The Fall of Heroes…

August 18, 2008 by Aspen Eggimann 

…And How to Raise Them Again

“In an age that would level everything and reverence nothing, I light my candles at the shrines of great men.” -Will Durant

I was once sitting in a room of about thirty youth. They gave their names one-by-one and told us who their hero was, as a way of introduction. As the moments passed my faith in our future began to fade.

Who were the heroes named? The Hulk, because he is green, Homer Simpson, Dwight from The Office, Superwoman, no truly great person was named. No figure with moral character and genius. The great men were entirely gone.

How Our Heroes Fall

New Social Icons
In an age of mass media and cheap entertainment, we are bombarded by stories, facts, faces, ideas and advertisements, and this bombardment has created casualties that are sometimes unseen but no less real. And those dying are not the weak but the strong. Those dying are the heroes.

Our society kills heroes. Those past and present are buried in a landslide of information and social icons without morals or genius. Most people know more about Britney Spears and her custody dispute than they do about our Founding Fathers. (Case in point, Google “Britney Spears” and you will find 45.5 million hits, compared to the 15.5 millions hits for “George Washington.”)

How can the actions and stories of the great shine through to our lives when all our thoughts are taken up with the latest actors scandal? How can we possibly remind ourselves of the actions of great men and women when what we see from our public figures is mediocrity at best and degeneracy at worst?

Buried History
In the past the stories of history were repeated in vivid epics about the lives of great warriors, artists, statesman and saints.

Now history is taught through the lives of the masses, and not the actions of the great. Dates and facts are piled on a student with no enlivenment from stories of brave souls and great minds. We recognize no heroes in history because our democratic dogma of leveling all men has made the giants nothing but common men.

People as a whole have an aversion to great men. For whatever reason we like to make lesser what is actually greater. We are ashamed of the mediocrity of ourselves and so try to tear down the greatness of other. Even names of the past, which are separated from us by time, are “humanized.” So often you hear of the Founding Fathers stories starting out with a list of all their faults and ending with a statement indicting how normal they were.

How does this happen? How can we stand in complete awe of the wonders of nature and the advancement of technology and yet look straight past the wonder of all the ages, a man or women who has changed the world?

Society Without Heroes

What happens to a society without heroes? What happens to people without a heroes’ light by which to see?

We cannot rise to that which we know nothing about. Without the stories and a belief in heroes we have limited ourselves to a lower state of behavior. Simply by denying or not knowing about a higher standard set forth by heroes. The effects are such that we have no leadership for the decision in our lives; there is no standard by which to judge others or ourselves. Worse, we settle with the standard of popular culture, no matter how far fallen or how second rate.

3 Ways to Resurrect Gods

1. Tell the stories
Stories are the lifeblood of individuals and civilizations at large. Stories have held together the past and the present for all of time and molded the aspirations of men. From the Bible to the storytellers of Native American tribes, civilizations have used stories to lift their people.

As Durant said in A Shameless Worship of Heroes,

“I see men standing on the edge of knowledge, and holding the light a little farther ahead; men carving marble into forms ennobling men; men molding peoples into better instruments of greatness; men making a language of music and music out of language; men dreaming of finer lives, and living them. Here is a process of creation more vivid than in any myth, a godliness more real than in any creed.

“To contemplate such men, to insinuate ourselves through study into some modest discipleship to them, to watch them at their work and warm ourselves at the fire that consumes them — this is to recapture some of the thrill that youth gave us when we thought, at the altar or in the confessional, that we were touching or hearing God.”

2. Expose Yourself to Greatness
Do not be afraid of greatness! Embrace it, learn it, and do not be uncomfortable by it. Delve into the great classics that allow you to rub shoulders with character and passion. Doing so may sharpen your sense of mediocrity and weakness within yourself, it will also start a fire, the same fire that warms those great men and women and drives them on.

Exposing yourself to greatness and genius is where life is made, where the godliness of man shown. Who knows but in that exposure to genius we may catch fire from its sparks.

3. Be the Hero
There is, in fact, only one sure way that heroes will continue on through our history and in the lives of our children — by becoming heroes ourselves and leaving a legacy of greatness.

