#MyKindOfBenedy

Benedy and maledy are words I made up to discriminate among types of narrative art. In a benedy the arc of the story and the circumstances of the characters change from worse to better. In a maledy, things change from better to worse. I find the distinction useful because the more-common terms comedy and tragedy seem ambiguous to me: Farce is usually benedy, but satire is almost always maledy – where drama can be either.

There’s a lot more theory behind this, but the meat of the matter is here: Benedies will tend over time to make people better, where maledies will make them worse. Ars gratia artis all you want, poetry is leadership, and, accordingly, benedy is the art of human thriving.

Pursue the links to ingest the argument:

• How can something as silly as a movie make your life ever-better over time?

• John Wayne, John Galt and John McClane walk into a bar. Why does each come out alone?

• Sympathy for the underfathered: How the right art will cultivate better lives for our children.

• How would I program my three-hour prime-time TV Koch-block? Family style.

Meanwhile, I want to sell this notion – not as merchandise but as culture. Stuff you can do right now to help make this happen, from easy to hard:

1. Subscribe to #MyKindOfBenedy on Twitter to see my recommendations for benedies in the marketplace, especially on Netflix. Support artists who support you – your values, your virtues and your loved ones.

2. Learn to work my way. Ds is humanity, and, for that reason, in due course there will again be a market for Ds art. I have a better map to this than anyone. More map than examples, so far, since I’m still working this out, but I’m interested in building an ecosphere for Ds artists – especially screenwriters and kidlit authors.

3. Put your money where my mouth is. ThriversEd is benedy disguised as education disguised as fun, and it would thrive better with your help. Meanwhile, I have a map in my head for a whole new way of programming everything – movies, books and especially television. I would love to talk to you about how to take back the half of the entertainment marketplace Ci culture hates.

Repeating that:

I know how to program for the other half of the entertainment marketplace – the folks modern culture hates.

How? With benedy, of course. No one wants to fail, and each one of us desperately wants to believe he can prevail. It’s a simple story: Hard work pays off. Learn better, work at it, do better – and you’ll do better. But by telling that one story over and over again – in thousands of ways – art redeems humanity by illuminating its better path.

Poetry is leadership. I’m leading myself and anyone who wants to follow me toward Ds – toward humanity, toward civilization, toward love. #MyKindOfBenedy is how I’m getting that job done.