your coherent sense of the world, which destroys your world vie... .

Once the soul model is in place, the plot becomes psychological. Each member of the family has an Odyssey because each has a soul to repair Source trail 9:38 There could be a trauma that splits the soul, okay? And it could be a demon. It could be a really painful incident. It could be anything, okay? But it splits your soul. And if you are to recover, then you have to repair... . The answer is not conquest or cleverness. The answer is each other: the love of family as the force that can put a shattered world back into relation.

That is why the story of Odysseus leaving for Troy matters. He loves Penelope and his infant son, but Troy is the greatest war in human history. Achilles is going. Agamemnon is going. Glory is going. If Odysseus truly wanted only home, he could hide, flee, or make the fake madness impossible to test. Instead he creates a stratagem the Greeks can see through almost immediately Source trail 14:53 us is that, yes, Odysseus really loves his family and he wants to be with his family because he knows that if he goes to Troy, he'll be gone for 20 years. That's 20 years that he won't be able to see his son, Tammacus,... .

He then needs reasons. Justice: Helen was taken and Menelaus' honor must be avenged. Family: Helen belongs with her children, as Penelope would belong with him. Legacy: if he wins the war, Telemachus inherits a name that teaches honor, justice, and truth. The justifications are not decorations Source trail 17:04 But family. Okay? Now, third reason is legacy. Yes, he will not see his son, Timarchus, for 20 years. Therefore, he has to build him a legacy that will carry him for the rest of his life. If he is in Troy and he wins th... . They are the repairs he uses to keep his own conflict from tearing him apart.

The wound opens when the war ends. Winning forces Odysseus to see that the three reasons were wrong Source trail 18:10 Because again, he's abandoning his family for 20 years, okay? So what's going to happen is this. This is the worldview that Odysseus has when he enters Troy. The problem starts when they win the war, okay? Because when... . Justice was revenge and murder. Family was the destruction of families. Legacy was the ruin of a civilization whose queen did not even want to return to Sparta. The worldview that let him fight breaks under the weight of victory.

The Iliad readings show the older Odysseus still intact. Agamemnon tries reverse psychology by telling the soldiers they can go home, and the army immediately runs for the ships. The point is brutal: the men are sick of the stupid war Source trail 22:30 Okay. So this just shows you how stupid Agamemnon is because Agamemnon thinks that his soldiers actually want to fight this war, but all the soldiers are homesick. They're sick of this stupid war. They don't even know w... . They miss their wives and children. Agamemnon cannot process this because his heroic script says they should want glory.

Odysseus is the one who can act. He does not board the ship, which means his desire for home is already divided. Athena appears as intuition Source trail 26:06 Okay. So he's now going to single handedly save the Greeks from losing this war. Okay. So Athena, right? Athena is always part of Odysseus. It's part of his soul, right? The intuition. And his intuition tells him, there... , part of Odysseus' soul, telling him something is wrong. Agamemnon is frozen in cognitive dissonance, so Odysseus takes the royal scepter, the object that carries authority, legacy, and soul Source trail 25:2826:06 Helen of Argos. Helen for whom so many Argives lost their lives in Troy, far from native land. No, don't give up now. Range the Achaean ranks. With your winning words, hold back each man you find. Don't let them haul th...Okay. So he's now going to single handedly save the Greeks from losing this war. Okay. So Athena, right? Athena is always part of Odysseus. It's part of his soul, right? The intuition. And his intuition tells him, there... , and becomes king for the moment in order to save the war.

Then the lecture crosses from Iliad to Odyssey. The heroic tactician is gone. The man who once galvanized armies is now shipwrecked, captive, weeping by the sea. Homer withholds him for many books, and when he appears he is changed: not merely delayed, but broken Source trail 27:33 Yeah. All right. All right. So, but that's the Iliad. Okay? And again, what will happen is that Odysseus - Odysseus will win this war and he will win eternal glory for himself with the stratagem of the Trojan horse. All... .

Calypso's offer is deliberately excessive. She can keep him in pleasure and make him immortal. But immortality without home is not salvation Source trail 30:19 Okay, so he's a broken man. He's a very different person from the Iliad. Okay? So, now the question then is why? What happened to him? All right? So, Calypso says to Odysseus, you know what? It's been great having a sex... . Odysseus must leave because repair is not escape from mortality; repair is the restoration of relation to wife, son, house, and self.

The banquet gives him the necessary wound. The bard sings Troy as great deeds, but Odysseus cries instead of boasting. Memory is storing pain in him Source trail 32:51 Okay, so there's this great banquet, and the bard sings about the Trojan War. And at this point you would think that Odysseus would be like, hey, that's me, man. He'd be very proud. But instead he cries and he cries, ok... . If he wants to go home, he has to ask for the song he most wants to avoid: the wooden horse, the concealed engine of death that made his name Source trail 34:53 Stirred now by the muse, the bard launched out in the fine blaze of song, starting at just the point where the main Achaean force, setting their camps afire, had boarded the oarswept ships and sailed for home. But famed... .

The poem gives the answer through a woman. Odysseus hears the story of the sack and melts into tears like a wife clinging to a dying husband Source trail 36:19 There he sang, Odysseus fought the grimmest fight he had ever braved, but he won through at last, thanks to Athena's superhuman power. That was the song the famous harper sang, but great Odysseus melted into tears, runn... while conquerors drag her into bondage. This is not decorative simile. It is the image that reveals what his victory did.

Jiang names the event. During the sack, Odysseus kills and then sees a woman crying over the husband he has just struck down. He came to Troy to save a woman, Helen, and suddenly sees Penelope in a Trojan widow Source trail 38:15 And Odysseus is traumatized by this woman being traumatized because he came to Troy to save the woman, right? He sees Penelope in this woman. He says, I came all this way to make sure that Helen could be safe with her h... . He has not restored family. He has made another family impossible.

That is why the three noble words fail. This is not a just war. This is not a war about family. This is not a legacy a son can safely inherit. The central question of the Odyssey becomes brutal and exact: having done so much evil, how can you go home? Source trail 39:32 This is not a war about family. This is a war about destroying families. And what legacy am I leaving my son? How will my son feel if he knows how I destroyed families like ours? And this causes trauma in him. It splits... How can you mend the soul and repair the worldview so that family is still possible Source trail 39:32 This is not a war about family. This is a war about destroying families. And what legacy am I leaving my son? How will my son feel if he knows how I destroyed families like ours? And this causes trauma in him. It splits... ?