Heroes & Heroines
Superheroes may be seen as our alternate egos, incarnations of one’s true potentials. The message is not self-delusion but to get me in touch with my dream potential. A dream is a promise of more than I am given. What matters and will make a difference is how I deal with the promise of my superhero potential. Will he serve as an escape route to avoid dealing with reality, or do I consider him a challenge not only of reality but of myself as well ...
In times past it was knights, princes and princesses or maidens and shepherds that sparked a child’s imagination. The tales’ subject is the discovery and awakening of the hero or heroine that is dormant inside the child, be it the prince locked inside a spell that gives him the appearance of a frog, or the woman trapped inside the maiden, waiting to be kissed awake, and not just for gossiping, cooking and household chores, nor for choosing a business career. We and our children are expected to deal with more serious and profounder matters than making a living …
As a parent I am expected to help my children discover and awaken the hero or heroine that is dormant inside their innocent soul. As a child I’m facing the choice of either following the guidance of those who are responsible for my well-being, provided they encourage my curiosity and challenge my dream potential, or else venturing out alone as so many young men in ancient myths and tales do when they do not find proper guidance and opportunities to get in touch with the hero that is dormant inside their yet untouched soul. Ancient cultures had established rites and rituals of initiation that helped young men get in touch with the man inside them, just as the girls were initiated to their destination as a female member of the tribe …
Modern society, scientifically enlightened and castrated, has abolished all notions of anybody getting in touch with their heroic, bigger than life-size self. The reasoning is that we must not reach beyond life-size reality but stay sane and sensible lest we wreak havoc as so many bigger than life alpha animals have done in the course of history. This rational, scientifically enlightened view blissfully ignores its own hubris. After all, it was cold blooded scientists who have blessed humankind with the technology to unleash nuclear power, with industrialized warfare, euthanasia and eugenics, currently traded as bio-engineering …
Cold blooded scientists shape reality before anybody knows what the consequences and repercussions are going to be. This they leave to society and our children to cope with. Too busy making a career for themselves. Yet they all and society as a whole fail at providing our children with challenges, peers and idols that might initiate our children and help them get in touch with the hero and heroine that is dormant inside their soul. Instead they are being fed the fast food candy fluff of a sanitized and emasculated culture that is but a rehashed and regurgitated recycling of retro fashions, poses and dress codes …
How is anybody who has never been challenged beyond their choice of dress code to believe in, never mind awaken the hero or heroine inside them? Not to mention that society and authorities would freak out should they detect signs of true heroism in our children. Quick, call for the pros of mental and emotional sanitation before my kid gets hold of a gun and does some real life target practice at the shopping mall. Shooting at avatars with one’s gaming console is no challenge that will ever awaken a hero or heroine in anyone, not to mention facing the real life demons like boys for girls and girls for boys …
Science and modern society deal with the demons inside of us by rationalizing and thus castrating them. There are reasons for us to be facing demons, just as the demons, witches and dragons of ancient myths and tales served solid and profound purposes. For a society and community to be strong in the face of adversaries, whoever they may turn out to be, requires of us and our children to be awakened to our true and full potential. This won’t happen if our children grow up in a culture that feeds on fear of worst-case scenarios and knows no other prerogative but safety and comfort …
Long as we are prisoners of our fear, we will never be safe, the worst will always be waiting for us in the dark and behind our back. As Bruce Lee has said: “Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” It is the essence of all ancient cultures who taught their children to grow up and become contenders for whatever challenges might await them. This shared concern and responsibility has made cultures and societies strong as it integrated an individual’s growth and development in the well-being and evolution of the community. No one can demand of our children to share and partake in the well-being of the common if the common does not provide guidance and initiation into the role and responsibilities the children are expected to take on …
Modern society under the regime of science and sanitation has successfully killed the hero-potential in our children. As nature awakens in them, they are inept at coping with their fears and yearnings. Nature craves for its supplement to become whole in itself. A boy’s and girl’s awakening makes them aware that they are not complete, that they are lacking something essential. Yet as urgent as nature’s demand is, as frightening is its power for a pubescent boy or girl, disrupting everything their upbringing has prepared them for. The claim of scientists is rational enlightenment, but nature is more than rational crisis management. There is no way to fall in love by sound reasoning. Without the allure of fatal attraction no boy or girl will ever venture out of their comfort zone, they will stick with their own and leave it to scientists to deal with the call and demands of nature …
The result will be artificial life, mood enhancers to provide some vapid surrogates for the challenges that society and our elders are afraid of facing in real life. Life as reality-TV à go-go. It will be a matter of time before a nation of underdogs with nothing left to lose will overrun the defenses of scientific sanitation. No hard- and software can protect us from our inner corruption and depravity. Immune deficiency has wrought havoc on scientifically sanitized civilization in more ways than just biologically …
