NOTE: In an earlier post, I mentioned that I wanted to do a Combat Frame Xseed/Shining Tomorrow crossover. I’m sorry to say that it won’t be happening any time soon since Brian Niemeier rejected the idea. I respect his decision; please do not harass Brian over this.
Within the space of a few minutes, I saw two different posts outlining two different philosophies.
One was friend of the blog JD Cowan’s review of Bradford C. Walker’s Reavers of the Void. The other was a Twitter thread explaining why the recent Joker film is relevant to today.
They could not be more different; in fact, the post and the tweet show worldviews that directly clash.
The post — and the novel it reviews — asserts that good and evil are real, and that with great struggle, good can overcome evil. The novel in particular asserts that the Christian God is the source of this good, and that through Him, all things are possible.
On the other hand, the tweet decries those who find the Joker film to be too nihilistic. Its writer asserts that the movie did well because heroism is dead. According to him, no one wants heroes anymore because society is corrupt and collapsing, with nothing to look forward to. In this social climate, trying to tell a heroic story is absurd and embarrassing. One must wait for society to collapse and a new one to take its place before heroes become relevant again.
My sympathies lie with the blog post, and not only because I’m mentioned in it.
The tweet only has meaning when one views life from a materialistic lens. When all the women are fine, all the men are tough, all the children are above average, and all the cash is flowing, this is the only appropriate time to have hope. But when our leaders disappoint us, our children lose their way, and our jobs disappear, having hope is ridiculous: what is there to be hopeful about? Everyone will struggle unless they’re in the top 20% of income earners, and even they will have to contend with a debased currency and populist revolts. The material conditions are bad and will remain bad, and that’s the reality.
However, if you view life from a Christian lens, the tweet is galloping nonsense. Did Jesus promise an easy life? Is Satan not the Prince of This World? Has any attempt at earthly utopia ever succeeded? Not a chance. Christians are given the hope of Heaven, and they know that the good comes from God. All people — even Christians themselves — are sinners, thus it is impossible to build utopia, or even to guarantee that society will always function smoothly. Christians were told that society would go to the dogs, and it’s not hard for any honest believer to see why.
Thus, to get to a better society, we need hope. We need to be able to imagine things being better. We have to get through our current distress, and we cannot do so by despairing all the time.
In other words, stories of heroism absolutely have a place, even now.
When someone has to endure an unending train of horribles, they want to see someone overcome. When someone lives in an unfair society, they want to see a just one. When someone is weak, they want to get strong. They cannot get through their troubles on a diet of mud and blood.
For all the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s flaws, there’s a reason its movies do well. Mock “weebshit” all you like, but My Hero Academia manga regularly outsell American superhero comics. Nintendo does not need nihilism, either. While there is no guarantee that a given heroic story will succeed, there is no evidence at all that audiences broadly reject the hero.
It is said that heroism is childish while nihilism is grown up. The way I see it, it’s the opposite, for nothing else but heroism can get us through dark times.
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For a story that embraces the heroic and rejects the nihilistic, check out Shining Tomorrow Volume 1: Shadow Heart!
“It is said that heroism is childish while nihilism is grown up. ”
They gotta live with themselves somehow.
That’s true. Materialism can only sustain itself in good times.
Why do depressed weirdos have to assume that everyone is as hopeless as themselves? Moreover, weren’t heroism and heroic stories, whatever their forms, universal across cultures before the current year?
Weren’t heroism and heroic stories, whatever their forms, universal across cultures before the current year?
I would assume so, but I can’t say for sure.
“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” – C.S. Lewis
I know that quote. I agree with it too.