I struggle with this a lot. Especially recently. I grew up reading sword and sorcery, where when A Bad Thing is happening, you go stab it. Where it is moral and sensible to bring violence to evil. Where almost any evil can be defeated by a small group of determined do-gooders.
In the real world, if I set off on a quest to defeat evil with a sword and a dream, I’ll get picked up by secret service and locked in a nice hole before I make it two blocks away from my house.
Recontextualizing “heroic struggle” into things like community building, education, and charity is difficult when every instinct is screaming at me that there’s a simple and obvious solution. That solution isn’t really simple and obvious because we don’t live in Middle Earth. But a million billion stories of a hero putting the tyrant king to the sword beg otherwise.
I struggle with this a lot. Especially recently. I grew up reading sword and sorcery, where when A Bad Thing is happening, you go stab it. Where it is moral and sensible to bring violence to evil. Where almost any evil can be defeated by a small group of determined do-gooders.
In the real world, if I set off on a quest to defeat evil with a sword and a dream, I’ll get picked up by secret service and locked in a nice hole before I make it two blocks away from my house.
Recontextualizing “heroic struggle” into things like community building, education, and charity is difficult when every instinct is screaming at me that there’s a simple and obvious solution. That solution isn’t really simple and obvious because we don’t live in Middle Earth. But a million billion stories of a hero putting the tyrant king to the sword beg otherwise.