Palingenetic hero's journey
You know what the hero's journey is.
Palingenesis is a concept of rebirth. Of recreation. That after great struggle something new will be born. Christianity is palingenetic, that after great evil and darkness the apocalypse will happen and the world will be destroyed. And then the kingdom of heavens come will come to earth. It's also part of the famous definition of fascism by Roger Griffin.
Almost all stories that deal with world resets are by definition palingenetic. Also dystopias where the world collapses except for a small bastion of good humans left to regrow from the ashes. Very palingenesis.
This. Palingenesis. May be one of, if not, the most frequent concepts in culture. Any culture. Or history. I have no proof of it but I also have no doubts.
(Please I don't want to imply that palingenesis or the hero's journey are inherently bad or anything silly. They are just useful concepts or definitions that let us talk about broader themes. Their use and application, well get to that.)
My point is, the hero's journey is something we all can relate to because it touches on something fundamental of the human experience. I believe that palingenesis and the hero's journey are very very related, but that their difference is the scale. That while the hero's journey is very individual or group related, palingenesis is more of a kind of cultural/national/global/societal/macro hero's journey. (Kind of like assigning a god to phenomena around us in other cultures (like many polytheist cultures), maybe palingenesis narratives come from an extrapolation of this deeply human experience that the hero's journey approaches to a societal level. I don't believe this, but it's interesting to consider.)
This also makes it very dangerous in real world. Fascism is palingenetic. Plenty of death cults are palingenetic. I believe(? idk if I believe believe) that palingenetic narratives are powerful propaganda tools because the jump from the macro level palingenetic to the micro level hero's journey is relatively a leap, not a chasm. (Remember, no matter how prepared you are, you are not immune to propaganda)
Palingenesis is a common hope for the oppressed, what are the tales of the freed? Why write a story where everything is always well? Wouldn't that kind of story suck? Is slice of life the exception to the rules or does that not make any sense?
(I think I might be wrong. Maybe palingenesis is just embedded into the later part of the hero's journey, and it doesn't exists apart from it. Thus making it easily embedded into pretty much any narrative. idk)
It's just interesting to think about.