Anti-antiheroism

The messianic impulse forces apocalyptic thinking to justify itself

The anti-hero and it’s consequences has ruined countless generations of men, and it continues to ruin them even as we speak. The literary anti-hero is a reflection of a psychological tendency that runs in all modern men. It’s a little voice that tells you that you are beyond redemption.

There’s a lot of talk about reviving the mode of being that is heroism. Neo-masculinity, neo-paganism, neo-barbarism. Neo-spartanism. Neo-antiquity. The basic premise that man today is weak and needs “rewilding”. Same basic idea. But if we are to become Greeks, one should take seriously the question of, “and then one day, for no reason at all, the Greeks converted to Christianity”.

In this falsification of history that we are all collectively undertaking, in creating a new interpretation of history, you have to account for the mythological significance that the undiluted, uncorrupted, non-decadent superior Greek was supplanted. I’m just saying if your explanation is “they got tricked”, then your premise of supremacy is in contradiction with itself. Odysseus is rolling in his grave. He would have loved someone who was that good at tricking people.

In our era, the anti-hero is more prevalent than the hero himself. We are already long beyond the anti-hero in literature and fiction. The idea of the masked, caped “super-hero” is already at it’s invention, created as a literary deconstruction. Spider-man was created to be an anti-hero: a permanent loser who couldn’t revel in the spoils of heroism. All “super heroes” are, as a literary category, anti-heroes.

The most terrible example I can think of is the Scandinavian brooding divorcee police detective, of so many airport novels. This archetype has invaded all of contemporary fiction. It’s essentially the cornerstone of the archetype of the man “stepping back” and letting women have a go at it, which is having an upsurge lately. Brooding bald single dad in video games. It’s the closest the mainstream has come to making a character “relatable” through his “personal flaws”.

There’s something very revolting about these things, which becomes especially apparent as time goes on, and you see worse and worse men trying to write them. It becomes more and more apparent that this is self-indulgent. The brooding bald single dad feels sorry for himself. That’s not particularly masculine and heroic. The anti-hero is ultimately childish. It’s wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Rather than standing up to your wife in IRL life, you’d rather write God of War 3 where your stupid bitch wife is dead and you can just be free to indulge in revenge or rage or whatever. It’s a coping fantasy of avoidance of the central problem, that becomes more and more pathetic as it’s iterated by worse and worse, more and more cowardly, male writers.

Many mainstream popular media fields have gone through the same process. The first iteration of creative work was generated by “real men” - comic books as we know them were invented by a group of American war veterans. Then after a while, they started to be made by people who had never been to war, but had grown up reading comic books. Now they are being made by women and failsons and Disney suits. Video games went through a similar process: The original creative spark was a group of autistic hypernerds. Today video games are being made by people who grew up playing video games. Manga and anime went through a similar process.

Television, very notably, went through a similar process. Today all television is written by people who grew up watching Joss Whedon being “snarky” and jerking off to teenagers. In ten years it will be made by people who grew up watching Rick and Morty.

The people making these things are like all of us, dealing with the impacts of modernism and our technological environment. Living in permanent hyper-propaganda in a socially disintegrating, more and more alien and lonely world, where we are all desperate for affection, which the tools we have become dependant on, frustrate and actively prevent. But unlike the people who invented comic book super heroes, they weren't forced by circumstance and history to become hardened killers. So the product shows this. They are still childish.

The anti-hero is the brooding teenage fantasy of being a “secret good guy, who does a little bad things, but for the sake of good”. Everyone thinks about this at age 12, because it’s a stepping stone in trying to come to terms with your own agency as a man in the world. Your relationship to women, you are disgusted and horrified the first time you hold one in your arms and realize that you have total power over her. Part of working that out is imagining that you are a grey jedi, who does a little bit of the dark side, but he’s actually on the good guy’s side. It’s like imagining stopping a school shooting or saving that girl you like in class. Everyone does it. But it’s not enough when you’re older than 20.

Redemption demands total commitment. You can’t have it both ways. The leap of faith is total. You can’t keep a foot on solid ground “just in case“ things go wrong and it doesn't pan out. Redemption is free. Redemption will cost you everything. There is no contradiction.

The reason modern mainstream media sucks is because it’s being written by people with a total lack of commitment to anything. The anti-hero is the lack of commitment crystallized to an archetype. The Hero is total commitment. Gigachad is a hero.

The way this manifests in you is your lack of commitment. “I want a good trad life for YOU, but me, oh no I couldn’t possibly have one.” “I want for YOU to have a loving wife and many children, but me? Oh no I’m beyond redemption, I don’t deserve that, so I can just have a little degeneracy and have sex with floozies and put notches on my belt.” “I want for YOU to be healthy and strong, but me, oh no, I don’t deserve that, so I can just indulge in being fat and eating trash.”

The anti-hero inside you is not this false humility: the anti-hero is pride. The only thing preventing the anti-hero from becoming a genuine hero is his own pride. Peter Parker holds on to his secret identity out of pride, not humility, and every single story ever written about Spider-Man is about how he creates his own problems. “With great strength comes great responsibility” - but he refuses to let go of his desire to have a private life and commit to becoming a full hero. All of super-heroes famously have these tragic personal flaws that supposedly “humanizes” them. Another way of saying “humanize” in this sense is “holding them back from achieving their potential”.

Rather than humility, of being a mere-human, the anti-hero is messianic: it is the claim that YOU are Christ. YOU are the transcendent point between humanity and divinity. YOU get to have a foot in each world. It is saying “*I* am going to carry the cross of humanity on my back”. Oh no, a good life, I couldn't possibly. You have one though. Me, I’m good. I’m busy over here with my cross. And my promiscuous sex life and my indulgences of appetite.

Messianic thinking then leads to apocalyptic thinking, because to justify divinity, you always need an apocalypse. And before you know it, you’ve filled your head with ideas of the end of the world which – I mean, it’s the END OF THE WORLD we’re trying to prevent here, so we’re going to need every hand we can get. Even a brooding, edgy antihero who uses a little bit of the dark side of the force. Right? Ends justify the means.

Counting and weighing your own sins in this way is an attempt to barter with God. God is not a merchant looking to scope a hot deal. Or if you don’t like the religious framework: morality is not a merchant looking for a hot deal. Redemption is free. It requires total commitment. There’s no contradiction.

Lau-tzu says: “The master finishes his work, then steps back” not, “the master finishes his work, then he can have a little jerking off to video of a borderline retarded teenage girl being sodomized by a psychopath, as a treat”

You are not beyond redemption. You have to do your part. We need all the hands we can get.