Wolfgang Hammer

Not in the organized way necessarily, but perhaps in a way of ultimate concern.

Stories are very good vehicles for delivering experience of ultimate concern.

It's an unbelievably powerful symbol because it stores potentiality.

So the mind can imagine anything.

So it's the ultimate story in some sense where both all your desires and fantasies can be fulfilled and all your anxieties can be purged to such a degree maybe that the money project is a denial of death project.

The more you accrue of that, it allows itself to be imprinted with any vision that you want.

The more you accrue of it, the more it gives the illusion that you're not going to have to leave your consciousness.

I think it's a character starting at an extreme point, going to an extreme point that they cannot imagine at the beginning, but consciously imagine at the beginning, but somehow deep down know that this is where they need to go.

And then situations arranged in such a way that the original intent faces bigger and bigger versions of a barrier that is then resolved at the very end to some degree.

Most characters that you meet are either underdogs trying to rise or kings are falling or queens are falling.

The biggest people in the world believe they're the underdog because we are, again, locked into this subjective experience of the world and we are wanting being.

but because everyone views themselves as one.

You get access to people when they recognize themselves in what it is you're saying.

It's the human desire to overcome our wretched state, which is this Kierkegaard phrase I always love, and it's that humans are gods who shit.

And I think it has to do with this capable being on this planet that has to die.

And that sends all these things like questions of death.

I think hardship as the barrier to be overcome is the foundational element of any narrative.

I find it very interesting in general that when you look at the history of storytelling, how the archetype

Well, the paradigm of what a story is, is someone actively overcoming obstacles to achieve something.

I guess somehow this must correspond to how collectively, you see this in Chinese mythology, you see it in Indian mythology, you overcome through activity, through intentional action.