As a society of people called the human race, we are moving into a new stage in our social evolution. Survival needs are changing. It is easier to survive now, so more people are living into old age. However, we are still carrying a load of health care problems.

Barring accidents, the biggest threat on this planet is ill health and disease. The quality of our health is not good, and we are seeing a heavy load being put on our outdated health-care system. The medical system we are currently using isn’t solving the health problems or improving the quality of individual life in our society to a measurable degree. Instead of moving into greater health and prosperity, we seem to be moving into physical decay and pollution. We are more aware of drug abuse, the toxicity of drugs, the waste produced by the medical industry, malpractice, and the failure to find true cures to conditions and diseases that don’t create other conditions and diseases. We are even drugging our children with Ritalin, antibiotics, allergy drugs and vaccinations.

As a result, the health of our planet seems to be declining rapidly. Women are loosing their female organs and gall bladders. Men can look forward to prostrate cancer and counting fat grams. Children have an array of challenging issues. We all have allergies and weakened conditions like heart disease and obesity.

As a society, the medical system is the one we choose and endorse, the system that everyone supports financially. But who really wants to financially support a big failing system? Aside from ignorance, the problem is that we still believe the doctor is the hero, the one who lovingly rescues us from pain and disease. We make the doctor the hero. In fact, we pay doctors great amounts of money to play this role – to come charging in on the white horse, wearing the white coat, to make us well again. This type of collective belief is called an archetype.

The hero archetype shows up in many other areas of our lives also. According to Carl Jung, archetypes are created out of the collective belief systems held by society. Archetypes are handed down generation after generation, for they are actually flows of energy we identify with. Archetypes add energy to the drama of our lives. We choose these streams of energy and allow them to fuel our dramas by identifying with them.

We can turn anyone we believe to be a power and authority figure into the hero archetype. The only thing necessary is that we have admiration for the individual, deeming him or her more worthy than we are, having some incredible power to protect us or solve our problems if need be – survival issues again.

As society evolves, so does the archetypal energy we co-create. New archetypal energies emerge. We now have a Goddess archetype rising as a result of the social thought about "who women really are." This thought came out of the women’s liberation movement of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. With the Goddess archetype to identify with, women have reclaimed their sexual power and their spirituality. Belief systems about God are changing also. People no longer believe that God is an old (non-sexual) man in the sky who passes judgment on us. God is being discovered as energy, a divine force that includes the feminine as Godhead. Socially, we are always evolving and moving into new collective thought patterns; thus, new archetypes form as old ones die.

With the new millennium upon us, the shift speeds up. It is easy to find evidence of new collective thought forming. "New Age" was coined as a phrase to describe this new thought system as the idea became more popular and more identity (and energy) was added to it. "Holistic" is another word that we associate with new thought. We now have holistic healers, teachers and an alternative medical system being born out of this thought. As we move more and more into the new paradigm of personal power as compared to power over others, we see what I call the fall of the hero.

The personal growth movement and our collective success at survival have made us self-sufficient, independent people. Technology has given us a whole new world. We don’t have to go to power and authority figures any more for our needs. We don’t need power figures to protect us from war. We can now consult a computer program to do our taxes and our divorces. We can look up answers on-line to our questions about health or any other topic. Information is everywhere and information is power. We can solve our own problems. Our choices have increased to the point where we don’t need guidance or protection to help us make them. We don’t need a hero to rescue us. Not only that, our heroes have fallen. O.J. Simpson was accused of murdering his wife; Magic Johnson got AIDS; Princess Diana was killed. Behind it all, they were just people with human problems. We are people too. Maybe there really isn’t anyone bigger, wiser or more knowledgeable about what is good for us than we are. Maybe I am my own hero and I am just seeing myself reflected in the eyes of someone like Princess Diana.

The hero archetype grew out of our need for role models. We needed to find people we could pattern ourselves after – parents, teachers, friends, ministers. The idea of equality was born with the civil rights movement 20 or 30 years ago. The new paradigm, the new model, is moving into a place where there is no rank, no social class, no one person that is essentially better than any other. Power and authority figures are no longer trusted. Our lives are basically in our own hands. It is a scary place to be when disease or accident is the major threat on this planet now.

The idea that we could know more about our health and more about how to stay healthy than our doctors know lends a little risk to our new emerging independence. It also makes the hero fall. Still, I would rather take my health into my own hands and consult with healers and alternative medical people than blindly turn my body over to the care of institutionalized medicine. This attitude is a result of the rapidly emerging personal power paradigm: "I am a wise, intuitive being. I know what is good for me."

The fall of the hero and the rise of the individual are certain signs of a new social structure emerging. Team play is replacing follow the leader. In our business world, cooperation is replacing war. Families are looked at as systems that function for everyone, rather than patriarchal systems that benefit the leader instead of the followers.

We can all bring this new way of being in faster if we focus our own individual lives on the new paradigm principles of self-actualization, equality, cooperation and finding solutions where all parties win. In the distant yesterday, we punished our children to get them to obey us. In the new system, we reward good behavior and down play the rest.

Take your health care into your own hands. Build it with nutrition and regular stress-reduction methods like massage, acupuncture or energy work. Have your own relationship with the Highest Power and cut out the middlemen. Look for natural remedies and whole foods. Spend your money supporting your own health care instead of using an outdated system that costs us all more than it is worth. Talk to your doctor about alternative treatments instead of drugs. Consider magnets and herbs to speed recovery from accidents and injuries. We can all play a part in changing the world for the better and improving quality of life on this planet.