The Different Kinds of Hero

Last night I had another of my 3:00 am Aha! moments. I realized that the Sacrificial Hero is the hero that inaugurates a new religion. But whatabout people inaugurating a new culture? Or a new politics? Whatabout them?

Let's get back to fundamentals.

Politics is downstream from culture. Said Andrew Breitbart.

Culture is downstream from religion. Says John C. Wright.

Religion is downstream from the question "what is the meaning of 'life, the universe, and everything?'" Says Christopher Chantrill.

And I say, in my "Vision of the Good Life," which is supposed to replace the left's reactionary vision, that the new answer to the question of the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything," is the Sacrificial Hero. Like Moses, bringing his tablets of a new religion down from the mountain, but never getting to the Promised Land. Like Jesus Christ, dying for the idea that you don't need blood sacrifice to atone for your sins.

But whatabout the guy that creates a new culture out of the new religion providing a new answer to the question of the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything?"

That was the point of my Aha! moment. Because I thought to myself: probably the chap that develops a new culture is not a Sacrificial Hero. But what is he? Is he a Hero? Is he a Philosopher? An Artist? A Writer?

See, the point is that the cultural innovator is not really, as Jungian analysis proposes for the heavy lifting, a Hero teetering on the border between Order and Chaos. Because the heavy lifting has already been done. By the time the cultural innovator comes along the area of Chaos is no longer complete Chaos. The outlines have been mapped out.

So let's do the decent thing and say about the cultural innovator: I don't know.

Same thing for the political innovator that creates a new politics. This chap is not really tilling virgin ground that has never felt the blade of the plow. He is taking a culture and working out the implications of the culture when it comes to politics.

And that means we have to do the decent thing and say about the political innovator: I don't know.

But already my mind is seething with ideas. What do you call chaps like Calvin and Luther? What do you call Montesquieu, the chap that invented the political framework that our Founders hammered into the good old US and A? What do you call Kant? My pal Nietzsche? Whatabout the Rousseaus and Marxes and Marcuses? Whatabout Saul Alinsky, of Rules for Radicals? Whatabout Martin Luther King, Jr.?

And what you you call the actual high-profile politicians, the Lincolns, Bismarcks, Roosevelts, Reagans, Obamas?

What indeed do you call President Trump, the most unlikely of political innovators?

I don't know. Because I just don't want to jump to conclusions. Not just yet.

But I will be back!