I love Disney. Especially the Lion King. And the Little Mermaid. And Frozen. I even mentioned Aladdin in my previous post. For years my family has belonged the the Disney vacation club. I really love Disney.
But Disney gets something fundamentally wrong. Their stories follow a predictable, but misleading arc. The protagonist is good, but flawed. So far so good - I think this describes most humans. We see ourselves in Simba, and Aladdin, and Ariel.
But the villains... the villains are pure fiction. They consciously embrace evil to gain power - Jafar, Scar, Ursula, even Darth Vader since Disney bought the Star Wars franchise - they all do this. They know they're evil. And they do it anyway. It easy to differentiate between us and them. We know we try to do good. At least of the time We would never be like them. Phew.
But that's not how it works in the real world. Of course there are villains. And real evil. But the villains rarely know who they are. And evil gets done in the name of righteousness. Because we're all the heroes of our own stories. Even the bad guys. Let that sink in. This means that the bad guys don't know they're the bad guys. And this means that YOU might be the bad guy. I might be the bad guy. We're all potential Vaders.
Good and Evil is not black and white. The world is complex. We choose a narrative that makes it feel like we're doing the right thing. We cherry pick ourselves as the good guy. And so the world is full of self-avowed heroes fighting other, self-avowed heroes. And both sides think they are fighting a Disney villain.
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