Post-Traumatic Allergies and Landmines

I've been pondering a blog post on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for almost a year. I am finally writing it.

When people hear PTSD mentioned, it is usually referencing war experiences, rape, terrorism, natural disasters, and significant violence episodes. Those are the angles talked on and researched and beginning to reach the public consciousness. I don't need to reinvent that wheel here.

What I do want to do here is clear up some misconceptions I have seen and parallel some examples I have recognized in various stories.

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First off, some metaphors of how I could possibly have PTSD if I don't fall into the above scenarios.

Consider the phrase, "The straw the broke the camel's back."

There were times when I'd be upset, hurt, distressed over the latest incident, I'd often be rebuffed with, 'What's your problem? My family does stuff like that. It doesn't mean anything.' The event certainly didn't merit my over-reaction, from their point-of-view. It was a simple, measly straw. Nothing to get excited about. Unless you were the camel and the straws were only ever piled on and never relieved by also 'normal' things like love and appreciation and gratitude and help. When you are carrying thousands of straws, every straw adds to the barely bearable weight.

"Chinese" water-torture is also an apt parallel. A single drop of water falling on the forehead of a restrained individual doesn't sound like much, but the repetition, the inevitability, the sensitivity of the location landed, the inability to escape it are all elements of control, manipulation, and breaking a person down.

I didn't have to be beaten or raped. In fact, such actions would have propelled me to denounce the abuser because I would have known his actions were wrong. But mental abuse, emotional abuse, they leave no visible evidence. Only one experienced with the scars would recognize the cognitive/behavioral evidence in the non-psychotic victims. Could one have seen my spirit/soul, however, the image might just make one realize just how devastating such life-long abuse really is.

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It is an automatic allergic reaction. Allergies are due to 'inappropriate' responses by the body to substances the body should be able to tolerate without adverse reaction. There are allergies of various levels and various causes - sometimes superficial responses, sometimes life (psyche) threatening anaphylactic responses.

It can come from the environment (situations, sounds, sights). It can come from ingested foods (philosophies and ideologies). It can come from safe locations (accidental triggers) or from malicious sources (people who refuse to accept your reality and seek to force/prove otherwise). It can come from sources that previously had never been a problem. Maybe it starts as hay-fever where sneezes short out your attention in a rush or it gets harder to see clearly because sight is obscured or perhaps it is a rash that won't stop itching and makes you jumpy. Or perhaps you are placed in the environment/situation that directly provides the dangerous trigger and it's all you can do to get to safety where you can breathe again.

There are certain things that can help allergies. Ways to try to deprogram the traps and neutralize the mines. Some think it's an easy, perfect remedy. Whether out of good-will or simple impatience, they have trouble comprehending that what took a life-time and specific circumstances to create requires the same to un-create.

Some people imagine that, so long as the events are no longer occurring, there is no cause for current problems because of past events. Just 'move on, already'. Wow. Such thinking betrays a solid lack of understanding of the concept of actions and consequences. It's like condemning a person with an old, 'healed' injury - war wound or sports injury - because the changing pressure systems of incoming weather makes the injury hurt again. It's like saying that because wars are in the past, that any landmines left over should automatically deactivate through wishful thinking.

I knew a guy who showed me a trick he liked to pull on family members and thought to rig the church computers in the same manner. It seems there is some location where basic computer commands can be re-written to effect entirely different results. Some use this to make convenient short-cuts. He used it to tell the computer that whenever someone tried to use the internet, the whole computer would shut down. Having spent many years in written-paper heavy college courses, my dismay was automatic, and apparently unexpected to him. I've lost papers because the computer froze on me when I'd forgotten to save. The thought of doing a quick fact-check online while working on a paper and having that mean I lost all that work because some punk kid thought it would be a funny prank was not funny at all. When I presented that little scenario, he quickly restored the original settings.

PTSD is similar. It is landmines and control traps. It is a form of brain-washing. Pavlov training the dog to stimulus. It is an allergic response. And when the PTSD is from years of repeated and varied abuse, you can't just deprogram for a single function.

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I've seen that people often consider the dementors in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to be reflections of depression because they suck the happiness out of people. With my background, I see them as reflections of PTSD because they trap people by making them live their nightmares. The worse the nightmare, the stronger their hold. Harry's worst memories were far more concentrated than the average teen that fears social rejection due to acne. Therefore the dementors affect on him was far stronger than those with more docile lives. I found it appropriately telling that while Harry didn't have a 'happy memory' strong enough to combat them, he found the strength in the hope of what could be ahead of him.

