March 2000 — Where have all the heroes gone?
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In an age of disenchantment, old-fashioned
heroism seems to be on the ropes; at the same time, unsung
heroes are everywhere. Maybe it's time to switch from public
to private heroism. Beginning in the home...
Peter H. Gibbon is a research fellow at Harvard University's
Graduate School of Education who travels around the United
States talking about the current lack of respect for heroism
in his country. He points out that New York City's Hall of
Fame for Great Americans attracts only a fraction of the number
of visitors who flock annually to Cleveland's Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame. He says that in an age of instant but often
ill-prepared communication, people are being given the impression
that "sleaze is everywhere, that nothing is sacred, that no
one is noble, and that there are no heroes." He reaches back
to the ancient Roman poet Horace for words to describe this
state of affairs: "Nil Admirari " - nothing to admire.
Though Gibbon focusses on the situation in the U.S., what
happens there in this regard is all too likely to happen elsewhere.
Americans are the leading trend-setters in the global society.
They produce the movies, television shows, videos, CDs and
web sites that are seen and heard more than any others by
the international public. The publicity mills of Hollywood
and New York turn out the stars who set examples for good
or ill among impressionable young people around the world.
So if America really is giving up on heroism, other societies
can be expected to act accordingly. The fading of public heroism
in the U.S. is especially disturbing in the light of its national
mythology. As the world's most heroically-minded nationality,
Americans have reserved a central place for noble conduct
in their collective self- image. They have concentrated on
individual greatness to define their greatness as a nation.
With this record in mind, it is to be hoped for all our
sakes that Dr. Gibbon is being a bit alarmist. For the end
of the heroic tradition would mean the end of a lot of other
good things, too. If there is no admiration of greatness,
no representative figures that ordinary people would want
to emulate, we could be taking a U-turn on the road to civilization.
True heroes and heroines (the qualification "true" is necessary
because there have been a lot of phoney ones) have always
shown the way to the betterment of the human condition. Heroism
and progress (again, true progress of the moral and not the
illusive material kind) go hand in hand.
A loss of interest in heroes and heroines would be something
new under the sun, for history shows that human beings have
always felt a need for paragons to look up to. Why? Because
they show the rest of us that members of our species can be
better than we ever thought they could be. Heroism symbolizes
the soaring potential of humankind.
Dr. Gibbon suggests that the scepticism that has led to
the decline of admiration in the United States is connected
to religious scepticism. With the spread of secularism, people
have come to feel that they are sufficient unto themselves
and have no need of a higher power. A loss of religious faith
implies a loss of faith in anyone greater than oneself, including
heroes and heroines.
Along with secularism has come modernism, a cultural movement
that thumbs its nose at structure, form, and convention. To
modernists, one work of art or artist is as good as the next.
Through reductio ad absurdum, that would put a gangsta rap
"song" on a par with a Beethoven sonata. In the modernist
mind-set, the old standards of what is good and bad do not
apply.
Diluted by excess
Those "old" standards, which obtained for thousands of years,
were predicated on excellence. They gave the rank and file
of humanity something to aim for by identifying what was best.
The "old" values system held out reasonable rewards for successful
efforts to be among the best in one's calling. Entertainment
was a metaphor for the way things worked in every aspect of
society. Performers were admired not only for their talent,
but for the work they put into developing that talent to a
state of excellence.
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"Without emulation we sink into meaninglessness, or mediocrity, for nothing great or excellent can be done without it."
Francis Beaumont |
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In the new wired popular culture, excellence has been more
or less abandoned. It's a simple matter of supply and demand.
The more the demand for entertainment is pumped up for commercial
purposes, the lower the standards. Television's hundred-plus-channel
universe cannot sustain a continual flow of excellent material.
In fact it does not produce much that is even very good.
A byproduct of this form of mass production is instant and
apparently effortless stardom, and the wealth that goes along
with it. A performer no longer needs to be first-class to
win a following among a public whose tastes have been diluted
by excess.
By capitalizing on the commercial possibilities of the cheap
thrill, popular culture pays more attention to glitz than
merit and to trash than things of value. That might be all
right but for the fact that merit and value have been thoroughly
confused with glitz and trash. The net effect is that persons
who are "famous for being famous" are held in the same respect
as genuine heroes and heroines.
Dining on subjects
Much of the blame for this rests with the news and public
affairs media, which have become more and more like the entertainment
media in their race for ratings and circulation. Because scandal
sells big -time, the media now hasten to tell us the worst
about everybody and everything.
