| That's a thought-provoking perspective. It made me wonder whether BW has more to say, and what his plans are for how to say it. A charitable hypothesis is that he thought that his existing work said what he considered to be most important in the clearest way, and that anything further he said would detract from it. Another charitable possibility is that he knows what he has yet to say, but he thought "we" weren't ready to hear it yet for some reason (e.g. the marriage of the comic medium and its commercial dimensions made saying it too complicated or risky. Maybe other reasons.) I think it's easy to assume that BW acted selfishly by doing nothing. Well, not easy in every way--your perspective isn't in the majority, and the pushback from other commenters demonstrates that, I think. What I mean by "easy" is just that I can see his behavior as being in-line with human frailties (easier to talk the talk than walk the walk). I know it would be hard for me to choose to labor, creating my art, when I'd already achieved success. I'm hoping that you could forgive his failures as being just the ordinary human kind, or maybe even consider the possibility that he might not have failed at all, but was instead in a situation where it didn't make sense to produce more. But I like your argument a lot, because it reminds me that we have a responsibility to more than our own welfare and success. If we can do something to help the world, we should, and those (like BW) with more opportunity have more responsibility. |