“Now, the idea that A Story is a form of Communication — and entertainment — is one of those facts that appears self-evident upon first consideration, but that becomes more mysterious the longer it is pondered.
If it is True that A Story has A Point, then it is clear that it is pointing TO something.
But What, and How?
What constitutes Pointing is obvious when it is an action specifying a particular thing, or a personby a particular person, but much less obvious when it is something typifying the cumulative behavior, shall we say, of A Character in A Story.
“ There is an old saying: "That which doesn't Kill You, makes You Stronger." I don't believe that.
I think the things that TRY to Kill You, make you Angry and Sad.
Strength comes from The Good Things : Your Family, Your Friends, The Satisfaction of Hard Work.
Those are the things that will keep you Whole. Those are the things to hold onto when You are Broken.
— Jax Teller
"What Happens to People when they are acted-upon by Powerful Ideas from Outside Them?"
AND...
"What Then Happens to Those Powerful Ideas, when They get inside Those People's Heads..?
There are Tigers in The Night.
Creatures bearing great scars inflicted by wrenching confrontations -- lethal rushes on dark, unyielding ground where the body pours all it's strength into fitful instinctive thrusts.
This is The Real Thing! The primal struggle. Throughout history it has cried out for dramatisation on A Cave Wall, The Written Page, or The Panel of a Comic Book.
In my attempt to create a serious novel for our medium, I have chosen that most basic of experiences, one we have all shared at one time or another -- SURVIVAL. I have taken this innate response to danger and have portrayed it in mythological terms.
The concept is simple. Friends and Enemies squaring off in various ways, for various reasons, on some Eternal Battleground where all is won or lost and the debris is cleared away for the next conflict. THEY are Evil, WE are Good. THEY are Plotters and Traitors, WE are Loyal and Clever. THEY are eternally responsible for Our Woes, so WE will someday pull up our guts, stop the shadow-boxing, and go in for The Kill.
Thus I am doing what mankind has always done. I've turned these emotions and reactions into gods, and brought into view the awesome images that haunt our dreams. So it has been throughout the centuries.
Idols rose and fell all over the world with an odd and fantastic nobility that fairly flipped our history books.
How we loved them all -- our Horatios at the bridge, our Transylvanian Draculas.
Grandiose figures such as these symbolized The Real Thing. Territories immemorial have been covered with Average Joe types doing what they've always done "in the name of (fill in the name of your choice; all sides have continually offered so many).
When my turn came at the draft board during World War II, I chose Superman as My Guardian. Tarzan, at that moment, seemed somehow related to my early teens. Superman was the electrifying hero of the day. Who was going to rub out a guy who hid behind such a patriotic and invincible image? There was even talk in the army about General Eisenhower trading pulp magazines for copies of Action Comics. How could I have landed in a better outfit? It eased my trepidations about having my hair parted by a twenty millimeter shell.
Experiences like these seem to stimulate and guide one's thoughts into avenues where one's humanity must be examined in relation to The Past, Present, and Future. Darkseid, Highfather, and the rest of the cast have always been sincere expressions of my feelings - reactions to all the things I knew were out there in The Night, like the scrabbling of an unseen army of claws, or the beating of wings in nocturnal vigilance over sleepers in repose.
Today The Real Thing is something we've never known before, a new something not yet devised, shaped, or defined. It is something we must deeply consider, since Darkseid looms ever larger, like a great, monumental cobra moving ceaselessly and vengefully.
Ever-present, he is thwarted, sometimes outsmarted, but always eager to swallow us en masse and integrate us into his push-button paradise where his every wish is fulfilled.
For Darkseid is the god of the silo that houses the death-package. He rules the toxic wastelands and merrily increases their rate of expansion. He seeps into our hatreds and prejudices, and nurtures our biases until they become time bombs --primed and ready to activate The Worst in us.
Darkseid is playing for keeps in a cosmic minefield that's never supposed to blow After all, isn't that where we all are? Isn't that where we live? Aren't we at the apex of the Big Blast? Well, that's the backyard I'm playing in.
How is it going to turn out? Suffice it to say that like Darkseid, I too play for keeps. You see, I'm walking that same cosmic minefield. What I have in mind for the Hunger Dogs graphic novel will make your blood race. What will they do, these gods whose situations so strangely resemble our own? The bottom line involves choices.
Neither gods nor humans have ever stood calmly in a minefield forever.
Good or Evil, they are bound to choose. And when they do, you will see The Truth of all that motivates us. As a thinking being, you have the obligation to choose. If the fate of all mankind were in your hands, what would your decision be?
What's genuinely funny is that years later, I came across a Canadian TV Talk with Dr. Jordan Peterson debating with a Movement Atheism Activist who was representing a small, militant atheist organisation who had bought up ad space on the sides of Ontario City Buses to display atheist slogans --
And ALL this guy wanted to talk about was male infant circumcision and female genital mutilation, no matter what was said to him -- he just was NOT listening, he was just hearing what he wanted to hear (or rather, what he DIDN'T want to hear)
And he just proceeded to get angrier and angrier and angrier, and angrier, and ANGRIER -- just exactly like this.
Didn't your dad ever teach you to look before you leap?
Crystals. They're amazing, aren't they?
They inherit The Traits of The Minerals around them...
kind of like — A Son
inheriting The Traits
of His FATHER !
Look buddy, we sent you there
to die, but ya' had to come back . . .
Oh yeah. All those photos?
Those stories about
Krypton still existing?
It was me.
And him.
Lex looks toward Stanford.
Thankfully,
The Press doesn't check Factslike they used to.
Hey, you took away five years of my life.
I just returned the favor.
SUPERMAN :
I'm still Superman!
