https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=XP8fL_s8WBI
I was reminded recently of this documentary I watched called Hitman Heart, which is a great documentary. Hitman Heart. It’s about pro wrestling. Brett the Hitman Heart, yeah. That’s right. That’s right. And he’s the good guy. He was the good guy in pro wrestling. And so and he was very, very famous. He was the most famous Canadian of his time, as it turned out. And he had this role thrust upon him. He was the good guy. Right. Right. Yeah. And watching the documentary, I realized that people watch pro wrestling because it was a battle in a coliseum between the forces of good and the forces of evil. And I didn’t understand that. I didn’t know it was a drama for people who didn’t want to go to movies. Like it was one level of fiction below movies. I’m not being smart about this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like I’m not I’m not being cynical about this. Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t realize that it was a mythological drama. Yeah. And Hitman Heart got cast as you know, this the hero, the savior essentially. Yeah. And that was very weighty for him because that’s what people expected from him. Yeah. But in any case, there was a sophisticated psychological drama that was being played out in the wrestling or in the wrestling ring. And it was good against evil. And that fantasy that you have of protecting the people you love against malevolent and malicious intruders is the fantasy of good against evil. It’s just called the good guy. Yeah. Yeah. So you see it like in our religious doctrines and at the core of religious doctrine, much religious doctrine is the idea that the entire world is a stage for the battle between good and evil. And that’s right. It’s right. We know it’s right. You know, that’s happening in your own conscience because you torture yourself when you do things that you shouldn’t do. Yeah. You want to see yourself on the side of the good. You want to be on the side of the good insofar as you’re motivated by the good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. By the proper and appropriate intentions. Yeah. Yeah. And you’ll so you’ll see that in a fantasy and it is part of friendship to defend and guard. But you want to make that sophisticated enough so you don’t get the bad guy wrong. Because sometimes the bad guy you’re saying is not a person. So sometimes the bad guy is you sometimes like it’s better. And this is something I tried to stress in my writings is the forces of good and evil are inside. Yeah. They’re best conceptualized psychologically. It’s this it’s the most appropriate way to conceptualize them. Get yourself under control. Right. Yeah. Well, the devil in your own soul. Yeah. It’s the best thing you can do for your friends. Because otherwise it risks getting acted out at a much more concrete level and then it becomes dangerous. You know, it’s the the protesters who are shaking their fists all the time. They’ve identified evil outside. Yes. And that’s what they’re fighting. And you know, you can understand that motivation. Yeah. But the problem for me is like, what makes you so sure that the evil is where you think it is? It’s not it’s so convenient for you that it’s outside. I don’t think it’s outside. I don’t want to misquote you. But you said something about there is no there is a I don’t know there’s a there is no limit to what human beings will do in the pursuit of good. There’s no limit to the evil human beings will do in the pursuit of good something like that. Well, the idea of utopia, you imagine that sort of revolutionary utopia. Yeah, how many people that the revolution is going to bring it’s like, yeah, well, it’s so good. Yeah, that anything I do to bring it about is justifiable. Yes. Yes. Yes. Jesus, you’ve just been handed a blank moral card, you can get away with bloody murder because after all, you know, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Right. Right. Well, away we go breaking eggs. It’s like, well, it’s better. It’d be better be one hell of an omelet. Yeah, even then it’s not clear it’s justifiable. I’ve seen sophisticated literature, you know, in unsophisticated literature, there’s evil people and there’s good people and they have a battle. Right. And sophisticated literature, the good and evil are within the characters that that’s the the thing about to make it very unsophisticated. But Marvel, I think what they get so well about their villains is that they make their is they make their their goal somewhat relatable. You know, like there’s this Thanos character who’s like, I want to remove half of life in the universe. And everybody’s like, oh my God, you’re a piece of shit. That’s horrible. And then he’s like, no, I saw what happened on my planet and there was no more resources and the people just killed each other and is absolutely horrible. So if I just remove half of life and rich people, poor people, everybody gets taken out in the same way, then they’ll be playing a game. There’ll be plenty of food, there’ll be plenty of resources for everybody and