@seanhart

Chag Pesach Sameach and Happy Easter everyone, regardless of what you believe from either religion, Judaism and Christianity tell some of the greatest epic stories in the history of humanity. Both the story of Moses, the Passover and Exodus, and Christ’s life, crucifixion and resurrection are two of humanity’s most impactful hero’s journey tales. Epic hero’s journey stories are vital to the social and psychological wellbeing of humanity. These stories summarize life’s challenges, moral dilemmas, and how to live with and sacrifice for others. These lessons help ensure the survival of humanity in a harsh universe. They also allow the generations of ‘good times’ to learn the lessons taught to generations of ‘hard times’. It’s easy to read about caricatures of evil villains and the brave heroes who stand up to them in the face of certain death, but sharing holidays around epic tales allows those moral lessons to take deeper root within us. Over recent decades, humanity has known a relative period of ‘good times’ but now might be a time when those caricatures of villainy gain power to bring us ‘hard times’ and challenge us to become the heroes we have celebrated in our shared epic tales. Doug Bandow of the traditionally conservative Cato Institute recently wrote an excellent piece on a modern incarnation of our epic tales of villainy in “The Madness of King Trump” [link below], but it’s important to remember that this level of villainy doesn’t come out of nowhere, and that if we keep our hearts and eyes open, we can use the lessons of history and caricatures in our tales to see the villains from a long way off. Trump has always been the villain he plays on the global stage today. He has always been a man of cruelty and amorality in the truest sense, not merely a man who struggles with vice and sins but a man who views the world as zero-sum, saying what people want to hear while daily breaking his promises, and getting his greatest form of pleasure in causing the suffering of others, especially those who are weak and helpless. We live in a time not only of great evil, but one where those with the greatest power are openly cruel and corrupt. Whether sowing chaos for personal enrichment, dishonorably attacking opponents when negotiating, conquering the property of others, slaughtering subjects to retain power, or even committing genocide, parties on all sides of the current global conflicts embody the greatest caricatures of villainy from our shared stories. Whether Russia under Putin, Iran under the Ayatollah, Israel under Netanyahu, or the United States under Trump, the great powers of our current conflicts manifest the great villains from our tales. When the powerful are all villains, what is there to do? Turn to your epic tales. We tell those tales for times such as these. It takes the greatest bravery to stand with the helpless, persecuted, and weak against the strong. It’s hard for Americans who have grown up viewing themselves as the heroes in past conflicts to accept that we might be ‘the baddies,’ but it takes immense courage to accept the reality that fighting evil might mean letting go of the past and stepping into a completely unknown future against the most powerful for the sake of justice and a healthy society for our progeny. So read those epic tales, my friends and consider how we might write the next one together with our own lives. https://www.cato.org/commentary/madness-king-trump

1 reply

1 recast

3 reactions