The Avengers has a few spots relative to PTSD. When Tony Stark is talking to Bruce Banner about when he first hulked out, he states his belief that the anger and the hulk protected him from death - that the hulk was something positive rather than a monster. Banner could only see it as the monster that takes over, the one preventing him and others from living safe, normal lives. He tries to control the anger (supposedly by keeping it at a steady steam) to control the 'other guy'. Yet, to my view, the hulk doesn't appear because he 'gets angrier' but because Banner's life is in danger. To me, it looks like a defense mechanism. Sure, the hulk gets angry, but anger is a motivating emotion - it allows one to take actions that they might not otherwise take. In this case - fighting for his life. Once Banner sees that, he is able to accept that it happens and learn how to live with it and even use it to help others.

The other Avengers dual-parallel comes in the form of Hawkeye and Romanov. She had been raised in the spy-world (extrapolated from movie dialogue as I've never been comic-book inclined) and taught from child-hood to live for herself and her missions. Morality had nothing to do with it. At least not until Hawkeye gave her a chance, against orders, to try to fix her moral compass. She saw that event as her one chance at redemption and felt a debt beyond imagining to the man who let her future have a different story.

Then Loki comes along spouting the ideal that people shouldn't have minds or wills of their own. It just makes things messy and them unhappy. And he just so happens to have a means to enable such brain-washing, mind-wiping. Hawkeye targeted, all of his previous functions are over-written by Loki's demands and desires. Until Romanov manages to return the favor with 'cognitive re-calibration'. But when Hawkeye is finally coming out of it, he tells her she can't understand where his head is - 'Do you have any idea,' he asks, 'what it's like to have your mind ripped out and replaced with something else?' Her response is simple and the best one that can be given, 'You know I do.'

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The truth is, most haven't experienced the terror of someone who has so much control over you that you can't even remember events, motives, thoughts contrary to that someone's dictates. "So it is written, so it is done" being able to over-write who you are, why you are, and what you can and 'should' be.

I have met two people that I can think of who have any experience with this. The first was like a breath of air to my suffocating self. Like me, she had distanced herself from the abuser. She was making the best she could out of what had happened and engaging her future with determination, but she also had a deeper wisdom and understanding of the darknesses hiding within people due to her experiences. I'll tell you what, though - she was an amazing teacher, with an energy and enthusiasm that drew everyone's attention and made everyone feel pulled into a grand embrace of charity and affection.

The other made a cursory effort to 'deal' with what happened but preferred denial to recognizing the parts that led to her abusive relationship. While she might be able to relate and support a fellow rape-victim, she has yet to recognize the patterns inherent among all abuse victims and is self-absorbed enough to not notice such behaviors in the first place. Someday, perhaps she will recognize what we have in common. Someday, perhaps she will stop condemning me for refusing to deny the landmines I try to dance the clueless around for continued friendly relations.

The Devil in my Mind: Moriarty and Master Manipulators

I just finished watching the BBC Sherlock shows again and have been entertained with pondering such things as putting the various versions of Sherlock in a room together, Cumberbatch and Downey, or adding characters like Stargate Atlantis' Dr. McKay or Bones' Dr. Brennan into the mix. Also, how well would Sherlock and Spock relate or would the one drive the other nuts? There was, however, in the final episode, an interlude that struck a different chord.

I had already noticed a parallel between Moriarty and Sherlock, but realized a huge difference, at least in the BBC interpretation, in their egos. Sherlock may have a seemingly absurd level of confidence, but he doesn't care for public attention or opinion. His only concern is that he have a true challenge to his mental powers. He could easily have gone into some sort of science, but I suspect he found it as dry a long-term all-encompassing focus as I did... (Yes, I'm well aware he is a fictional character, but all characters are simply case studies of real humanity.) Instead, on some level, he recognized that the true puzzle is in people. While I am content to watch and interact and piece together details and patterns of people in general, he did that so quickly and automatically that there was no challenge or long-term interest. Kind of like how playing Sudoku over and over eventually trains your brain into the patterns so that it is no longer an actual exercise and therefore becomes a bit boring. Sherlock found his outlet and exercise 'on the side of the angels' by coming in at the end of a play, a crime, and using the scenery and props, the set dressing, costumes, lighting, and details the average person only vaguely notices to piece together the story of the the preceding acts.

