Why do the heroes always win? Why do we insist upon the good guy always winnning and that the bad guy going to jail? Not only do we subject our offspring to this façade of reality, but also we condemn our minds to a false sense of security.
When was the last time you read a book or watched a movie where, in the last few edge-of-the-seat intense seconds, the hero somehow pulls an ace out of their sleeves and the villain’s carefully planned out plot is cast into ruins? I’m not saying that this happens in every movie, on the contrary there are a few that dare to break the norm, like The Empire Strikes Back (my personal favorite out of the trilogy), Seven, and Saw.
Most likely, the endings of these movies irk you. It’s alright if they do. Many people have a negative attitude towards these movies because the valiant hero doesn’t win and (shocker) evil prevails.
Beginning with the first days of their lives, people are forced to endure the constant barrage of “Light Side propaganda” that, in my opinion, turns people into one-dimensional puppets.
But this brings us back to our main question, why do we do this? Why must the good guy win?
Why do we put our children at a disadvantage by lying about how reality really works? My experience has been that, for the most part, evil wins and good guys finish last.
My answer is that most Americans subconsciously hang on to the ideal that life doesn’t – for lack of a better word – suck. Americans like to escape from their reality for two hours so they can face each morning with a smile on their face. They like entering a world where their evil boss works for them, where they get the beautiful maiden and conquer evil, where the words “bank-foreclosure” hold no meaning.
Americans (heck, the whole world) tells the next generation that good guys win in the end because if we all believe that no matter what we do, the jerk in the Lexus will win, there would be no reason to go on. The reason that people allow themselves to be hoodwinked like this is because they like to believe that even though their real-life heroes can’t beat the villain, their made-up ones can.
