The Heroic Epic: the Most Difficult Narrative to Compose

Dear Reader, I saw a notice of a cultural festival soon to be enjoyed in Ukraine! Sounds fun. If I were in Ukraine, I would make plans to go. So many things about Ukraine are unavailable to me. It will never be my country. I will never know anyone from there. I can admire Ukrainian courage and resilience, but I can offer no assistance. I am in possession of arguments that I cannot make. It is not my place.


It’s not out of sadness that I complain, but envy! What an opportunity for the young people to define how others will experience Ukraine! How will our friends know us, if we do not show them?


Look at the branding of the United States. Early in our history we had great characters that portrayed virtues available to every American at the time. Paul Bunyan manifested the power of human industry, while Johnny Appleseed mapped out freedom of movement, and marked the hidden treasure trove it led to: free enterprise! Many more examples exist over our short history, short relative to the rich historical tapestry of life in Ukraine.


My country can look back a few hundred years. Yours can look back more than a millennium. I have seen historical references that recount the spreading of Christianity through your country, what a history. How wonderful it would be to create modern folklore from such a rich library of lives and loves.


May I share a secret with you? Sometimes, I think I was destined to be a comic book writer. Of course, the very thought is absurd, and no matter what, that ship has sailed—but if I had been, I would have recrafted the Marvel Universe to sell books.


The objective would have been to sell books. That is the business after all, and first things first. But the method of selling those books? The publication of virtue. Each hero would be an altar in a cathedral dedicated to the good side of the future. Both heroes and villains have power, only heroes can demonstrate virtue. (Dear Reader, do you agree that virtue can be taught? I wonder.)


My beloved Jennifer extols restraint, by imprisoning the She-Hulk. My brave and empathetic T’Challa, loved among his people for always being second best at everything, shows the power of human cooperation. “We have risen to dominate this world as a function of our ability to cooperate!” he laughs in my mind, as his friends for life throw him over a hemp plant.


There are more, of course, they make up a gallery in my mind’s eye. They are fake. Oh, the ideas are real, but they are not anchored in any kind of experience, or nation. In Ukraine, freedom has real meaning. In that place, real people, not comic book characters, express human virtue every single day.


A young author wouldn’t even need to make up new heroes. She could just chronicle existing ones.


I would love to participate in something like that, but it is not my place. Rather, I am happy to see what new genius emerges from the Ukrainian fires of creation! To share Ukrainian virtue with the world is to enrich the world. 

 

 

 

True believers!  Please find the blurb above read by a digital being below, the words are always my own!

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