There will always be a need for new heroes. Light the candle and hold it at the edge of knowledge, at the edge of the known, and lead out for the others. Hold the torch a little further along the road of history and others will take it up when you are gone.

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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.

Filed under: Culture, Education, Heroism, History, Human Nature, Leadership
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Comments

4 Responses to “The Fall of Heroes…”

  1. Ken on August 20th, 2008 10:59 am

    The rhetoric of this post is rather basic: begin with an anecdotal poll, raise an alarm about an imminent but supposedly ignored threat, and end by giving three simple examples of how the reader can make a difference. Oh, you also get bonus cheap rhetorical points by mentioning the American fascination with Britney Spears and backing it up with the highly statistically relevant use of Google hit counts.

    For a site that lauds the classics so much, this post is rather skimpy and polemical. No effort was made to look beneath the surface of the issue.

    Still, the overall thesis is valid: most Americans do seem to care more about contemporary pop culture than any sort of a heroic past. What this means for the future is up for debate. Perhaps we should consider the possibility that a democratic form of government naturally leads to the diminution of virtuous leaders and, by this logic, demanding that society perform the same way under diverse forms of government is unreasonable. This is one of Alexis de Tocqueville’s arguments in a nutshell: because all men are more economically equal more men will enjoy a small degree of virtue and self-esteem, but fewer men will be seen as highly virtuous by the community. Experts and heroes will decline, the common man will increase.

  2. Mike Wilson on August 20th, 2008 12:40 pm

    Many conservatives who promote classics as a curriculum see distant, grand “heroes” as the cause of change and therefore as being necessary for future change. However, battles (be they military or philosophical) are often won or lost by the common man. I don’t believe that my role as a statesman or citizen is to be a hero to others or to point others to a hero. My role is to powerfully impact my sphere of influence (mainly my family and friends and others who aren’t too annoyed to listen to me) in such a way that persistent incremental change is made and maintained.

    Although I disagree a bit with Ken’s tone in the prior post, I think our current (and most importantly future) world will be changed, reformed, revolutionized by the common man because of the points Ken makes. That is where the focus should be, not on created new heroes or gods to be worshipped and adored.

  3. Aspen Eggimann on August 20th, 2008 3:13 pm

    First to Ken, I agree with you on the skimpiness of this article. And appreciate you thinking it still valid enough a concept to comment on. But to put down this site simply because of my undeveloped writing skill… well that would be right along the lines of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

    Tocqueville’s was entirely correct in his observation that in general economic prosperity you also bring about the general dispersion of virtue. But as Ken pointed out it is a “small degree of virtue”. If this world is going to be changed then is will not be with a small degree of virtue. In order to see great virtue the hero must have a place in the life of the common man.

    I agree completely with Mike that there needs to be a revolution of the common man. And change can come from the masses, and does all the time. But to only promote the mass of men and not recognize the power of one is to take away the power of all.

    I take issue not with the rise of the common man, but with the fall of heroes. We can have both. But we are in a society that does not understand the importance of greatness and so society continues to copy itself with no image or standard of greatness.

    If we are going to have a revolution among the people and if the common man is going to change then we must give them something to rise to.

    Perhaps it is possible that we don’t have to level heroes to be a common men, but can raise the common man to be a hero. That would be a true reform.

  4. Mike Wilson on August 20th, 2008 8:21 pm

    Aspen said:

    “But we are in a society that does not understand the importance of greatness and so society continues to copy itself with no image or standard of greatness.

    If we are going to have a revolution among the people and if the common man is going to change then we must give them something to rise to.

    Perhaps it is possible that we don’t have to level heroes to be a common men, but can raise the common man to be a hero. That would be a true reform.”

    I agree that this is a better answer and I agree that we have a lack of even aspiring to “greatness”. But part of the problem is that we are mistaken in what greatness is and what it requires. Socrates decried the utter sinfulness of many of the heroes of the Greeks. As long as we continue propping up heroes for the sake of having someone “to worship” (Dostoyevsky discusses the danger of this in The Brothers Karamasov), we will lessen the powerful growth of greatness among the everyman.

    The principles of greatness are what need to be revered, not the heroes. I think we fundamentally agree. I think it’s just a matter of emphasis.

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