everybody will live happily ever after. And all of a sudden you’re like, OK, he’s a psychopath, but he has good intentions with his psychopathy. You know, so now you relate to this fucking villain in a weird way. And I guess what I’m saying is, yes, that is that is the more sophisticated storytelling that I really like. I want to relate to the villain. I want to look at the Joker. Yes, of course, because you want to grapple with those sorts of forces inside yourself, too. And you want to see where your motivations might take. What’s that? I’m not a hero. I always will relate to the villain more because I’m not Captain Fucking America. You know, I’m battling. I imagine we probably relate to the villain if it’s a sophisticated villain way more than the hero, because the hero doesn’t isn’t really dynamic. He’s not really battling a lot in a lot of these like superhero movies like Superman. The fuck does he have to deal with? The fact that he’s faking have a big problem with Superman. Right. I mean, he got to the point where because he could do everything, there was nothing to do. There’s no story. Boring. Give me a regular guy that’s going through some shit. Yeah, well, that is what Marvel did when they burst onto the scene in the early 60s. Right. They made their they also made the heroes more complex and and and and more multidimensional in their motivations. And that simple thing, I guess, made them blow DC out of the water or something. And it’s just it’s so interesting how we just get drawn into these stories, man. I even look at like directors. Well, the whole Marvel universe is I mean, it’s you know, in my last book, In Beyond Order, I talked a fair bit about Harry Potter. And yeah, a lot of the people who like to take potshots at me took potshots at that because, you know, I don’t know, they think Harry Potter is beneath their notice or something. But, you know, I kind of noticed that J.K. Rowling made several billion dollars building the biggest entertainment enterprise of the decade and rose herself from, you know, single mother status, unemployed single mother status to richer than the queen and then occupied every movie screen for like 10 years. Maybe something’s going on there. Yeah. Well, these complex characters, they play out mythology, you know. And so if religion disappears in the culture in general, it pops up in our stories instantly. And that’s exactly what’s happened in the Marvel universe. And what happened? I mean, you even have Thor, for God’s sake. Thor is a god. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not even not even subtle. You can’t get rid of these stories. They come back. No matter what you do, these stories come back. So what was what was J.K. Rowling doing with the with Harry Potter? Well, it’s the battle between good and evil. I mean, Voldemort is Satan for all intents and purposes. Yeah. So it’s it’s it’s the battle between good and evil. I mean, the second volume in particular is St. George and the Dragon. It’s Bilbo and the Dragon. Harry fights a giant snake that’s under the castle. It’s the same story as the Lord of the Rings. And that’s the same story as as what’s the original story? Hobbit. Yeah. But far before that. Well, the oldest story we have of that sort is a Mesopotamian creation myth where a god named Marduk attacks a giant dragon named Tiamat. And that’s one of the oldest religious tracts that we have. It’s symbolic of humanity, right? The human being goes out there and encounters the terrible unknown, often in reptilian form. And that terrible unknown. Well, that’s why that terrible unknown is often evil itself. And so in Christianity, you get this weird intermingling, for example, of the snake in the Garden of Eden with Satan. It’s not obvious why there should be a connection. Yeah, you snake Satan. It’s like, well, what’s the worst snake? It’s not a snake. It’s snakes as such. Well, it’s not snakes as such. It’s predators as such. Reptilian predators. Wait a minute. It’s not reptilian predators as such. It’s enemies. It’s human enemies. It’s the enemy in our own soul. That’s the progression of the thought. It’s unbelievably sophisticated. How does it go from… Insanely sophisticated. How does it go from enemies to the enemies in our own soul? Well, who’s your worst enemy if it’s not you? Who’s your biggest obstacle if it’s not you? And who do you contend with more than anyone else if it’s not you? And to the Harry Potter thing, Harry Potter has a piece of Voldemort in him. Yes, well, that’s the original sin doctrine recreated. So it’s also the case that he can’t understand evil without it. It’s also part of what makes him sophisticated, right? Because he’s being touched by it. Yeah. So is that what we got to do is just copy the Bible? Like, we don’t have a choice. Wait, what do you mean by that? It happens whether we want it to or not. I mean, the Bible aggregated itself over centuries, right? I mean, no human being directly oriented that. It’s not something that could happen over thousands and thousands of years. This is just the greatest hits. That’s one way of thinking about it. Yes.