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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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Oh sorry, I meant ancient Athenian youth. I was referring to the popular hot take that super hero stories are the myths of today. Of course, the former are much more manichaeic and underdeveloped than the latter. But that might just have to do with the fact that they didn't undergo the long selection process you speak of. The "90% of everything is shit" rule propably comes into effect here.

I guess to me, this is how I would see the distinction. The Ancient Athenian boy is tying his identity to the religion of his family and community, and the modern American boy is tying his identity to a story that was created by someone entitled to royalty checks every time someone sells a shirt with the word Spiderman on it. The ancient boy's family, friends and everyone he's ever met believes the myths as fact and has never met anyone who doesn't believe them. No one in today's America believes Spiderman was real and it would be weird if you did. If today's boy wants to grow up to make all his money writing Spiderman comics, he's going to have to hash out property rights with whoever's managing the estate's IP from some guy who died 30 years ago or face a big lawsuit, while the Athenian boy could have grown up to create his own myths about Achilles and spread them to everyone he'd ever met and no corporation was going to be able to silence his stories.