Often I will get into discussions over superheroes. I am a 30 year old boy, of course I'm going to talk about comics, I grew up in the 1980's with Optimus Prime as my father figure.
Many people tell me they don't like Superman. I'm a Spider-Man/Batman fan myself, but I've always admired good ol' supe.
Why?
Once upon a time comic heroes of old gained their powers and immediately thought in a JFK vein of "Ask not what my country can do for me, but what I can do for my country".
We can extend the imaginary lines of "country" and mean "humanity".
Later, in the 80's, superheroes took a dark twist, and they became more self serving, revenge tales. Something "people could relate to."
Spider-man was already doing this, he had real problems that super powers couldn't fix. But I digress.
The fact is that people, North American people, don't like to feel inferior. No one likes to be wrong, and they will go to enormous steps to do damage control when they do make mistakes, or wrong yet difficult life choices.
They especially do not like seeing someone genuinely good, because that means that they might not be as good.
What really started this post was a comment I heard recently, "zen people act like they are so much better than the rest of us, like they have some special knowledge that makes them superior".
That made me think of Superman. If he really existed no one would like him. When we see someone who has gone through a painful life, we do exonerate them. When a person goes through the same pain we go through, but heals "better" than us, we resent them.
I was watching a cooking/zen documentary and they made a good point: when things don't do what we want them to, be it people or things, we put up barriers and disassociate ourselves emotionally, or get angry and try to control them.
It's easy to hate or be angry at someone who seems to handle things better than we handle them. In a generation that was taught to "always feel good" and took away first place and replaced it with participation awards, where everyone is "equal" and we haven't been taught to be good "losers", I see a lot of pain on the horizon.
Thanks for letting me ramble.
Many people tell me they don't like Superman. I'm a Spider-Man/Batman fan myself, but I've always admired good ol' supe.
Why?
Once upon a time comic heroes of old gained their powers and immediately thought in a JFK vein of "Ask not what my country can do for me, but what I can do for my country".
We can extend the imaginary lines of "country" and mean "humanity".
Later, in the 80's, superheroes took a dark twist, and they became more self serving, revenge tales. Something "people could relate to."
Spider-man was already doing this, he had real problems that super powers couldn't fix. But I digress.
The fact is that people, North American people, don't like to feel inferior. No one likes to be wrong, and they will go to enormous steps to do damage control when they do make mistakes, or wrong yet difficult life choices.
They especially do not like seeing someone genuinely good, because that means that they might not be as good.
What really started this post was a comment I heard recently, "zen people act like they are so much better than the rest of us, like they have some special knowledge that makes them superior".
That made me think of Superman. If he really existed no one would like him. When we see someone who has gone through a painful life, we do exonerate them. When a person goes through the same pain we go through, but heals "better" than us, we resent them.
I was watching a cooking/zen documentary and they made a good point: when things don't do what we want them to, be it people or things, we put up barriers and disassociate ourselves emotionally, or get angry and try to control them.
It's easy to hate or be angry at someone who seems to handle things better than we handle them. In a generation that was taught to "always feel good" and took away first place and replaced it with participation awards, where everyone is "equal" and we haven't been taught to be good "losers", I see a lot of pain on the horizon.
Thanks for letting me ramble.
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