Month: February 2024

I was listening to a podcast recently recounting Homer’s Odyssey. The host, Doug Metzer, did a masterful job walking through the events captured in the saga and putting the story in the context of the history and other writings of the period. He emphasized that the Odyssey is not a simple tale of valor, but also a commentary on the dubious nature of heroism. That is what makes it a modern story.

The Odyssey is in many ways the prototypical hero’s journey. Odysseus, the archetypal alpha male, sails off to war and finds glory as the architect of the fall of Troy. He then spends nine years trying to make his way back home, overcoming obstacle after obstacle along the way. He defeats the Cyclops, resists the temptation of the Sirens, and is the lone survivor when his ship is wrecked.

Eventually Odysseus makes it back to his home in Ithaca only to find a gaggle of suitors who, assuming he is dead, seek the hand of his wife, Penelope, along with his wealth. He massacres the suitors, is reunited with his wife, and takes his rightful place as King of Ithaca.

Most retellings of the story end there with a family reunited and a hero basking in his glory. However, Homer’s saga does not conclude in such a sanguine manner. It is this oft forgotten ending that provides ready guidance as we consider the plethora of hero stories we are confronted with daily, whether it’s in various media, or in the myth’s politicians weave around themselves.

After Odysseus dispatches the 108 suitors, along with an undisclosed number of maidservants deemed disloyal and a goatherd that had dissed him when he was in disguise, he finds himself confronted by the families of the suitors. They want to know how he can justify the harshness of his actions. After all, he had been gone for 20 years, and had not been heard from for the last nine. Maybe the suitors had been overly aggressive in their pursuit of Penelope, but did that justify wholesale slaughter?

The families are also troubled by the fact that Odysseus has returned alone. Twenty years before he led a generation of Ithacan youths to a dreadful war on a foreign shore and not one of them came back with him. How was that possible? Reminiscent of Job questioning God, the families’ confrontation of Odysseus makes us wonder whether he really is the hero we have made him out to be.

Like Job, the families get no real answer. As they are about to attack Odysseus (probably a bad idea), Athena intervenes. She commands the Ithacans to lay down their weapons and, channeling Rodney King, basically says “Can’t we all just get along?”. Since she is a God, they comply, and all is seemingly well.

This coda is discomforting. We all revere heroes. We do not tire of stories where great men or women face seemingly unbeatable odds, but power on through using grit and fortitude. We like them even better if their foe is pure evil, or they are exacting a well-earned revenge on those that have done them or society wrong.

But Homer does not allow us to bask in hero worship. He makes us face the consequences of the hero’s action. The lives lost. The families sundered. The community ripped apart. The hero may embody personal glory, but he also leaves a wave of destruction in his wake.   

In many ways, the turbulent 1960’s and 70’s undermined the comfortable narrative of the glorious hero. The anti-hero became the focus. In films like “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Dirty Harry” the “hero” is morally suspect. We root for them with the full knowledge that they are not anyone we would ever want to emulate or have as part of our world.

In “real life”, the release of the Pentagon Papers, followed by the exposure of the FBI’s ConintelPro, Watergate and Church Committee revelations on the activities of the CIA destroyed, seemingly forever, our faith in those running the government. They were not heroes, but the morally ambiguous, and had to be watched at every turn.      

And yet it is hard to shake our love of heroism. We want to put our icons onto a pedestal and boil down narratives such that the differences between good and bad are clear. We want to stand confident as to which side our champion is on. Woe to those that muddy those waters by raising inconvenient facts. History is to make us feel good about who we are by glorifying the giants that came before, regardless of troubling details.

We also see our ties to heroism in the expectations we place on our political leaders. We demand of them perfection. They must be right on every issue, never waver, never err. We dismiss their foibles as immaterial if they do not comply with our manufactured vision. Just as importantly, their opponents are not just wrong, they are inherently and irredeemably evil.

The ending of the Odyssey demands more of us. It requires that we look at those harmed by policies we support. It compels us to admit that those left behind have a right to feel frustrated and angry. It makes us take a step back and consider the consequences of actions. We are obligated to question whether the white hat we embrace is really as white as we believe it to be, and whether the hat our opponent wears isn’t more gray than black.

This is especially hard in these times. There are so many leaders who seem to care about nothing but naked power. They are willing to sacrifice values supposedly held dear to acquire that power. They create and inspire myths that mask their flaws and demonize their opponents. Frustratingly, many are willing to accept these myths as fact, looking no further than the façade.

We have an obligation to expose those myths. To strip naked the “heroes” and show the cruel reality behind their “deeds”. At the same time, we cannot make myths of our own, putting our champions on a competing plinth. Raising our beliefs to the status of unimpeachable doctrine. To do that is to perpetuate the illusion of the hero, and fail to confront the complicated reality of the world we live in.

The saga of Odysseus does not conclude with the end of the Odyssey, book 7 of an 8-book cycle called the Telegony, of which only the Odyssey and Iliad survive. While we do not have Book 8, we know from other writings that Odysseus quickly grows tired of the staid life, and soon leaves Ithaca and Penelope behind. He gets involved in another war and marries another queen. He eventually makes his way back to a war-torn Ithaca, only to be killed by a son he sired while on the 9-year trek back from Troy. Not what most of us think of as the quintessential end of the hero’s journey, but maybe fitting. Maybe the “hero” is not all he or she is cracked up to be. Another apt lesson from Homer.             

