{"id":3957,"date":"2000-03-01T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-03-01T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/march-2000-where-have-all-the-heroes-gone\/"},"modified":"2022-11-27T01:49:16","modified_gmt":"2022-11-27T01:49:16","slug":"march-2000-where-have-all-the-heroes-gone","status":"publish","type":"rbc_letter","link":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/march-2000-where-have-all-the-heroes-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"March 2000 &#8211; Where have all the heroes gone?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"layout-column-main\">\n<p class=\"boldtext\">In an age of disenchantment, old-fashioned                     heroism seems to be on the ropes; at the same time, unsung                     heroes are everywhere. Maybe it&#8217;s time to switch from public                     to private heroism. Beginning in the home&#8230;<\/p>\n<p> Peter H. Gibbon is a research fellow at Harvard University&#8217;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&#8217;s Hall of                     Fame for Great Americans attracts only a fraction of the number                     of visitors who flock annually to Cleveland&#8217;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 &#8220;sleaze is everywhere, that nothing is sacred, that no                     one is noble, and that there are no heroes.&#8221; He reaches back                     to the ancient Roman poet Horace for words to describe this                     state of affairs: &#8220;<em>Nil Admirari<\/em> &#8221; &#8211; nothing to admire.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8220;true&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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                     &#8220;song&#8221; on a par with a Beethoven sonata. In the modernist                     mind-set, the old standards of what is good and bad do not                     apply.<\/p>\n<h3>Diluted by excess<\/h3>\n<p>Those &#8220;old&#8221; 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 &#8220;old&#8221; values system held out reasonable rewards for successful                     efforts to be among the best in one&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<table width=\"415\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/08\/dotted_quote_line.gif\" width=\"415\" height=\"1\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\">\n<div class=\"quote\">&#8220;Without emulation we sink into meaninglessness, or mediocrity, for nothing great or excellent can be done without it.&#8221; <span class=\"boldtext\">Francis Beaumont<\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/08\/dotted_quote_line.gif\" width=\"415\" height=\"1\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>In the new wired popular culture, excellence has been more                     or less abandoned. It&#8217;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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8220;famous for being famous&#8221; are held in the same respect                     as genuine heroes and heroines.<\/p>\n<h3>Dining on subjects<\/h3>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>As Dr. Gibbon is quick to note, today&#8217;s journalists are                     not responsible for the situations they cover: &#8220;They did not                     invent celebrity worship and gossip. Nor did they create leaders                     who misbehave and let us down.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, they &#8220;are not innocent, and they know                     it&#8230; Roger Rosenblatt, a veteran of the Washington Post,                     Time, Life and New York Times Magazine, says, &#8216;My trade of                     journalism is sodden these days with practitioners who seem                     incapable of admiring others or anything.&#8217; In his memoir,                     former presidential press secretary and ABC senior news editor                     Pierre Salinger writes, &#8216;No reporter can be famous unless                     they have [sic] brought someone down.&#8217; And New Yorker writer                     Adam Gopnik comments, &#8216;The reporter used to gain status by                     dining with his subjects; now he gains status by dining on                     them.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3>Turning up dirt<\/h3>\n<p>The malaise surrounding heroism might be attributed to the                     media&#8217;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 &#8220;brought down.&#8221; &#8220;Thomas Jefferson is now thought                     of as the president with the slave mistress and Mozart as                     the careless genius who liked to talk dirty, &#8221; as Dr. Gibbon                     observes. Under the spell of <em>nil admirari<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<h3>A Canadian tradition?<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/08\/march2000_1.gif\" alt=\"image\" width=\"406\" height=\"318\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\"><\/h3>\n<p>It has long been lamented that Canadians grow up knowing                     more about famous Americans than about the famous people &#8211;                     or people deserving of fame &#8211; who have occupied their own                     territory. A generation of Canadian youngsters could identify                     Davey Crockett as &#8220;king of the wild frontier&#8221; without having                     a clue about explorers like the LeMoyne brothers, Samuel Hearne                     and Sir Alexander Mackenzie who performed similar exploits                   on the Canadian frontier.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8211; last.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8211; dash and quick thinking, physical                     courage, stamina, a certain artistry, and that ineffable characteristic                     called &#8220;class.&#8221;<\/p>\n<table width=\"415\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/08\/dotted_quote_line.gif\" width=\"415\" height=\"1\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\">\n<div class=\"quote\">&#8220;The grandest of heroic deeds are those which are performed within four walls of domestic privacy.&#8221; <span class=\"boldtext\">Jean Paul Richter<\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/08\/dotted_quote_line.gif\" width=\"415\" height=\"1\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<h3>Death of the local hero<\/h3>\n<p>There was a time when every Canadian boy could rhyme off                     names like Syl Apps, Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard and Jean                     B\u00e9liveau. The most admirable thing about such men was                     their character. Of the last- named hero, Guy Lafleur said                     in his younger days: &#8220;I may not be the hockey player Jean                     B\u00e9liveau was, but some day I hope to be the man he                     is.&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<h3>From Joe Louis to Mike Tyson<\/h3>\n<p>Meanwhile, the notion that &#8220;it matters not whether you win                     or lose but how you play the game&#8221; has apparently been tossed                     out the window. &#8220;Show me a gracious loser and I&#8217;ll show you                     a perennial loser,&#8221; O.J. Simpson once said.<\/p>\n<p>Winning is everything because winning means more and more                     money for the players and owners. &#8220;I measure respect by the                     figures on my contract,&#8221; one baseball star declared in a fair                     reflection of the prevailing mentality in pro sports.<\/p>\n<p>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.)<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<table width=\"415\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/08\/dotted_quote_line.gif\" width=\"415\" height=\"1\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\">\n<div class=\"quote\">&#8220;Every man is a hero and an oracle to somebody, and to that person, whatever he says has enchanced value.&#8221; <span class=\"boldtext\">Ralph Waldo Emerson<\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/08\/dotted_quote_line.gif\" width=\"415\" height=\"1\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<h3>Fighting anonymous battles<\/h3>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/08\/march2000_2.gif\" alt=\"image\" width=\"257\" height=\"190\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"0\" align=\"left\"><\/p>\n<p>Sport is a peaceful &#8211; well, comparatively peaceful &#8211; 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.<\/p>\n<p>While turning their backs on the traditional type of hero                     &#8211; the good guy type &#8211; 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.<\/p>\n<p>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. &#8220;In jail they don&#8217;t provide belts,&#8221; one character                     explains, &#8220;and so if your pants are too big you just let them                     ride low.&#8221; When jailbirds become role models for youth, it                     is indeed time to start worrying about what the world is coming                     to. The attraction of &#8220;grunge&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Rather their battles are against man&#8217;s inhumanity to man,                     against injustice, disease and hunger &#8211; 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 &#8211; as true heroes                     and heroines have ever been found &#8211; leading lives of self-sacrifice.<\/p>\n<h3>Turning off the trash<\/h3>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[1],"rbc_letter_theme":[],"rbc_letter_year":[83],"class_list":["post-3957","rbc_letter","type-rbc_letter","status-publish","hentry","category-uncategorized","rbc_letter_year-83"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.4 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>March 2000 - Where have all the heroes gone? 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