Not that I necessarily disagree with any particular conclusion, I just don’t feel like that’s a place for fiction. I don’t think anyone get’s to say “There. That’s the answer. Problem solved.” Fiction is the place to make people ask questions and think about things complexly and consider different points of view, not to be fed which conclusions they should draw about the world.
I bring this up because I just watched an episode of a show which seemed to say spirituality and/or God is the answer to your problems. You know that feeling that you get sometimes, like you’re a broken, helpless thing that’s all alone in the world? It’s because you don’t have any religion.
I find this troubling.
It’s a similar feeling to the one I had after finishing Battlestar Galactica, when, after making us wonder about the tough questions surrounding religion and the meaning of life and what it means to even be alive, they said, outright, yes, there is some sort of higher power at work. Everything does indeed happen for a reason. Faith is the answer to all our problems.
I don’t like when this happens, and not just because I’m not particularly religious myself and I don’t believe that faith is the answer to life, the universe, and everything. It bothers me because I don’t believe any person should take on that authority. Spirituality, even the absence of spirituality, is a personal journey, and no person should try to say they have the answers because no one does. No one can prove, beyond any question or doubt, that there is or is not a god. So to try to assert that you have any sort of definitive answer to the big, philosophical questions is just a level of pretentiousness that I can not tolerate.
And here’s an idea: maybe the reason you sometimes feel like a broken, helpless thing that’s all alone in the world is because you are a broken, helpless thing that’s all alone in the world. People are these complicated messes of experience and emotion, and nobody really has anything figured out. And at the end of the day, it’s just you against the world. No matter how many people you love, or how many great things you do or how many people you help, everyone dies alone. When you meet challenges in your life, you are the one that has deal with them. When you screw up, you are the one that has to deal with the consequences. When you lose something you love, you are the only one that feels the overwhelming power of that pain.
You are the only one that experiences your hardships.
Even if you come at this from a religious angle, there is no religion in the world that teaches that when you have a problem, just step back, because some magical higher power is going to swoop in and fix everything for you. It would never sell, because we all know that it would be a lie. The only inarguable truth is this: we are all, in some way or another, going it alone
I think that’s why I find classic hero tales far more compelling than any other narrative style. You have your hero, who never asked to be put in his position, who has no control over the things that are happening to him, but still he sets out on the journey that’s been laid out before him. And he has help. There are people there he can rely on, old masters he can learn from, tools that have been passed down to him. But in the final scene, it’s just him and the villain; Beowulf against the dragon, Luke Skywalker against Darth Vader, Harry Potter against Voldemort. He does it not because he has some absolute answer that everything is going to be alright, or that he has some magical being there at his side to take over when it’s too much for him, but because he has accepted that he must.
That’s why we have stories. Not to tell us what’s good and bad, or to give us all the answers. They’re to prepare us. So that when you’re alone, facing down your own dragon, you’ll have the tools you need to get out alive and, hopefully, fight another day.
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