I recently stumbled on the New York Times “72 of Our Favorite Facts of 2023”.  It was a rehash of a mishmash of stories throughout the year that piqued the interest of Times staff members. I have not been immersing myself in stories the way the Times reporters do, but their list did lead me to reflect on some of what struck my fancy in 2023. I could never get near 72, so here are 10 things about 2023 that intrigued me.

The Obsession with AI. The near frenzy surrounding AI is either an example of the media latching onto something and blowing it out of proportion, or another item to add to the long list of things that I don’t understand. I thought we have been dealing with AI for years, and had pretty much identified the risks, accepting that we would have to deal with those risks for a long time to come. Based on the hysteria of 2023, you would think that recent innovations raised those threats to a new level. Maybe, but I haven’t seen anything meriting this insanity. It seems more like another example of the lemming nature of media, legitimate and social. Time will tell.

The Non-Transportability of Anti-Woke.  When Ron DeSantis announced for the Presidency, he thought conservative voters across the country would line up to pay homage to the man who had sought to roll the clock back to great acclaim in Florida. It just didn’t happen. Apparently, people want more from a President than a blowhard culture warrior. I took more pleasure than I probably should in watching his well-funded candidacy fall flat.

Philadelphia Sports Debacles. While neither the Phillies’ failure to make the World Series nor the Eagles decision to stop playing football halfway through the season had the grandeur of the Phillies’ 1964 debacle, both were hard to take. The Phils vanquished the Braves and were up 2-0 and then 3-2 on the Diamondbacks, only to fail on an epic scale to get to the last win they needed to go back to the World Series. But even that collapse couldn’t match the Eagles descent from a 10-1 start to games in which they weren’t even competitive. These seasons were poster children for why betting on sports is a bad idea!!!

Fall of Bitcoin. I tried to understand the lure of bitcoin. I really did. But it always struck me as the wild west of finance. Using real money backed by a government with incentives to keep it stable to buy fake coinage which wavered on the unregulated whims of an unknown coterie of self-aggrandizing entrepreneurs and investors. What could go wrong? Sam Bankman-Fried, that’s what. The only surprise was that it took so long for fraud to be exposed. Oh yes, and that people are still putting their money into this.

Movies, Movies, Movies. In 2022 I went to see “A Night in Soho”. Not only was I the only person in the theater, I was the only one in the entire multi-plex. I feared that movies on the big screen were moving toward a niche undertaking. But 2023 was a great year for movies. Locally, the Philadelphia Film Society aired 99 of the 100 Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time to large, appreciative audiences. Plus, 2023 produced one the most interesting crop of first run movies in a long time. They weren’t all great, but they were generally serious movies. Even “Barbie” had a bit of an edge to it. As a bonus, superhero movies seemingly have run their course. Buff that I am, I couldn’t be happier.

Reasons To Be Cheerful. I have probably mentioned this site started by David Byrne before, but it really hit its stride in 2023. The name says it all. The stories presented are a constant reminder that there are people out there working hard to improve the world around us. From big stories, like the impact from the removal of dams on the Penobscot River in Maine, to small stories, like the “water ATM’s” in rural India that allow families to access clean drinking water for a nominal price, these tales of innovation and determination are a welcome respite to the daily bombardment of stories on war, pestilence and crushing poverty we are inundated with.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. I was dreading the 15-hour drive from Atlanta, through Charlottesville up to Philadelphia. Luckily, I landed on the new book, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride to accompany me on the way. I had read other books by McBride, so I knew this would be enjoyable, but I was not fully prepared for the adroit mixture of humor, suspense and social commentary that this book provided. I do not like to drive, but the time just flew by. I am not saying that this is the greatest book ever written, but it may be the most satisfying, and that is saying a lot.

UFO Report. The report on unidentified flying objects issued by the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence was to be the one – the report that acknowledged unexplained visitations. However, predictably, the government took the blue pill, and just said there were some things they can’t explain – as of yet. But that wasn’t the end of it. In July three military veterans claimed during Congressional hearings that the U.S. government has operated a secret “multi-decade” reverse engineering program of recovered alien vessels and had recovered non-human “biologics” from crash sites. In December Congress passed legislation that should speed disclosure of governmental information on “unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin and nonhuman intelligence.” Wherever he may be, Fox Mulder is smiling.   

Lorena Boebert. We are used to politicians being caught in scandals, but usually it’s because information is uncovered which reveals something they tried to hide. Rarely is the scandal played out in public for all to see. However, Lorena Boebert is no ordinary politician. She is arrogant, aggressive, sanctimonious, and often intentionally obnoxious. As such, it was doubly delightful to watch her crash and burn while being thrown out of a performance of the play Beetlejuice for creating a disturbance. This was only enhanced by pictures of her with her hand in the lap of her escort for the evening. And of course she topped it off with the cry heard from egomaniacs everywhere, “Do you know who I am?”. I wish I was a bigger man and did not relish this so much, but I cannot help it. It makes me laugh even months afterwards.

The Lingering Pandemic. Limitations on gatherings are a thing of the past. Zoom meetings are for convenience, not necessity. Masks are a comparative rarity. And yet, the impact of COVID permeated 2023. You can still feel the tensions rise with any talk of a new strain. Teachers were struggling to get kids caught up from a year of virtual “learning”. There is a belief that social behaviors have changed for the worse. Many people seem wary of crowds – I know that I am. We are a species of short memory. Yet the pandemic has implanted deeper than most events, and there is definitely a sense that it is just a matter of time before we deal with something similar again. Let’s hope we learned something, though I am not holding my breath.