Heroes

Heroes:

The subject of heroes has come up at two blogs I visit regularly. Some of the questions raised are provocative: Why are certain kinds of men revered as heroes? What is the difference between the scholarly historian's list of heroes and the ordinary man's list of heroes? How does the creation of a list of heroes reflect the values of the culture?

In the comments thread at Kim duToit's place, several examples of heroes are mentioned. While many are 'big names', several are nobodies. These small-name heroes somehow seem more impressive in that they have tried to stay out of the limelight of public attention.

This raises a question about the definition of a hero--the Platonic ideal of a hero, as it were.

The great heroic legends are full of heroes who are eager to tell of their greatness to all who will listen. (Neither Achilles nor Beowulf are shy about mentioning their past deeds.) However, the boasts are not their sole claim to fame--the heroes rise to the challenge at hand, the challenge that is the center of the story.

These men are not viewed as heroes because of their boasts, but because of their deeds. Their boasts are not out of place.

In the modern world, this seems less common. One recurring image of a modern hero (especially those mentioned in this comments thread) is of a man who has done heroic deeds, and would rather not share that history with anyone else. His family and friends know, but few others have that knowledge.

Which image is a truer representation of the hero? Or do both represent the bearing of a man of heroic stature in different cultural situations?

After some deliberation on the subject matter, I am leaning towards the idea that the heroic ideal is silent about whether the hero spends his time advertising his stature. That is, the heroic ideal is centered on the actions of the hero, rather than his attitude towards telling his own heroic tale.

However, I am also deeply aware that traditional measures of heroic stature have lost most of their cultural currency in the West. We have men and women who proclaim themselves as heroes because they are in a default attitude of rebellion against the excesses of past generations. We have publicists and media personalities declaring celebrity for a variety of reasons; rarely are those reasons connected to heroic deeds. Anyone who wins the celebrity lottery has lost almost all privacy for the purposes of feeding a novelty-driven media culture.

This makes me very happy to be able to learn about heroic stories from locations like the weblogs I linked--or locations like the Someone You Should Know series at BlackFive. I can learn their stories without them being subjected to the attention of the mass media.

When discussing why a man might not want to become the center of a media circus, I pause to wonder if the existence of this corrosive media environment is a sign of sickness in the culture. If so, how deep does the sickness run? How could such a sickness be healed?