The Fall of Heroes…

August 18, 2008 by Aspen Eggimann · 4 Comments

…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.