The “Red Shirts” of fiction are the expendable
nonentities as protagonists… as they are portrayed in Star Trek: the Original Series. Though “good guys” their lives are
insignificant and their deaths inconsequential. Still, the heroes value these
lives and grieve their passing.
The “mooks” of fiction are the expendable nonentities as
antagonists. Their lives are cheap and their numbers easily replenished. Their bosses
use them as cannon-fodder and think nothing of it.
The lowly are lowly whether “good” or evil. They are expendable
whether their affiliation is right or wrong. Quite simply: a life’s merit is
its significance. Those that amount to little are worth little. Those that
amount to nothing are worthless. I dare say the lowly are cheap if not trash by
their personal failings.
There is no “fairness” to be had or even yearned for.
There is no “equality” better than justice. Our world is what it is that the
wheat may be separated from the chaff. It burns to clear the gems and precious
metals of all the hay and stubble. Our spiritual reality is
survival-of-the-fittest that those who would do shall do much and those who
would do nothing shall lose everything. Our best fiction is always a parable of
this unseen yet innately evident truth.
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