The Ties that Bind: Part 1

"I don't know what his problem is!" Bessie told her over the phone late one night. "I'm graduating soon! If I don't pass this class I'll have to take it again next semester and I don't have the money for that!"

Melody narrowed her eyes. Not her normal bright blue ones, but the hidden intangible ones. She saw a thin string connecting Bessie with her boyfriend. It was pulled as tight as it could be. It wouldn't take much more for it to snap altogether.

 "Melody? You still there?"

Melody snapped back to her normal eyes. She was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling with her cellphone resting next to her ear.

 "Yeah, I'm still here," she said. "Have you actually talked to him about this?"

"Yes, but he just won't--" Bessie started, but Melody cut her off, a touch impatiently.

"I don't mean an argument. I mean did you really talk to him? Like, you say you don't know what his problem is. Did you actually ask him how he feels? Not demand, ask."

The answering silence told Melody all she needed to hear.

"God, why are you talking to me right now? You could be talking to him instead!"

"Because I don't know what to do, and you always give good advice..."

Melody took a deep breath. Counted to ten. Let it out.

"Bessie, it's 1 o'clock in the morning, and I have work at nine. If you don't talk to Bryan as soon as possible and reassure him that you're still into him, he's going to dump you."

"You sound awfully certain of that," said Bessie, suspiciously. "Has Bryan been talking to you then?"

"Oh for the love of--" Melody started angrily, then stopped herself. 1 o'clock in the morning.

She sighed.

"Wait, you're not still telling people that you can see relationships, are you?" asked Bessie, sounding annoyed.

Melody pinched the bridge of her nose.

"I'm not getting into this argument with you again, Bess," she said firmly. "I don't care if you believe me or not. But if Bryan dumps you it will be just as much your fault as his. I won't say I told you so, but you'll know I'm thinking it. Now let me go back to sleep."

"Alright," said Bessie, apologetically. "Sorry for waking you up, I just--"

"It's cool," Melody told her. "Next time call Bryan instead of me. Tell him you miss him and that I said hi. Okay?"

"Alright," said Bessie. "Good night Melody."

"Good night," said Melody, and hung up. She turned on the "do not disturb" setting, then turned off herself shortly after.

Heroism 101: How Things Actually Work

 

 

Welcome to Heroism 101! This class is an introduction to heroing for potential new heroes. It is also a remedial class for established heroes who are feeling lost or helpless, or who are in recovery from well-intentioned extremism or guilt-induced trauma. I'm sure you all have questions about what it means to be a hero. No? Nobody? Well then, I suppose you all have some preconceptions instead--

Please raise your hand in my class, Mr.--

Mr. Awesome, okay...

So class, this "Mr. Awesome" has just asked a very good question! He said he's been 'secretly' invited to join a hero team for special individuals with extraordinary powers called "The Super-Legends". He wants to know if he should join.

So, everyone. Should he join? Or not?

Raise your hands for "he should join". Wow lots of raised hands, I see. Okay, and how many for "he shouldn't join?"

Okay, okay. So for those of you who just raised your hands, could anyone tell me why Mr. Awesome shouldn't join "the Super-Legends"?

Yes indeed, it does sound kinda pretentious, doesn't it. But why does it sound pretentious?

You there, in the back! What about that heroism job offer sounded pretentious?

Okay, that was a good thought. Anyone else?

No one? Alright then. Mr. Awesome, before you accept that heroism job offer, you should ask the following question: What do they mean by "extraordinary powers"?

Indeed. Now, I've actually had the privilege of meeting the Super-Legends in the flesh. They fight crime. They beat up bad guys. The police see them as nosy, inexperienced idiots who always get in the way and mess things up. They've faced countless lawsuits.

 

They saved my life once, but in the process they accidentally killed my dog. And the firefighters were already on the scene, and likely would have handled things better if the Super-Legends hadn't gotten in the way. They claim that they have super-powers. They don't. They're just ordinary incompetent vigilantes who think they can do a better job than the trained professionals because they think they're special and gifted.

And unfortunately because they have indeed saved lives, some people listen to them and believe them.

 

They aren't superheroes. It's all fantastic nonsense. They and their fans are falling prey to the Great Man fallacy. The Great Man fallacy is the tendency to assume that history is shaped primarily by special, naturally gifted people called "heroes", and that these "heroes" were all given their gifts on a silver platter, that they were destined for greatness from the moment they were born and that we mere mortals can never hope to match them.*

But one need only look a little closer and ignore the temptation to wishful thinking, to see how obviously nonsensical that is. What powers have these historical figures really had to shape the course of history?

 

Einstein had to be pretty smart to figure out his theories of relativity. But he didn't start out that way. He didn't have to figure everything out himself, and he couldn't have. If you plopped baby Einstein down in an ancient hunter-gatherer tribe on the African Savannah a hundred thousand years ago, he wouldn't ever stumble upon the idea of "E=MC^2". He'd be just as ignorant and incompetent as the rest of humanity was back then. The same thing could be said for every other hero in history, from Washington to Gandhi and everyone in between.

