Imagine Batman without the Joker, or the Penguin, or any of the other villains in the comics and movies.

Or Superman without Lex Luthor, or those three individuals with equal powers to Superman but who broke bad in their spirit and wished harm and destruction upon Planet Earth?

How utterly boring would that be?

It was the villains that made those shows and comics watchable/readable. A villain who did an awful thing made Batman himself if I recall correctly.

We revile the villains, the misfits, the outsiders. It gives us a sense of security in our bubble of righteousness.

"Maybe I've got issues, but at least I'm not him..."

"What a mess she is..."

And so on and so forth.

But can you imagine life without them?

Superman and Lois Lane just flying around looking gaw-gaw at each other? I'll give that a hard pass.

Superman spinning around the earth so fast he reverses time so that he can stop a nuclear missile from destroying the San Fernando Valley? Now that's exciting.

How about a movie with Batman giving a David Attenborough style tour of Gotham City? I'm laughing at the thought of it. Heath Ledger's Joker character - even Batman himself struggling with his inner demons after the death of his parents - makes the movie entertaining and worth watching more than once.

Our society has lost its character in many ways, because being a character has become taboo.

Can you imagine people wearing two face masks at Wal Mart, or a world-class tennis star who has made the sport of tennis into what it is today being humiliated on an international stage because he doesn't get a vaccine with unproven efficacy in the 1970's? I can't.

That generation had character, because people were allowed to be characters.

Things that people routinely lose their livelihoods over, or have their reputations ruined here in 2022 was part of life not that long ago. Someone had an unsavory opinion on something? You just accepted it, lived with it, and maybe even learned something from a differing point of view, albeit with language you'd just as soon not hear.

It used to be part of life. These days? Not so much.

Humanity with all its flaws and errors, dare I say it, helped form people's character.

I've had as much of this sterilized, homogenized culture as I can stand. I'm grateful to have a job, a wife, a son that allows me to be a character and not be punished for doing so.

Said wife and son and I often team up to produce a little show called "Ba Vojdaan". It means "awake" in Sana's native Persian language, and you won't find any walking on eggshells in the show at all.

I invite you to check out an episode, and hit the little "subscribe" button if you dig it.

https://flowjn.com/vojdaan