Thinking Out Loud: I believe a man can fly...

Despite being raised Catholic and being a practicing Buddhist for a few years, I tend to think of myself as an Atheist, often throwing Humanist and Positive-Nihilist in there for good measure. I don't have a lot of "heroes" because I'm not one to believe in people to the exclusion of their flaws. Gandhi slept naked with his underage niece. Nelson Mandela was, in his youth, by most definitions, a terrorist. Arthur C Clarke fled to Sri Lanka to escape child sex charges. Weather or not you personally believe that a person's good deeds can somehow "outweigh" their bad, in the end, we are all human and all flawed in a great many ways. Yes, it does matter that sports stars get caught out committing crimes and getting the charges brushed away just because they can kick a ball well, because children take that on-board and begin to assume that being "good" in one respect eliminates the "bad" that someone does. It seems, as humans, we must worship in our lives, be it a god, a person or an ideal. Why not Superheroes? 

I know that sounds a bit nuts, but really, what or who is better suited to be the "secular saints" in our contemporary society than Superheroes? Before his patriotic revision in the 1950s, Superman stood for "Truth, Tolerance and Justice", that's a hell of a philosophy in just three words, and that's only the one hero. Take a look at most superheroes and you'll see that the classic ones can be boiled down to a single virtue or concept. Spider-Man represents Public Responsibility. Wonder Woman represents Compassion. Invincible represents Optimism. Atomic Robo represents Ingenuity. There's a Hindu pantheon's worth of heroes out there to take our leads from, if we're just willing to endure the stigma of telling people that we look to something created by Stan Lee for our moral guidance. Is it really that much more strange than worshiping an undead carpenter, Sumerian storm god or Tom Cruise? Hell, there's at least the rationalist advantage of being able to recognise that these characters are fictional, and therefore, hopefully, not worth killing each other over. 

Look, I'm not saying we need a religious revolution or that this should be our new cultural norm, but maybe, just maybe, when you're looking to give someone (especially a child) moral guidance, reach for Ultimate Spider-Man before you reach for the New Testament. Now, I'm sure that comment is offensive to some, but mostly those who find my being an Atheist, Polyamorist, academic and/or anarcho-communalist (take your pick) to be offensive and probably didn't make it past the first paragraph anyway. Superheroes can be our new idols, our secular saints waiting to guide us and even help us learn from their mistakes and our own. These characters are immortal, though in a manner in which they stay with us throughout time, changing who they are and what they mean to us. Put your hand in the hand of the man with heat vision.