Moriarty, on the other hand, is a far different mix of genius and ego. Where Sherlock really only needed the younger sibling/best friend stand-in of John Watson, Moriarty needed the challenge plus the whole world and Sherlock to see him as he saw himself - the best, smartest, supra-ordinary being in existence. He tested himself against Sherlock and found a fairly even match. (Thankfully he didn't try to pull a stupid Joker and claim in was Sherlock's fault he existed - the dumbest excuse for bad behavior I've ever heard!) Instead, his ego ruled out and he decided he was better than Sherlock and was going to 'prove' it to everyone.

And herein lies the issue of interest for this post. Moriarty runs a campaign that the viewer can follow and that Sherlock figures out, but he orchestrates it such that (he thinks) he's left Sherlock with no escape but to fall to his manipulations. The way he does this? By messing with truth, reality, doubt, distrust, jealousy, confusion, and human emotion in general. He uses a mass of truth to obscure a basic, but huge lie. He plants doubt in people who know they aren't as smart and uses the jealousy of others who don't want to have to admit they aren't as smart to build a web of confusion. He uses the sources that everyone chooses to accept as truth to spread these twistings and knows that most don't bother stopping and thinking things out for themselves. And in his own mind, it just proves to him that he really is so far above the 'ants', the 'common', 'ordinary' people he plays with. He knows that if he lines things up just so, people will conveniently choose to act as he wants them to and be too vacant to recognize it's even happening. He even plays it so that Sherlock himself is faced with wondering if Moriarty's lies are truth.

[I know I'm mixing tenses, but considering that the characters are archetypes and also that I'm a bit out of it, you'll just have to live with it.]

If you didn't follow my 'ants' reference, that is the term Loki uses in The Avengers. (Favorite movie, remember? Whole post about it!) Loki, Moriarty, Haman in One Night With the King (about Esther) who uses political machinations against the best, twists accepted protocol rules and intimated public perceptions and judgments to convince the king that a whole population, the Jews, should be exterminated... Where have we heard that story-line before??? A bit reversed, but it's the same thing Hitler did to convince a nation they had the moral right and superiority to do the same.

So why am I, a good Mormon girl, so attuned to the manipulations of the devil characters? If you know me, you know why. If you've paid attention, you could guess why. If you're new here, you'll hear the coming sentence for the first time with the rest of the readers. Once I realized there was something wrong at home, I came to think of my dad's voice as the voice of the devil. I began to recognize that the thought patterns, the manipulations, the constant mind-twisting were all the same tools, the same words the devil would/did use against me to undermine me and my confidence in self, my belief that I had a right to exist, and ultimately an effort to undercut my person-hood, my sanity even.

First I started realizing that the beliefs I had learned at home didn't mesh with what I learned at church. Then I traced back where those beliefs came to be (as a defenseless child) and recognized they were placed and regularly reinforced by the should-be-protector. It literally took years not to hear my dad's way of thinking and judging against everything I did after I cut contact with home, but I did it and as I've been digging out his 'retarded-ness' (as I like to call it), I have become highly aware of the patterns and application of the same in story villains and even normal-people interactions.

I would not want others to experience the trauma of having to fight against childhood programming just to learn to trust your own senses. I do not, have never had, the inclination to rail against God for the 'unfairness' of it. There are many trials, some from Him and some from 'retarded' humanity and why shouldn't I have to face that reality like everyone else does? I do think, however, that one very positive element of having survived and fairly overcome the father/family I was born to is that I am probably more aware than most people and this brings a level of defense against others who would try to manipulate.

So why I am writing on something of a darker subject than usual? My last conversation with my youngest sister before dad banned me from talking to her (just before I realized there was no point in further associations, and banned because of these points made in that conversation) the two points I was anxious to impress upon her mind were 1) that she should build a strong connection to God. That had, after all, been what had helped me through all of it. 2) That she has a right to decide what she thinks - she doesn't have to think something just because someone else tells her to. Her mind is her own and it doesn't make her wrong to think or feel differently. I was quite anxious to pass that one on since I had wished, for years, that someone had told me that same thing. Dad, on the other hand, was quite upset about it since it undermined his authority. It had been so useful against me, after all. She doesn't know it, due to how everything's played out, but I have prayed often for her. She was quite young when he married a woman after his own heart (NOT a compliment!) and she was raised with a very distorted version of the truth. I know she doesn't understand, and probably won't be able to for quite some time. I hope, sometime in the future, that will change and maybe then the sister relationship I've craved (consider how many of her age I've connected with on twitter - very much an unfulfilled older-sister issue evident) can actually come to be.

