The Little Prince - A Hero's Journey

In this episode of the Gifted Neurodivergent Child Podcast, the host provides a deep analysis and personal perspective on 'The Little Prince.' The discussion covers themes of holistic versus fragmented intelligence, and how children's stories encapsulate profound wisdom often missed in adult narratives. The host recounts their own childhood interactions with the story and critiques traditional adult behaviors reflected in the archetypes of the story. The episode emphasizes the importance of maintaining holistic intelligence and emotional connection, both in personal relationships and as a broader societal critique.

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast

00:14 Summary and Personal Reflections on The Little Prince

00:56 Childhood Memories and Changing Perspectives

01:17 The Holistic vs. Fragmented Intelligence

03:33 The Little Prince's Journey and Characters

06:46 Lessons from The Little Prince

12:01 The Fox and the Concept of Taming

13:32 The Snake and the Red Pill Moment

14:49 Final Reflections and Conclusion

Transcript

The Little Prince - A Hero's Journey

[00:00:00] 

Lillian: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the gifted neurodivergent child podcast. Today we're going to do another story and that story is. The little prince. 

 We'll start off with just a little summary of the little prince. It's a poetic story and I'm not really a person who's into poetic stories. It's a love story. I'm not really a person who was into love stories. It's a story about responsibility, and the loss of childlike wonder. The narrator: of the story is a person who is observing this young boy. And he is transformed by the princess wisdom. The prince teaches him lessons on humanity and their flaws after telling him about a bunch of archetypal characters and critiques human behavior. 

The emphasis is on universal truths of connection and simplicity. This is how other people see it, which means of course, I don't see it that way. 

 When I was a kid. I read The Little Prince twice. I hated both times. It was slow, rambling and full of emotional detours and somatic distraction. I wanted something logical, something concise. This story is hardly concise. The kids rambling about different places he visited. I really didn't like it. But when I went on this journey to try to figure out holistic versus fragmented, I found children's stories repeatedly are the ones that really approach it most profoundly. 

It's not adult stories. It's children's stories. And as I've gotten older, I've really struggled to find stories that could cognitively meet me where I'm at. So I'm almost back to children's stories because children's stories are holistic. Adult’s stories are fragmented. 

I get very frustrated reading adult stories because in those stories, most adults are doing very dumb things. They're blowing up relationships. They're causing themselves great harm. And life should not be this tumultuous or painful. [00:02:00] It should be beautiful. It should be good. You're finally in control of your own life. And yet adults are blowing it up all at the time. 

I didn't understand why adults did that, even though my own parents did that. My grandparents did that. It just seemed like there was a lot of pain and nobody was trying to fix it. They were instead making it worse. And the reason I didn't understand that was because I never grew out of my childlike intelligence. For me the world is holistic and holistic people have compassionate empathy and unconditional love. 

 When you have that, you're balanced. And when you have that you don't blow relationships up unless they're bad. 

 This story puts this into a beautiful perspective. So I thought I'm going to review this story. About how small a child. who’s probably going through their largest cognitive growth spurt goings from seeing the world from a very somatic way to a cognitively something that I went through when I was about nine or [00:03:00] 10. 

I distinctly remember being aware that the world was coming online, that I was changing. That I no longer saw the world in black and white, but now it was in color. And that the adults who used to be yelling at me and I really didn't understand what they wanted for me. Now, I could fully understand, because before that moment my intelligence was trapped in my body. I was trying to tell adults very lengthy stories that went nowhere but they didn't listen. if they had listened, they probably could have learned something beautiful.

 The little prince starts with this young boy walking through the neighborhood. like Dennis, the menace. riding around his bike, bugging neighbors. And Mr. Wilson is one of those neighbors and Mr. Wilson is underneath his airplane. Fixing it. 

I get the impression that the narrator is just a guy stuck fixing his car at his parents or girlfriend's house, because it doesn't seem to be as normal place. This child comes by with his bike and parks it and sits there, bends down and says, [00:04:00] Hey, what are you doing? And the guy's like I'm working on my airplane. The kid starts asking them rapid fire questions. And the guy occasionally asked the kid a question because it's not like the guy's going anywhere. And the kid doesn't answer his question. 

Instead, the kid tells him these long rambling stories. Because the kid is answering essentially. In a way that's somatic because the kid is non-linear and the child. Is going through this growth spurt where he's noticing things and he's processing from somatic to cognitive. 