What powers did these historical heroes really have? The same ones anyone has. They had their mouths to speak with, their legs to walk with, their arms to carry with, their minds to think with and their hearts to feel with. Anything more than that they would have had to borrow from other people or from the environment around them.

If your powers can't be taught to others then they may be far less useful than you think they are. A power that only you can use, if such a thing ever existed, would be a power whose impact is fleeting and cannot scale.

 

Even Kark Clent from the old 20th century Ultra-man comic book series couldn't be everywhere at once. For every life he saved, there were many more that he couldn't, and he often caused a lot of collateral damage in the process.
 

Beating up giant robots and saving kittens from trees can definitely be heroic, but if that's all you can do it isn't so impressive. The military and other kinds of security workers have already known how to do that for a very long time.

But if your powers can be taught to others...

 

If they can help you to heal, build and create rather than just hurt, defeat and destroy... if you could use those powers to save the world without throwing a single punch or firing a single bullet, and without throwing a single political or cultural adversary into a cage or the street...

If you could find your way through the murky threads of relationships and fate... not by being omniscient but through educated guessing and hard work, to create a domino effect of increasing goodness and competence in the dark and gritty real world...

Then you could overcome the cycle of vengeance, and make human civilization competent enough to survive in the hostile environment of outer space.

Or in other words you'd save the world and then the world would stay saved, because it would have learned how to save itself. If you could do anything even a tiny fraction as difficult and impactful as that, it would be much more impressive than beating up giant robots or saving kittens from trees. None of that childish "Super-Legends" nonsense.

They say that heroes are born, not made. That being a hero isn't something that can be taught. I say that's nonsense! Just like any other job or passion project, to become a hero you need to really want to be one, enough to put in the hard work of actually making things better, saving lives, pulling through and carrying on when all seems lost.

 

And you need to learn how actual adults do heroing work--in the dark, difficult and gritty real world, with only their wills and their skills, their hard work and determination, and those friends and family who stand by them... without any superpowers or prophecies or special destinies handed to them on a silver platter.

If you think you need those bells and whistles to be a hero then you probably wouldn't be a very effective one and you'd have been better off staying home with your comic books and letting the grownups handle things.

For homework: write an essay on what drives you to become a hero or what drove you to become a hero. What is your purpose, your life's mission? What is at stake for you and others if you fail? What will happen if you succeed? Why does it matter? Since these essays will tend to be very personal, you need not share them with me.

 

However, you all have therapists yes? Of course you do, and if you don't you're not ready for this line of work and you probably won't pass this class.

If your therapist tells me that you completed the essay and that it fully answered the assignment questions, you will get full marks on it. If your therapist tells me that you did not complete the essay, or that you gave incomplete answers, you will receive either partial credit or no credit for the assignment, depending on the quality of your answers according to your therapists.

You may also choose not to do the assignment at all, since this class costs zero in tuition and doesn't impact your GPA. Your grades on assignments in this class aren't a perfect indicator of your potential or readiness to be a hero or to become a better hero, although they can be a useful clue for figuring that out.

If you do the essay, it must be submitted to your therapist before class at the start of next month. Until then consider these Tuesday mornings to be an independent study where you may read, write, search the internet, do some soul-searching, whatever you feel you will need to do to help prepare yourself to be a hero or to become a better hero.

That's all for today everybody. Class dismissed!

*en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory

3 Quick Tips for Talking to Your Racist Uncle or Elitist Aunt

So it's occurred to me that there are too many people who don't know how to understand, relate to or talk to those with different political views than their own. If you've ever thought something like, "I just don't understand people like that. How could they do and believe such crazy things?" then here are some nifty tricks to help you learn how to do just that.

1. Values before facts. Your goal is to connect with the other person, establish trust, and share your thoughts, feelings and perspectives with each other. NOT to prove them wrong or change their behavior. Persuasion on specific issues can come later. First you need to find common ground and build the relationship, which arguably is more important anyway.

2. Listen without judgment. Understanding someone else requires temporarily taking on their perspective, looking at the world through their eyes and seeing what they see, "stepping into their shoes" as it's often said. Don't filter their paradigms through your own while listening to them, because then you're not really listening. Temporarily remove all your assumptions (even when those assumptions are valid and true!) and just hear them out.

3. Steelman the other person and their perspective. Imagine your way into the mind of the most reasonable, normal, human version of the person you're talking to. That's probably who you're actually talking to, or close enough to start connecting with. The person you're talking to is a human being, so if your mental picture of them doesn't pass the Ideological Turing test* then it's probably a strawman.

These three rules of thumb won't make you an expert communicator overnight, but they should be enough to get you started on reaching people across the political divide. Try it, see how it goes!

*The Ideological Turing Test