The Cult of the Antihero

Cult and culture spring from the same root

Romans struggled to keep barbarism at bay

Within themselves and their sprawling domain alike

Cultus had a whole constellation of connotations circling it

In that lush and languid Latin that the Romans beat into so many minds

Bound together by a single theme: coming to fruition, i.e.

Becoming the most excellent form of the sort of thing you are

A field that yields crops, a flattering garment worn with style

A human being as refined, as virtuous, as good and noble as such a being can be

A home, a village, a city, a nation, an empire

Thriving and flourishing excellently well

When great poets and artists and actors and musicians

Create rich, fascinating, moving, edifying narratives

That encourage the worship and adoration of the antihero

They make optimistic assumptions about the hermeneutical prowess

Of the reader

If the proud, greedy, wrathful, gluttonous, lusty, envious and slothful

Protagonist is sympathetic, witty and endearing

If we empathize and identify with him or her or them

If we share their outrage at being misjudged and abused

Even as they relish every vice and sin and transgression

Against what is good and beautiful and true

We might well infer that such characters are the real heroes

Especially if we think all values are alike: relative, subjective

Cultural constructs that do not correlate with anything objective

If all of the rules are post hoc and therefore arbitrary or merely traditional

And we secretly think that you can do anything you wish

As long as it is fruitful and you can get away with it

Then the assassin, or the burglar, or the pimp, or the usurer

Will win our admiration with a charming smile and an amusing story

Subtle, sophisticated artists will always reveal

That the antihero is a dupe, oblivious to dramatic irony

Convinced that they are flourishing, they will in fact disintegrate

Surrounded by the spoils of fraud and malice, desolate

But we fast forward through those parts

The clips are fire

The cult of one antihero

Can become the culture of a home, a village, a city, a nation

An empire

If it does, microcosm and macrocosm will align

We will privately thrill to the exploits of antiheroes

In bedrooms and boardrooms and ballrooms and beerhalls

Loving the audacity of vice will teach us to mock and dismiss

The modest wisdom of virtue

Or to assume that virtue is a con

Everything is vice, we simply give it pretty names

This is a recipe for cultural catastrophe

Antiheroes are not heroic

Vices are not virtues

Lies are not truths

News is not fake

Girls are not women

Fraud, malice and betrayal

Are the lowest, coldest sins

Don't believe the hype

Disruption is not creation

Ignorance is not funny

The villain is not a misunderstood hero

I ought to be able to feel for the antihero

The antihero, like me, had the potential to thrive and flourish

The antihero had some wild adventures

But the antihero failed

We cannot worship antiheroes

If we want to flourish and thrive

To be cultivated, civilized, morally and ethically upright

To be fields of possibility that yield delicious, nourishing crops

We must leave the cult of the antihero

It has not been good for any of us