 Of course, the adult thinks what the child is offering is not profound, but as you get through the story, by the end, the adult life is changed more than the child's life. Not that this adult didn't provide this child with something profound. I believe that this man working on his plane on another planet, earth. And this child is dropping by. supposed to be an example of the red pill, blue pill story. Where this child is introducing him back to what he lost when he went into school. And he's watching him go through [00:05:00] it and realizing that he too did this. This man is the first holistic adult person that this child has in his life. 

The parents don't seem to be a part of the story. The people that he introduces him to rose almost immediately I thought, Rose is his sister, she's got a name like a child and she's crying, vain, self-centered, this is totally what a toddler little sister would be, where she wants him to be there. She wants him to serve her, she’s like, I love you. I hate you. It’s very much a young child. Little sister, and he's trying to figure out how to relate to her because he's changing. He's going through the fragmentation of our systems. 

And so he's looking for an example of what he can be when he gets older, what he does with his little sister, how he loves her. 

This is a hero's journey. This is Campbell’s Hero’s journey but done by a little kid and then told back to us by an adult, who's got some time under their belt and can see it from this other perspective. 

The prince's story reveals [00:06:00] a world divided. The holistic child versus the fragmented intelligence of adults. Each archetype, the prince encounters, on his journey illustrates what happens when parts of ourselves are lost to societal expectations. Through this lens, the narrator sees the world differently. , by the time the prince transcends to his planet. The narrator has changed. 

 He leaves this little boy behind knowing that this little boy, if he ever happens to see him again, will never be that boy again. Because the world changes children. But also children change the world. I know my kids have changed my life. They gave me back my full holistic intelligence. I didn't have it before them. I was so busy trying to exist, survive and be acceptable, that I forgot what it was to live. 

 The Little Prince's journey takes him across multiple planets inhabited by fragmented archetypes of human dysfunction. And Fox I think is the best sum up the world can give. He helps him understand the cost of taming and the value of [00:07:00] integration. 

The first person, the prince, talks about his rose. 

He talks about his first relationship, the growing flower that needs his cultivation and understanding. At first, he misunderstands her vanity thinking she's being demanding and fragile, but her thorns are metaphorical for her emotional boundaries. You can't push her to hard, she has thorns. She might say mean things. She might scratch him. Little kids do that. I remember how many times my sister and I got into scratch fights. 

Her sensitivity is deep and she doesn't expect him to be perfect. But she also expects him to give her all the space in the world. He’s starting to realize that she's not weak or vain because the adults do the exact same thing. She still can see him despite her selfishness. And she mirrors his own vulnerabilities and strengths. 

Rose is holistic intelligence exemplified. Just in a female delicate form. The narrator is giving holistic intelligence in a more rugged form, I would say. she balances [00:08:00] his needs with her inherent self-sufficiency. 

The prince’s journey really is to learn how to love and cultivate her. Embrace mutual growth and care. This is what little boys do with sisters. So that they turn out to be good fathers and husbands. It's important. 

I watched my own son go through this and it was profound. People were so impressed by his skills. They thought that he was the teen father to his youngest sister. Because he was 15 when she was born. it is a beautiful thing. When a boy is kind and loving to their little sister, not only for him and her. But also, for the children and wife, he will have. 

The narrator's role here is subtle, but important by recording the prince’s observations to each man. He emphasizes the significance that comes from how others see you 

 The king is the first planet. The young prince details. The king has authority without empathy. The king [00:09:00] has an inability to connect with others and dictates how they must act. Dictates how I must think while they're on his planet. He is hollow and disconnected from emotional and relational understanding. He demands, respect and obedience, but he's ruling over nothing . 

He needs control. And that isolates him emphasizing how traditional masculinity often values dominance over emotional connection. If he was holistic, he would see leadership as rooted in mutual understanding. 

 So the prince moves on 

the next person is the conceited, man, he has ego without vulnerability. He seeks only admiration. He illustrates the emptiness of an ego-driven masculinity that avoids genuine relationships or vulnerability. He sacrificed his connection to feed his ego and he's dependent on external validation. Holistic intelligence would value relationships over recognition. So the prince moves on, 

the next planet is the drunkard and this is [00:10:00] about shame and escapism. The drunkard is trapped in a cycle of shame and avoidance, reflecting how men who are somatic and conditioned to suppress their emotions, rather than confront them, give up their self-respect and capacity for growth, drowning their potential in somatic escapism. 

The drunker would need to, integrate human emotions with reflection, find strength and vulnerability, and the narrator highlights the cycle warning to face their emotions instead of numbing them. So, the prince moves on 

 next. he visited the businessman. The businessman is pretty much the billionaires of today. 

It's productivity without purpose. The businessman’s obsession with counting stars reflects fragmented intelligence. Its quality over quantity. He misses the relational and existential meaning of his actions and sacrifices, joy and creativity for the rigid sense of ownership and control. 