I would enjoin those same two points on you, my readers. Being connected to a pure and higher being gives a clearer gauge by which to measure and judge truth. It is a true protection. Also, while it sounds like the words of a skeptic, consider that not everything you hear or are told is being represented accurately. This could be malicious, or it could simply be skewed by someone's bias. Either way, learn to consider what you don't know. This does not need to lead to self-doubt, but rather, as Sherlock says - jumping to conclusions without sufficient data obscures the truth (paraphrasing). Sometimes just recognizing that things are probably not all they appear to be allows you to take in more information objectively and make a wiser decision.

The funny thing is, Moriarty's final digs at Sherlock were completely bogus. He taunted Sherlock to prove he wasn't 'ordinary', that he wasn't 'boring'. Like those who have chosen the darker path, he wanted the evidence that it didn't make him less than the good guy by bringing the good guy to the dark as well. Only he had already convinced himself he was better in his own denial and so, taunting from hell, as it were, he claimed that Sherlock was only 'as good as him' if he joined him. So do those like Moriarty. They claim they are above by pulling strings, when truly they stand below. We don't have to give them that power. They may pull strings and make life as miserable as they can manage in their efforts to control, but what we choose to think, what we choose to do, is our choice, not theirs. Please, don't ever forget that.

Smeagol vs Gollum; Merlin vs Morgana

You know those projects that you just stare at because the thought of starting them is so overwhelming? Well, I had this thought that if I put in the next Lord of the Rings movie (Two Towers - my favorite!), I might find it an easier prospect. [Transferring the mosaic laid out on cardboard to a board with the cement glue... It's my first one, so I'm nervous I'll mess it up with how small I made the pieces... Memo for next time - use bigger pieces...] I started the first disc and ate my dinner after realizing I'd get too confused if I tried to expand the size/gaps in between the pieces and found myself pondering a completely different topic and ignoring the mosaic. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it's another one of those multiple sources and thoughts converging into one. I took notes of my thoughts in my phone, didn't bother to watch the second disc yet (I wouldn't want to be distracted during the humor of Legolas and Gimli, after all!) and came to the computer where family history distracted me again. But here I am now, phone at the ready and a web of ideas to lay out for you.

The thoughts started as a combining of random sources bringing to mind the role of agency - how our choices determine our destinies inasmuch as the paths we take determine our ultimate destinations. The more wisdom and care we apply when making our choices will do much to indicate where we end up. With that in the background, I found myself considering Gollum in a different way. I'd always been a bit disturbed (still am, truth be told) by Sam's blatant antagonism of Gollum and how dear, sweet, wise Sam couldn't see that Frodo's anxiousness that Gollum could be redeemed was really his own concern that he would/was falling to the evil ring's power. This pity is even more brought forward as we watch the split-personality of Smeagol begin to fight off the wicked drivings of Gollum. But then I recalled something that I don't think is well known. Most are aware, I believe, that split-personalities tends to indicate past trauma in the individual's life, but being an uncommon situation, I think many don't realize that the person consciously seeks the splitting as a way to cope. It's a choice. (At least for the initial split. I haven't thought to ask beyond that...)

As Gollum taunts Smeagol about how he will be betrayed, that 'they'll cheat you, hurt you, lie to you' finally ending with 'nobody likes you', I found myself wondering what caused the split. What was the trauma that Smeagol couldn't handle on his own? The third movie makes it clear that he was ostracized because his greed caused him to murder his friend, so to say he'd been horribly wronged doesn't really fit. But then I remembered Loki and Thor and The Avengers. Loki hadn't been wronged and yet, in his mind, his actions were perfectly justified because of how he chose to interpret events. It is also how my family chose to see me as the source of all problems even as I was in relative form a house-elf. So, returning to the 'cheating, hurting, lying', this seems the basis for Gollum's hatred and anger self-justification. Ownership of the ring and citizenship in the Shire were both his right in his mind, so to be banished from the latter because he killed for the former would twist into being cheated. Also, he'd see Bilbo's winning of the ring as a cheat. Smeagol then had a hard life in the course of the consequences of his banishment with the most recent torture at the hands of Sauron's minions seeking the ring. Hence the 'hurt you'. Finally, the one who chooses to turn to anger and hate has no patience of compassion for the frailties of others or circumstances which interfere with stated intentions. He has no inclinations to forgive any perceived slight to himself and so it all becomes 'lies'.

