But in listening to a book called The Closing of the American Mind and hearing the acclaimed Mr. Bloom discuss American’ aversion to heroes and how he’d observed that it has impacted our culture as a whole, I realized that all my thoughts on literary heroes and my sorrow when I see statues of Southern heroes being torn down are really about this greater question.
Why do we need heroes? Not just in literature, but in life? And why don’t we have them anymore?
The book in question looks specifically at university students and how they’d changed over the course of this professor’s thirty years of teaching them. The book, though written in the 80s, certainly pinpointed the patterns that continued and which we’re still seeing play out today. I don’t agree with his every conclusion, of course, but there’s no denying the general trends he puts to paper.
The root of them all is the current American mindset that we must accept all viewpoints, all cultures, all beliefs as valid, and that the only things that aren’t valid are the ones that oppose that openness. Which of course is ironic, because no other culture believes the same, and so while we say we grant the validity of another culture, we don’t really, because they’re too “closed.” It’s a cycle that renders the starting point absurd and yet is fully embraced by Americans…which results in a shallow belief system founded on nothing.
Enter the idea of a hero. We
had American heroes, in generations past. Washington and Jefferson. Adams and Hamilton. Lee and Grant. Even though we knew they were imperfect human beings, we still honored them for what they’d done in and for our country. At one point, hero worship of these founders and generals was so complete that it began to worry some educators, and they decided they better start reminding kids that Washington was still human. “He had wooden teeth!” they began to teach. A reminder that he had his weaknesses, his humanness. But it wasn’t yet meant to strip him of his title of “hero.” Merely to remind us that heroes are human.
As the years went on, the teaching continued on this trend. “Let’s teach our kids about their heroism” became “Let’s teach them how our heroes are human” became “Let’s teach them about their faults and flaws” became “They can’t be forgiven for their faults and flaws” became “These men weren’t heroes, they were monsters, and we’ve founded a country on them! GASP!”
The logical conclusion is to tear down the country built upon such monstrosity. And that is exactly what we see happening today, especially in the educational arena.
But that won’t just damage us as a nation. It will damage us as individuals. Because we need heroes.
We need people to believe in.
We need people to aspire to be like.
We need examples to follow.
We need causes to fight for.
We need causes worth dying for.
We need to believe there’s something bigger than ourselves.
This is human nature. And when we don’t fill those needs one way, we just fill them another. Anti-heroes become the people we believe in. We aspire to be like the rich since they don’t ever pretend to be great on a human level. We follow our instincts. We fight for universal acceptance, never ourselves accepting that it’s oxymoronic. We die
only for our own pleasures. And the only thing we’re willing to grant is bigger than ourselves is our need to tell others they’re the same as us.
Here’s the thing–we have this idea today that heroes have to be perfect. Or that we have to agree with them 100%. That if we dare to honor someone for something and then we discover a fault, we’ve committed a grave sin and are endorsing the fault.
That’s simply not true.
We do not have to be on the same side as a soldier to grant that he fought heroically. We do not have to agree with someone’s cause to admire them for sacrificing themselves to save others fighting for it. Heroes don’t have to be on the winning side.
This struck me a week or so ago when my dad had me looking up the memorials at Gettysburg. Thousands of men were lost on both sides of the war during that bloody battle. And memorials to men from both sides were raised after the war. Memorials that show how bravely they fought. That remember their names.
I’d never paused to realize that there were memorials for both North and South on that battlefield. But of course, there were. Because there were men who fought and died on both sides. There were acts of heroism on both sides. And in this case, it wasn’t just the winners that told the story–and even the winners recognized that the cost was hardly worth the win. This was a story owned by both sides of the divide–a story that belongs to our nation, whether you live in the north or the south.
Activists today are making a concerted effort to destroy the memory of American heroes with whom they don’t 100% agree. What they don’t seem to realize is that by doing so, they’re destroying themselves. Because if they teach the next generation that anything “closed-minded” is evil, what happens when that next generation realizes that their very teachers were closed-minded about something? They’ve rendered themselves null.
I believe there are heroes. In the past, and among us today. I believe there is Truth. I believe there is Right. And I believe a person can be a hero even when they’re wrong. I believe being human, having faults, doesn’t negate what they do right. And I believe honoring them for their victories can teach us all something, even when we disagree with some of their stances.
