Where Superheroes Require Our Help
Generally, a response to post by Don Allen, Ed. S., M.A.Ed., MAT . I basically agree, but want to emphasize his idea from my perspective. https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6997575994303799296/
We have time for both fiction, and nonfiction. However the time we set aside for the former, and more importantly, the “value” we seem to give to it, is very much out of sync. I love to lose myself in such “super drivel” to refresh my mind with endless possibilities. That said without the nonfiction latter I would not be able to live and write as I do. Even developing my meager writing skills required gruesome amounts of time, training, tedium, and others’ talents. The best way to explain my education philosophy, is to tell a true superhero story.
Brad Humprhey was the “Black Panther” superhero of my high school friend group. After climbing Argentina’s Aconcagua, at 22,837 feet (1986), maybe the first to cross Australia on mountain bike with his friends the Moe Brothers (1987), and the Moe’s, an ex-girl friend Sharon, and Brad crossed the Barnes Ice Cap, then attempted to boat across Baffin Bay as a bowhead whale tipped them into the arctic, where all four died (1995). Brad had attended our wedding three years before; his death coming 3 months after our first of two daughters were born. I spoke at his funeral. He was 32.
Brad was our Homecoming (or prom) King, the highest rusher at Centerville High, and a very good student in science and math, applying his education as a state archeologist in Wyoming. His specific superhero status was unparalleled in that small Iowa town. He was bigger than life. He deserved every accolade.?
Worst of all he was a very good person.?The all-around, overachieving super person. A guy you may wish to hate for all his perfectness, but you just can't. I mean, how many of us could go on such a trip with an ex-"friend" of any kind? And if he wasn't a very good person, why would he like me? I was devoid of almost all his superhero qualities, except maybe the good looks to date anyone I wanted to part… (Meaning I was a superhero at daydreaming.) For most of us, people like Brad exist only in Hollywood movies.
The remainder of us must work much harder to do less fantastical things, although often just as, or sometimes more, important things. But without Brad and other Black Panther type superheroes to press ahead ever further, our "limitations" would too often seem ever more insurmountable. Fiction but especially nonfiction superheroes like my father, Brad, Chadwick, Letitia, Danai, Lupita, Dominique, Mabel, Angela, and others can break the psychological ice, glass, metal, or brick ceiling ahead of, or above, us.
In most things I did not, and we do not, need fictitious superheroes, but wholly without their soaring possibilities we (human beings) are made smaller. Authorities of repression and oppression would win more often without their inspiration. Our internal repression, and psychological oppressions, and real repressive and oppressive systems and "leaders" would hold us more securely in bondage.
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The necessity of superheroes may be overstimulated, especially the fictitious kind. Yet tragically, their fiction may be "required" when our nonfiction systems are failing us. As a respite until real change occurs, or a reprieve from the war to refill the tank for future battles.?
There are various ways the tanks have been emptied, and in too many cases, for too many Americans were never filled. For example: Community investment has been waylaid as “personal responsibility” was oversold. Learning in such underfunded and unevenly funded community wastelands, and an overfunded political battlefield is even more difficult. Our deteriorating civic landscape shows this in stark detail via voter suppression, president-led conspiracies about fraudulent elections, etc. Denigrating and undermining a public school education, primary, secondary, or college is another. Depleting education funding, as well as denying health care coverage to millions also destroys communities. Our housing policies have turned communities against each other, and have made variant group (natural) interactions nearly impossible, encouraging different levels of policing, and engendering an exaggerated Judge Dredd fear of multiculturalism villains and “alien” invasions.?
When we avoid each other, or separate into our most "familiar" groups, learning from what others know is impossible.?
In addition, the fictions we tell ourselves about our society are more harmful than any number or kind of “capitalistic” movies about fictitious characters. Although our economic system itself is built on many fictions about the value of “capitalism” as we currently practice it. “Capitalism” for Americans is a fruit salad of perspectives and ideas, since we all understand, and experience it differently, and like many Americans, I believe too many of, or any of, certain fruits make it inedible.
We need a bigger and better say in how it is all put together from education to economics. And superheroes will not and cannot save us from our politics, not even the nonfiction type can do it without more of us average people suiting up. Only a more robust civic structure will do that.?
Our small town also had a famous superhero of music: https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/simon-estes-41
Brad is also the photographer of the header picture. Notice how he seems to be jumping into the picture, which he was. Just before the timer ended.
Note: I was born in South Bend, Indiana. Living there until 6th grade. We moved to Iowa when my father, a very successful automotive engineer, lost his job after whistleblowing about his Bendix plant manager.