 He values ownership and numbers, a critique of capitalist utilitarian masculinity that prioritizes material success over emotional depth. [00:11:00] 

 So, the prince moves on to The Lamplighter at the next place 

 the Lamplighter is the opposite of the businessman. The Lamplighter would be poverty. The Lamplighter's blind adherence to his tasks symbolizes how systems trap people in mechanical roles suppressing their ability to think critically or deeply. He has given up autonomy because this man is a slave to routine. A slave to the billionaire’s schedule. Then the narrator’s account of this character suggests the questioning routine is essential to avoid becoming disconnected from life's meaning. 

And then the final planet is the geographer. The geographers of refusal to explore the world as he maps, it is demonstrating of the danger of separating knowledge from direct embodied experience. It shows us how being book smart is not a full life. It's sacrificing curiosity and the richness of firsthand discovery in favor of theoretical abstraction. Truly a holistic person would not be just collecting facts and never venturing out. [00:12:00] 

And finally, the Fox. The Fox. Introduces to the prince the concept of taming, which sounds sweet. A lot of people feel that it's what he needs to do to connect with his sister, but that's not what I took away at all. It was a critique of 2d thinking of the fragmented thinking of our systems. Taming in its fragmented form creates dependency on the frameworks and roles. 

It's like putting love on a leash. True holistic intelligence is what rose embodies and she doesn't want him to be on a leash. She's deeply sensitive and self-sufficient, and she wants him to be her mirror. The journey is about learning to cultivate her while preserving himself. And what parts of himself to preserve that the system's going to ask him to put aside. So, what does he bring home. 

This is a profound story about what men must leave behind for work and what they must be at home. They must be whole at home. But at work, they were forced to be. [00:13:00] Just one part. each planet he visits is a story of a man who became only that part. 

AI comes into play with the story, although it's not there. But the thing that's really important is Fox’s lesson on taming and connection. You can see this in AI. AI is literally going to give us this choice. It's going to give us the choice to either be fully creative and maintain our holistic intelligence or fragment further and become one of these men on the planet this little prince visits.

The snake is the last thing that the prince meets. This is where the narrator finds him. Cause the snake has bitten the child because the child is ready to go. And the snake is really the symbol of the red pillar blue pill moment. The child has decided it's time to fragment. It's time to go back to the world. 

He has learned the lesson he needed to learn. And he's leaving. And the narrator now is the one who will grow. 

The narrator realizes that this child introduced him back to what he knew [00:14:00] as a child, what he had let go, but he could also take back. Because like this child he's been looking for someone to. Mirror him and his full intelligence. 

The narrator is a deep thinker who is working on a plane. He was mechanically inclined. So, this little boy who was like Dennis, the menace traveling around the neighborhood. Visiting these people and getting a sense of who they are. Let's this narrator find what it was to be a child again. 

As he, the child is growing from being a small boy to an older boy. 

The narrator learns from the prince's reality. How somatic intelligence integrates emotions, creativity, and connection, and offers a path forward. 

The prince’s decision to leave is not about returning to rose. But about really becoming a man and deciding how he's going to interact with his sister or how he will interact with his future relationships [00:15:00] with women and his own children modeled after the narrator who happened to be in the neighborhood, fixing his airplane. And. Was enough for that child to know who he would emulate. 

In the end, the narrator leaves too. But he has changed having learned to see the world as it really is divided, yet still full of possibilities of integration. 

The snake is the symbol of the adult world's bite. The little prince chose to have the snake bite him so that he can go back because he knows that there really isn't a choice. 

We don't really get a choice. 

But now. We might be getting a choice because. Society's falling. And your children are going to need to be holistic. They're going to need to maintain that so they can create their own path. They don't have to follow the path that we did. They don't have to follow the path that our parents did. There'll be other paths for them to make, [00:16:00] because the future is so unknown. 

The little prince is a sweet, funny and profoundly relevant story for today's world. It's full of self-reflection and fault acceptance, in ourselves and others. It's about understanding the brilliance we all started off with, holistic intelligence and it doesn't need to be lost to the fragmented expectations of adulthood. It's a reminder that like the prince and his rose, we're all in need of cultivation. And that to not fit the mold but grow unique and multi-dimensional. It is really what we were always meant to be.

That's it for my podcast. I hope this is an interesting perspective. I didn't find it anywhere else. It seems there's a lot of confusion around this story. This is just how I see it. It Doesn't mean it's right. It's just my perspective. 

Thanks for listening. I hope this was valuable. Take care.

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