They certainly show us the worst about the human race as
a whole, concentrating on crime, conflict, and perfidy. By
doing so, they make the world out to be a more cynical and
ignoble place than it actually is.
As Dr. Gibbon is quick to note, today's journalists are
not responsible for the situations they cover: "They did not
invent celebrity worship and gossip. Nor did they create leaders
who misbehave and let us down."
At the same time, they "are not innocent, and they know
it... Roger Rosenblatt, a veteran of the Washington Post,
Time, Life and New York Times Magazine, says, 'My trade of
journalism is sodden these days with practitioners who seem
incapable of admiring others or anything.' In his memoir,
former presidential press secretary and ABC senior news editor
Pierre Salinger writes, 'No reporter can be famous unless
they have [sic] brought someone down.' And New Yorker writer
Adam Gopnik comments, 'The reporter used to gain status by
dining with his subjects; now he gains status by dining on
them.'"
Turning up dirt
The malaise surrounding heroism might be attributed to the
media's obsession with the up-to-date, as if nothing that
has happened in the past is of any importance. But that does
not account for the fact that the heroes of former times are
also being "brought down." "Thomas Jefferson is now thought
of as the president with the slave mistress and Mozart as
the careless genius who liked to talk dirty, " as Dr. Gibbon
observes. Under the spell of nil admirari, revisionist
historians twist the facts to suit their political or cultural
points of view, and biographers sometimes treat their subjects
as blood enemies. The latter are well aware that biographies
that turn up dirt about a prominent person, however irrelevant
that dirt might be, sell better than those that stick to the
point of why that person was worth writing about in the first
place.
All of the above applies to Canada as well as the United
States. With the majority of its population sitting across
the border within close range of the American media, Canada
is in bed with an elephant not only economically, but attitudinally.
Canadian youths wear the same styles of clothes and listen
to the same kind of music as their U.S. counterparts. There
is little to choose between American and Canadian young professionals
in their range of enthusiasms and tastes.
It follows that if respect for heroism is waning in the
U.S., the same thing will occur in Canada, only more so. Canadians
have more to lose out of their culture from this trend, since
heroes and heroines are scarcer in relation to their population.
Canadians have never glorified heroism to the extent that
the Americans do.
A Canadian tradition?
It has long been lamented that Canadians grow up knowing
more about famous Americans than about the famous people -
or people deserving of fame - who have occupied their own
territory. A generation of Canadian youngsters could identify
Davey Crockett as "king of the wild frontier" without having
a clue about explorers like the LeMoyne brothers, Samuel Hearne
and Sir Alexander Mackenzie who performed similar exploits
on the Canadian frontier.
As if the lack of recognition of Canadian heroes were not
enough, Canadians tend to knock the heroes they do recognize.
People who know of Sir John A. Macdonald at all are likely
to make jokes about his heavy drinking, and never mind his
incredible accomplishment in setting Canada on the road to
nationhood. Knocking heroes, it seems, is almost a Canadian
tradition. Years ago every Anglo Canadian knew about the World
War I flying ace Billy Bishop. A revisionist National Film
Board docu-drama a few years ago depicted Bishop as a fraud
who faked his victories.
Sir Arthur Currie was another revered figure in World War
I as commander of the Canadian Corps, hailed as the finest
military formation among the Allies. In the 1920s Currie was
accused of wasting the lives of his soldiers for his own glory.
He fought and won a libel suit against the newspaper that
had printed the charges. Not long ago, a spokesperson for
Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal listed all the famous people
who were buried there. She named several hockey players, and
Sir Arthur Currie - last.
While that may seem a sorry commentary on the priorities
of Canadians, the fact is that they have always been more
likely to find heroes among hockey players than of any other
people. And there is nothing really wrong with their preference:
hockey at its best is a game that brings out qualities that
people are bound to admire - dash and quick thinking, physical
courage, stamina, a certain artistry, and that ineffable characteristic
called "class."
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"The grandest of heroic deeds are those which are performed within four walls of domestic privacy."
Jean Paul Richter |
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Death of the local hero
There was a time when every Canadian boy could rhyme off
names like Syl Apps, Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard and Jean
Béliveau. The most admirable thing about such men was
their character. Of the last- named hero, Guy Lafleur said
in his younger days: "I may not be the hockey player Jean
Béliveau was, but some day I hope to be the man he
is." Brilliant as they were by themselves, the old-time hockey
idols were team players. The team played in the spirit of
one for all and all for one; if one of them stood above the
rest, so much the better for them all.
Lately, with the frenetic sports media as a cheering section,
we have entered into the era of the individualistic superstar.