If we don’t believe in
something we’re left fighting for
nothing. And that is sure to ring empty in the ears of those who follow.
Enter the idea of a hero. We had American heroes, in generations past. Washington and Jefferson. Adams and Hamilton. Lee and Grant. Even though we knew they were imperfect human beings, we still honored them for what they’d done in and for our country. At one point, hero worship of these founders and generals was so complete that it began to worry some educators, and they decided they better start reminding kids that Washington was still human. “He had wooden teeth!” they began to teach. A reminder that he had his weaknesses, his humanness. But it wasn’t yet meant to strip him of his title of “hero.” Merely to remind us that heroes are human.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.
I like your clarification (i. e. making your previous points more clear to me).
It takes some thinking and certain values to draw the lines, and maybe some people don't see enough gain from this effort. And it's important to use definitions that can be applied universally, to all sides of a conflict, and maybe some people prefer to give their respect rather selectivly.
Over here, the loud-voiced opinion makers seem to use black-and-white arguments, putting rhethorics over values and respect. I know that there are many who see more shades of grey, even colors. I refuse to infer a nation's culture from its paid opinion makers. In other words: The Americans I know do pay respect to their heroes 😉
Jesus is my first hero! He's the perfect example of a hero. I consider my great=grandparents heroes, because they were massacred during the Hamid Massacres (Armenia) in the late 1890's. They weer massacred because they were Christians.
I agree with you that we need more heroes, especially those we can look at and see that they are just as human as we are. We can have heroes and still not use them as idols. Heroes and idols are very different from each other.
Your points are all very good ones and I agree with you. I don't consider anyone in sports heroes, either. I think of heroes like, John Newton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, George Washington and people like that.
I certainly NEVER advocate hero-worship. The other side of the coin is knowing what the proper place of a hero is. Someone to idolize and worship and think they can do no wrong, so therefore everything they do is right? No. Someone to aspire to be like, to admire, to recognize as great in a particular way? Yes.
My definition of a war hero, for example, wouldn't be the person who destroyed the most. It would be the person who risked (or gave) their life to save their brothers-in-arms. (I realize my definition doesn't match everyone else's.)
American heroes–our founding fathers–have been routinely stripped of all respect in the last twenty or thirty years because of their faults. Yes, they were imperfect. I would never say we should be like them in all ways. But does that mean everything they did was wrong? No. We in this country have begun labeling everyone as a villain who ever owned slaves, for example, without ever bothering to look at their opinions on the subject, whether they could even do anything about it (there were laws forbidding the release of slaves at certain points in certain states), that sort of thing.
I've always rolled my eyes at people calling sports figures heroes. I see nothing heroic in running a ball past a line, personally. 😉
I suppose for me it comes down to respect–something the American culture doesn't value anymore. You don't have to agree with somebody or like them to respect. Similarly, respect for a person should never cross the line into worship. When we worship imperfect people, it leads us into trouble every time.
I don't know…
I live in a country that used to perfect a Führer-Kult, like the extreme of a hero. And which came up with many heroes of war some of which still give their names to army barracks. Turned out that their imperfection can hardly be called human. Then there was a british air force commander, Bomber Harris, who by some is worshipped for bombing the city of Dresden. Others disagree pointing to the destruction of lives and cultural inheritance.
It is noble to remember the soldiers who died on both sides of a war. (It's something of which I have not yet heard in the wars against Native Americans, Vietnamese, drug dealers, terrorists/freedom fighters…) Civilian victims rarely get that treatment. And most soldiers, I'm afraid, didn't die heroically, but miserably.
"Heroes" are often abused, esp. posthumously, by others looking for cheap cannon fodder or simply buyers of whatever is on sale. Other "heroes" claim to fight for values which they seem to ignore at home. Then there's the occasional sports idol killing his wife. That creates disappointments.
So I can understand why some people are uncomfortable with some "heroes". Unfortunately, there's often exaggeration on that side, too. Most people I know, even it they don't easily cheer for "heroes" anymore, do respect the efforts and particular accomplishments of others. And, of course, they honor the dead. And if asked for heroes, they will point to their parents or teachers (great PR campaign) or civil workers or a Mother Theresa or Gandhi… I can live with that.