SUPERMAN REVENGE SQUAD :
Get up! Come on!
Now, fly.
•STABS HIM WITH A KRYPTONITE SHIV AND SNAPS OFF THE BLADE•
LUTHOR:
So long, Superman.
“We require RULES, STANDARDS, VALUES
— alone AND together.
We’re pack animals,
Beasts of burden.
We must Bear a Load,
to justify our miserable existence.
We require Routine and Tradition.
That’s Order.
Order can become excessive,
and that’s Not Good,
But Chaos can swamp us, so we drown —
and that is alsoNot Good.
We need to stay on
The Straight and Narrow path.
[I seek,] Therefore [to]
Provide A Guide to Being There.
“There” is The Dividing Line
between Order and Chaos.
That’s where we are simultaneously Stable ENOUGH,
Exploring ENOUGH,
Transforming ENOUGH,
Repairing ENOUGH,
and
Cooperating ENOUGH.
It’s there we find The Meaning that justifies Life and its inevitable Suffering.
Perhaps, if we lived •properly•, we would be able to tolerate the weight of our own self-consciousness.
Perhaps, if we lived •properly•, we could withstand the knowledge of our own fragility and mortality, without the sense of aggrieved victimhood that produces, first,
Resentment, then Envy,
and then
The Desire for
Vengeance and Destruction.
Perhaps, if we lived •properly•, we wouldn’t have to turn to totalitarian certainty to shield ourselves from the knowledge of our own Insufficiency and Ignorance.
Perhaps we could come to avoid those pathways to Hell —
and we have seen in the terrible Twentieth Century
just how real Hell can be.
Humanity, in toto,
and those who compose it
as identifiable people
deserve some sympathy
for the appalling burden
under which
The Human Individual
genuinely staggers;
Some sympathy for subjugation to
Mortal Vulnerability,
Tyranny of The State, and
The Depredations of Nature.
It is an Existential Situation that
no mere animal encounters or endures,
and one of severity such
that it would take a God to fully bear it.
It is this sympathy
that should be the proper medicament
for self-conscious self-contempt,
which has its justification,
but is only halfThe Full and Proper story.
Hatred for Self and Mankind
must be balanced with
Gratefulness for Traditionand The State and
Astonishment at what Normal,
Everyday People accomplish —
to say nothing of
The Staggering Achievements
of the Truly Remarkable.
We Deserve some respect.
You Deserve some respect.
You are important to Other People,
as much as to yourself.
You have some vital role to play in The Unfolding Destiny of The World.
You are, therefore, morally obliged
to take care of yourself.
You should take care of,
help and be good to yourself
the same way you would take care of, help and be good to someone you loved and valued.
You may therefore
have to conduct yourself habitually
in a manner that allows you
some respect for your own Being —
and fair enough.
But every person is deeply flawed. Everyone falls short of the glory of God.
If that stark fact meant, however, that we had no responsibility to care, for ourselves as much as others, everyone would be brutally punished all the time.
That would not be good.
That would make the shortcomings of the world, which can make everyone who thinks honestly question the very propriety of the world, worse in every way.
That simply cannot be the proper path forward.
To treat yourself as if you were someone you are responsible for helping is, instead, to consider what would be truly good for you.
THIS IS •NOT•
“What You WANT.”
It is also NOR “What Would Make You HAPPY.”
Every time you give a child something sweet, you make that child happy.
That does NOT mean that you should do nothing for children except feed them candy.
“Happy” is by no means synonymous with “Good.”
You must get children to brush their teeth.
They must put on their snowsuits when they go outside in the cold, even though they might object strenuously.
You must help a child become a virtuous, responsible, awake being, capable of full reciprocity— Able to take care of himself and others, and to thrive while doing so.
Why would you think it acceptable to do anything less for yourself?
You need to consider The Future and think,
“What might my life look like if I were caring for myself •properly•?"
"What career would challenge me and render me productive and helpful, so that I could shoulder my share of the load, and enjoy the consequences?"
"What should I be doing, when I have some freedom, to improve my health, expand my knowledge, and strengthen my body?”
You need to know where you are, so you can start to chart your course.
You need to know who you are, so that you understand your armament and bolster yourself in respect to your limitations.
You need to know where you are going, so that you can limit the extent of chaos in your life, restructure order, and bring the divine force of Hope to bear on The World.
You must determine where you are going, so that you can bargain for yourself, so that you don’t end up resentful, vengeful and cruel.
You have to articulate your own principles, so that you can defend yourself against others’ taking inappropriate advantage of you, and so that you are secure and safe while you work and play.
You must discipline yourself carefully.
You must keep the promises you make to yourself, and reward yourself, so that you can trust and motivate yourself.
You need to determine how to act toward yourself so that you are most likely to become and to stay a good person. It would be good to make The World a better place.
Heaven, after all, will not arrive of its own accord.
We will have to work to bring it about, and strengthen ourselves, so that we can withstand the deadly angels and flaming sword of judgment that God used to bar its entrance.
Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction.
These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities.
Strengthen the individual.
Start with yourself.
Take care with yourself.
Define who you are.
Refine your personality.
Choose your destination and articulate your Being.
As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted,
“He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.”
You could help direct The World, on its careening trajectory, a bit more toward Heaven and a bit more away from Hell.
Once having understood Hell, researched it, so to speak—particularly your own individual Hell—you could decide against going there or creating that.
You could aim elsewhere.
You could, in fact, devote your life to this.
That would give you a Meaning, with a capital M.
That would justify your miserable existence.
That would atone for your sinful nature, and replace your shame and self-consciousness with the natural pride and forthright confidence of someone who has learned once again to walk with God in the Garden.
You could begin by treating yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping.