In the stories I know of split personalities, there is usually a weak, protected, identity, and a strong protector identity. This translates to Smeagol as the weak one and Gollum as the protector. The thing is, Gollum as protector is like an abuser/victim relationship where the weak one can't imagine life being possible without what little support, abusive though it may be, the abuser provides. And since Smeagol is by no means an innocent, this gives the Gollum identity more to use in posing for strength over Smeagol. I suppose one could go into a discussion of id, ego, super-ego and say that Smeagol was lacking in the super-ego conscience factor, but I only know a couple split-stories and neither of them follow that pattern. What it does suggest to me, however, is the nature of the bully-coward, happy to hide behind the stronger entity as an easy excuse for their actions. That like the war-criminals seeking to claim that they were only following orders.

The good news is that in Smeagol's turning to Frodo (pre-Faramir), it proves that there is hope for the good to be found even in a long-mired soul. Smeagol had many opportunities to kill Frodo but saved his life more than once. I tried to consider that it could just be he didn't think he could get away with anything with Sam there (as Sam, himself, would see it) but that fails to take into account how Smeagol also showed joy and gave the gift of food and acted on trust when Frodo called to him. The good was there if he would choose to act on it even if things got rough. Sadly, he didn't. The bully has a weak spirit and when circumstances made him hurt, Gollum was quick to return and call it a lie. Rather than accept that more was going on, even when he later had the proof of it, he chose to remain Gollum and full of hate and malice.

It has always troubled me when I come across a character who has been wounded by life and chooses to turn dark for it. I remember a multi-page journal entry after watching The Phantom of the Opera the first time being so upset that a boy abused and set free was not then nurtured into healthy patterns, but left alone to develop in as twisted a manner as his outward form. Quasimodo is proof that the story could have been different. But then, it simply proves the point of Gollum and Smeagol. We choose our attitudes, our responses, our motivations, our destinations. White Collar's Neal Caffrey doesn't need coddled to turn his life as a con-man around, he just needs the Frodo opportunity. Nor does he need to be condemned forever as would the Samwise response. He just needs the chance and to make the choice.

I mentioned in a previous post that I have been watching BBC's Merlin. Morgana (read Morgan leFay) is Merlin's nemesis and the story has to hold to that, but in this version, she starts out as friend and good person. But then she learns she has magic (an automatic death-warrant if King Uther finds out) and in her fear, she turns to hate. She becomes Gollum. At one point Merlin, himself magical, points out to his one confidant that he actually has someone to guide and help him where she, the king's ward, sees herself as having no one. And yet Merlin is the Quasimodo to prove her twisting hatred wrong. While he can't tell her his secret, he does tell her that she can choose to use her powers for good, even being in such danger. But she has no desire to listen for she has chosen how she will see things. She has chosen to look to pride and seek vengeance against a reality she doesn't like rather than considering how to work within a flawed reality for the good of all. And, ultimately, she falls because of it.

Merlin, who is good of heart and in just as much danger as Prince Arthur's servant, is constantly using his forbidden gifts to follow his conscience while repeatedly saving those who would kill him with the very powers for which they would kill him. Many project their own natures on him, accusing him of intending to use his powers/position to gain power and influence for himself, but he is not ruled by pride. He is willing to accept that sometimes things go wrong and sometimes that means the innocent suffers. Rather than lashing out in hatred, he seeks to find the best way through for all involved.

The news is full of such stories that I'm frequently reminding of 2 Timothy 3 (perilous times shall be - good old seminary scripture mastery rhymes!) and D&C 88:91.

 91 And all things shall be in commotion; and surely, men’s hearts shall fail them; for fear shall come upon all people.

The news feed on my weather app is full of stories of people choosing to be Gollums and Morganas. But that is not the only choice. It's not often the easiest road, but there is such much more dignity in being the Merlin. And the most dignified part about Merlin is how his choices enable dignity for others as well. Let us all be Merlin.

The Avengers

So I don't actually have regular TV access, but thanks to the generosity of a friend, I do have access to Netflix streaming, and last week I discovered The Avengers. For the first time in I know not how long, I actually have a favorite something. I've always been more inclined to having lists of favorites, but never to have one top out. The Avengers did it.

I have always responded to the epic good-vs-evil survival stories and there are many great ones out there. I think they do so well because the people of our time recognize our world is kind of a big mess and it wouldn't take a whole lot to push everything out of whack. What with 'wars and rumors of wars' and the ever increasing number of natural disasters, I think the collective sub-conscious is a bit nervous. And the Christian not-so-sub-conscious sees them as warnings preparatory to our own end-story. Hero stories, therefore, reinforce the idea that all is not hopeless and that, even if the meager humans we are can have little appreciable impact on such massive happenings, others with more effect than us can avert catastrophe. Some of them even show how a normal individual can make a difference. (There are lots of stories that fill such roles and one does not need to be a geek or a nerd to appreciate them.)

