The Return of the Pagan Worldview

 

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Have you watched any of Yellowstone?

I watched some of it, and while it has interesting characters, powerful drama and well a well told narrative. It is as bleak a show as you can find. Except for maybe its spinoffs, which I just could not get into, and were more nihilistic than anything I'd ever seen before. 

Yellowstone and other shows just like it are part of a growing trend of nihilistic productions with incredible production values and no clear villain or hero. The Duttons are not good guys. The native American opponents seeking to reclaim their ancestors land are not good guys. The out of state developers and money managers are definitely not the good guys. There really are no good guys. There is simply struggles for power, betrayal’s, heroic events, cowardly acts, violence and rinse and repeat. There is no one to barrack for, because no one is really worth barracking for. Sure, some elements are far worse than other elements, but this is only in comparison. It does not make for good viewing in my mind. I like a good old fashioned good verse evil story.

But our world has a very different default setting.

I have been reading the Iliad recently and it is remarkable to see how much closer in style and themes it is to something like Yellowstone, than it is to something like the Marvel Cinematic universe, or Superman*. One would think that it would be far more akin to the superhero movies and shows of our era, because these heroes are based in part on ancient Greek, Roman, Norse and similar legends. But it is not. It is simply a nihilistic story, it has heroic elements, but it is ultimately small and bleak in its worldview. 

It is probably better to say that it works hard to endear you to both sides and then turn you against both sides. There are no good guys, only winners and losers in certain moments, and this includes among the gods, who are just as fallen as the Greek and Trojan heroes. It is not a classic good verse bad story, because this was not the worldview of its author, or its audience. 

Whereas what I mean by a good old fashioned story is really the narrative structure of the Bible. Genuine good verses genuine evil. The classic storylines. Based on the struggle between good and evil in the Bible. In the pagan cosmology there is not really any objective evil, there is instead situational or subjective evil. Stealing a cities women and children is not evil, it is only evil if it happens to your women and children, for instance. This is very close to the worldview of shows like Yellowstone. They exude such nihilism.

It is interesting to see how our society is returning to the paganism of a past era. It is even more interesting to consider how very different the Biblical worldview is to that of the pagan world. There is a superficial similarity, because the Greeks and Moses wrote about supernatural events. But the worldview of the Bible is alien to the worldview of the Greeks. And this is important to remember. There really is good and evil. There really are heroes and villains. Not everything is a shade of grey.

*Christopher Reeves Superman.