Wonder Woman and the Quixotic Quest

Spoiler alert: probably not such a great idea to read this if you haven’t seen the movie yet

The concept of a childlike faith: in this case the belief that war was a god called Ares and that if Ares could be killed war would end.

This brings up so much stuff for me.

First, the Quixotic Quest for the World Anthem, that I’ve been pushing on this blog for several years.  

Michael Jackson had a childlike faith that getting the whole world to sing together would bring us closer to peace — that people could be transformed by singing and dancing together.  He had this faith, because of what he had seen in his audience during his performances.  And, in fact, many people who were in those audiences did feel that something transformative had happened to them.  

I think he was right. I don’t know that the event that he proposed, an event where the whole world would sing and cry together, would permanently end war, but it would certainly start changing how we see each other — bringing us closer to a world where it isn’t us versus them, but only us.  As I’ve said, I feel there’s a more general action item here: creating international holidays or cultural events that we could all share, so that we could feel like one people, rather than multiple peoples.

Second, pagan gods.

I grew up in a Protestant environment.  In this environment, the idea of pagan gods was threatening.  They were violative of the first commandment.  We would be punished if we believed in them.

In the fictional world of comic books and comic book movies, Gods become superheroes or supervillains.  They have great powers but they are no different from The Hulk or Superman, at some level -- fiction.

Personally, as an eclectic universalist, I have a dislike of the mentality that people will be punished for their honest attempts to worship the divine in the best way that they knew how.  I am attracted to the Baha’i’ belief that all religions worship the same God — that any apparent differences are due to a universal human failure to understand God, not due to failings of selected groups of people to worship the correct God.  The Baha’i’s teach a God centered approach to religion that looks at the individual worshipper’s personal relationship with God.  Many religions adopt a more coercive approach, where the worshipper tries to pressure others to have the same beliefs or worship the same way -- and, moreover, believers tell those with different beliefs that God will punish them.

As I mentioned in a recent blog, I never actually became a Baha’i’, but I’m still attracted to this concept.

I was intrigued with an Internet meme that attributed the ascendancy of Donald Trump to the intervention of the Norse God, Loki, a sewer of chaos, associated with the color red.  The red of Loki was likened to the strawberry blond color of Trump’s hair.

The Nordic peoples are predominantly Protestant now.  But someone in Norse history recorded the Norse legends for posterity, so they can be remembered — unlike, for instance, the Druidic tradition, which is obscure and poorly understood, because details were kept secret.

And, because someone took the trouble to write down Norse legends, they persist.  Thor and Loki appear in movies.  Similarly Greek Gods are constantly featured in drama.  Witches, vampires, werewolves, and other monsters are also featured. 

Fundamentalists are often disturbed by such drama.  

Wonderwoman posits that Gods might die. Can Gods die? Can the memory of them be suppressed? If they are remembered can they not always be used as the metaphor for reality that they always were? What, in fact, is wrong with the concept of such metaphors?

Fundamentalists condemn Hindus, for instance, for worshipping more than one God.  Some Hindus counter that they believe in only one God, but they use these other personae to focus their minds during worship on the needs they are trying to address at the time -- as a sort of metaphor.  

So, similarly, the idea of Donald Trump as a manifestation of Loki, has the threatening implication that such metaphors could be acceptable — that coercive monotheism is wrong.

So, ultimately, Wonder Woman’s actions and her childlike faith are moving, yet we suspect they are futile. Still, we like the metaphor.  Still, we want her to keep fighting, trying to kill Ares, all the while suspecting that he’s likely to return in another movie, even if apparently dead.

And I suspect that even if my proposed event were to occur — the annual event where the whole world cries and sings together — war will not really be gone.  Still, I think it will make war harder.