Teams built around a single player are vulnerable. If the
great man refuses to play when he does not get the money he
demands, he sentences his teammates and fans to a losing season.
An already high -priced player recently did just that.
Hockey is only one of the sports that has deteriorated into
a game of spending money. In the money-spending game, players
go to the highest bidder, and show no attachment to a particular
team or city. The identification with their fans which once
made them local heroes has faded out of sight.
From Joe Louis to Mike Tyson
Meanwhile, the notion that "it matters not whether you win
or lose but how you play the game" has apparently been tossed
out the window. "Show me a gracious loser and I'll show you
a perennial loser," O.J. Simpson once said.
Winning is everything because winning means more and more
money for the players and owners. "I measure respect by the
figures on my contract," one baseball star declared in a fair
reflection of the prevailing mentality in pro sports.
Athletes are heroes and heroines among the young, who regard
them as the kind of men and women they would want to be when
they grow up. A child who emulated some of the pro players
these days might go on to be guilty of all the seven deadly
sins. (For the record, these are pride, greed, lust, anger,
gluttony, envy, and sloth.)
From the days of Joe Louis to the days of Mike Tyson, the
emphasis in sports heroism has shifted from character to performance.
In a perversion of the old saying quoted above, it matters
not what kind of human being an athlete is; it matters how
well he or she plays the game, meaning how many ticket-buyers
he or she can draw.
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"Every man is a hero and an oracle to somebody, and to that person, whatever he says has enchanced value."
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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Fighting anonymous battles
Not that the great athletes of the past could not perform
as well as those today, given the training and equipment available
to them. But it was character above all that made men like
Joe Louis beloved among their own people and people around
the world.
Sport is a peaceful - well, comparatively peaceful - substitute
for war, the anvil upon which heroism has been hammered out
over the centuries. Canada has had its share of heroes from
two world wars and the Korean war in which Canadians fought
against aggression; they are ill-remembered today.
While turning their backs on the traditional type of hero
- the good guy type - the youth of the sixties and seventies
gravitated towards the bad boys. For the most part, rock stars
do not make healthy role models. Partly out of the joy of
shocking their parents, young people placed them on a pedestal
nonetheless.
The icons of pop culture have a heavy influence on fashions
and behaviour among the general populace due to the well-established
fact that humans are an imitative species. If people do not
imitate good examples, they will imitate bad ones. The problem
is not that there is nothing to admire, but that people are
liable to admire the wrong persons and things. In his 1998
novel A Man in Full, that marvellous social observer Tom Wolfe
points out that the fashion for baggy pants among boys originated
in prison. "In jail they don't provide belts," one character
explains, "and so if your pants are too big you just let them
ride low." When jailbirds become role models for youth, it
is indeed time to start worrying about what the world is coming
to. The attraction of "grunge" to teenagers raises the question
of whether they were exposed to better role models, they would
emulate them anyway. Maybe not; but the fact remains that
there is no shortage of authentic heroes and heroines around.
They are simply not as well-recognized as they rightly ought
to be.
The heroic figures of the new age have better things to
do than appear on Entertainment Tonight, and they are unlikely
to be written up in People. Nor, like the old-style war heroes,
are they likely to be found fighting battles against a national
enemy.
Rather their battles are against man's inhumanity to man,
against injustice, disease and hunger - and for the most part
they are waged anonymously. The new-style heroes and heroines
will be found in non-governmental agencies in the trouble-spots
of the world, in run-down neighbourhoods giving aid to the
helpless and homeless, in schoolrooms and community centres
doing their best to steer underprivileged youngsters in a
constructive direction. They will be found - as true heroes
and heroines have ever been found - leading lives of self-sacrifice.
Turning off the trash
The abandonment of the traditional concept of heroism is
not altogether a bad thing. There has always been an element
of exaggeration in the making of idols for public worship.
Instead of looking at the statues of the kings and queens,
the generals, presidents and prime ministers of the past,
we should be looking at those unknown soldiers whose effigies
adorn our cenotaphs. The generals memorialized in statuary
merely lived to take the credit for what the troops under
them suffered to win their victories. Like those nameless
campaigners for freedom, most of the heroes and heroines throughout
history have been of the unsung kind.
The media may continue to produce shabby role models, but
there is no reason for independent-minded people to go along
with them. In a free society, the way to get rid of trash
is simply not to subscribe to it, so that it is no longer
so profitable to its purveyors.
If the age of the public hero has come to an end, then we
must look for the kind of heroism that is won with a minimum
of publicity. And if parents find that their children have
no wholesome role models, then they must strive to become
those role models themselves.
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