It is fitting, then, that the movie's problem came from a source rather reminiscent of the Christian fallen-angel-devil Lucifer of similar name: Loki. Brother of one of the Avengers, Thor, his 'imagined slights' over his life-time had previously led him to try to overthrow the ruling structure in his own favor through intrigue, manipulation, and murder. When that didn't go his own way and his father did not see things in his favor, Loki 'let go' and turned his back on the principles that his world was ruled by. It seems in the time between Thor and The Avengers he gravitated towards those who would support his desired reality as it would also benefit their own desires for gain and greed, power and glory. "And the humans - what can they do but BURN." They like to think that no one is as great as they imagine themselves, but as one old man pointed out, "There are always men like you."

The heroes have to face not only one who considers himself a god, but they have to deal with their own egos and issues. Who of us doesn't have to do the same? Used to working on their own, starring in their own shows (our own lives),  they don't mesh automatically. At some point, in Jr. High School, I believe, it occurred to me that there was a parallel between the earth's crust and human nature: when faults collide earthquakes happen. In the case of the heroes, they happened with each character judging another in their ranks and condemning the others' faults. One wonders how much damage in the middle of the show could have been avoided had they been working together instead of fighting each other.

Many look at the Christian, or religious mentality in general, as one that expects us to become mindless servants with no will or individuality or intelligence. Instead, becoming one, finding unity, is not about becoming the same. I would quote 1 Corinthians 12 but the applicable part's practically the whole chapter, so please read it through the link. The point is not in everyone being identical. That would actually be rather worthless in getting anything besides the one purpose done. The point is supporting each other by adding all the skills, talents, abilities together until the sum is greater than the parts. You know, that whole synergy thing that happens when two cows together can pull more weight than two cows individually can pull added together?

They also have to realize that they have a reason to work it out. You'd think the whole 'the world's gonna end if you don't pull it together' would get them into gear, but those faults, the little things they focused on and thought were more important, got in the way. How often do we see something that really needs to be done and we recognize we have responsibility towards it, but we really don't want to be bothered with it? At one point, a regular man out-matched to his own demise told Loki that he would not win despite Loki's apparent encompassing advantage because, "You lack conviction." Those who are willing to recognize the existence of good versus bad must consider if they have conviction in the strength and ultimate victory of good, even in the face of that individual's life. The man died. The heroes remembered why they were fighting.

You can see this same idea in history. The Spartans, warriors from birth to death, decided they liked what their neighbors, the Athenians, had and wanted to take it for themselves. They figured that the soft, intellectual, traders of goods and ideas had no chance against their obvious military advantage. Yeah. Didn't quite go as planned. Why? Because just as the good guys need and can claim the power of conviction in defense of their lives and families, the bad guys can't claim the same. Oh, sure, they are and have to be committed to their schemes to get where they do, but the ego of self can only be a weak imitation of the power found in fighting for others, in being willing to sacrifice your own well being to protect another.

We see it in those who dedicate their lives to public service. We see it in the scripture stories. We see it in the hero stories. We see it in the greatest hero story of all: Christ. And while heroes are not always thinking of such things and the writers of such stories may not always intend such parallels, the populace responds to it never-the-less.

The movie could be considered visually stunning with the amount of detail and effects that had to go into pulling off the great battle at the end. And yet, despite all that, I almost don't notice. Instead, I see the heroes accepting the lead from and old-fashioned God-fearing man who directs them according to the strengths of each individual. Furthermore, as each one fights off their particular monsters, there is almost always one of the others who shows up and lends a hand, or hammer, such as it is. They are paying attention to the others around them rather than going it alone. And they accomplish as a unified group of six what they could not as  six individuals.

Some consider such stories as escapist, avoiding reality and of no actual intrinsic worth. As one who consumes stories for understanding, (intellectual, emotional, spiritual even, food), I must think that those who claim such things must not be inclined to considering the world and the things therein for the good that can be found. Not only is this movie visually stimulating, exciting, full of pretty people and fantastic situations, with well-fitting music that I greatly like, well composed both in writing and directing/editing, with many great and funny lines and moments, it has a depth of ideas that speaks to my core. Symbolically speaking, "Why to fight" and "How to fight". As one who has only made it to this age by fighting to overcome such things as abuse, illness, discouragement, betrayal, loneliness, and temptations, perhaps you can see why it would register so deeply.