http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005 by the authors Fri, 24 Dec 2004 16:26:34 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/12/23/043202.php#comment-105373 Playing devil's advocate here, the esoteric value of confronting your inner demons can be difficult to appreciate fully when your outer senses tell you someone is actively engaged in an earnest and heartfelt effort to kill you. At such times, many people want to see decisive action from heroic figures, real or imagined. Angsty internal dialogues about the existential ambiguity of moral values may be more popular in societies with perceived enemies who specialize in quiet and subtle maneuvering for advantage, like the Cold War of the comic books' silver age, or the "Great Game" of European colonial geopolitics in Robert Louis Stevenson's day. In other words, David, the art forms you like are not necessarily higher and better forms of art. They may simply be products of their time and place, just like the art forms you dislike. This doesn't mean you have to like them. It does mean you might want to learn something from them, and use what you learn to communicate with people who aren't exactly like you, rather than merely insult them as inferior art and their fans as inferior people. You might find a more respectful approach turns out to be a more persuasive way to promote your own preferred view of the world. Just a suggestion. You could, of course, carry on with assuming you are right and everyone who disagrees with you is wrong. But then, how would that make you any different, intellectually, from the decisive action heroes who think they can infallibly tell the difference between good and evil? 105373@blogcritics.org Fri, 24 Dec 2004 16:26:34 EST