Subtitle: Survival is only for those that can perish.
I often wonder about the grand mythic strokes being written across America these last few years. They are big. And bold. Some seem terrible. Maybe some can be wonderful? I hope so.
I see people behaving like demi-gods, amassing power, seemingly without consequence or natural reckonings. They act like no fight is too small not to pummel their opponent, no interaction not worth winning. No mercy, no apology, no grace.
I see masses of fragile humans, pushing some of these characters up, and pushing others out. Deporting and pushing the weakest off “their” ship, as if it would make all who remain safer.
Yet logic tells us all then they’d be doing is sailing on a ship of thieves and pirates, with a plank at-the-ready for their next weakest move.
I see theologians, mathematicians, evolutionaries shaking their heads. Warlords and media seem to have overcome masses. No one can believe it. This must be a dream.
When will we wake up?
I see superheroes attacked – or used– by men, because the men were told superheroes were weak and pointless. And men were told they could win. That they had the power. But humans can perish. We are animals. If an animal fears for its life, what it is capable of doing to its home?
If I fear for my life, for the lives of my children and children’s children, what principles would I discard? What principles would remain?
Are we one tribe, or many? Are we one being? Alone, perishing, surviving?
Survival is only for those that can perish.
If a superhero and demigod met for a dual, who would win? Would the story we live in finally resolve… would this story of life feel like it has a “proper” ending?
Would they both laugh that we expected a resolution? “Those silly humans, those fundamentalists, those bleeding hearts,” they may say. “There is no end, don’t you get it?”
How dare we ask greater ones to resolve things for us. Are there even greater ones to appeal to? For real?
Survival is for animals that prey on others, the top of the food chain, the intellect, the trickster, the mighty and the resourceful. Survival is built inside ants, and bacteria, lions, and lizards. Survival is also for those who choose to be cooperative inside of nature.
And if we look closer, perhaps survival is a greater force than principle, or immortality, or might?
In survival lies great power. Also inside it lies humans with agendas and wanna be dynasties.
When we talk of the gods and superheroes, of myths and archetypes, of bibles and Buddhas – do none of their wishes really matter, because they cannot die?
Or does everything matter?
The reckoning that comes to those who have raped, pillaged, oppressed, subsumed, used, and destroyed others for centuries is fearsome. To face it would mean pain, maybe even suicide. So, some may fight, kill, maim and oppress, to have another day in the sun, without facing their day of reckoning. To survive.
They run away from empathy. It chases them anyway.
Some think superheroes are stupid, and that no one should work so hard to save humans. That humans should save themselves.
What is here, right now is all we have to work with if we are to survive.
Perhaps our survival instinct is our greatest strength. The gods have everything else.
