WHY DO WE HAVE NO HEROES TODAY?
(Asked by Marc Crick of Oak Park, Illinois U.S.A.)

By Dr. Stephen Juan

It is said that we humans live in an age without heroes. Assuming that this is true, there are at least two possible explanations as to why.

First, according to anthropologist Dr. Thomas de Zengotia, we no longer have heroes today because of what the mass media have done to our consciousness. No one can qualify to be a hero. When they achieve a high level of recognition, the media attention they receive exposes all the non-heroic aspects of their lives. This has the effect of pulling them down from whatever heroic pedestal they may have stood. In MEDIATED: HOW THE MEDIA SHAPES YOUR WORLD AND THE WAY YOU LIVE IT (2006), de Zengotia argues that what the media do to us is even worse that what they do to heroes---control our consciousness---such that for a hero to qualify for hero status they must be un-real. Take the example of religious heroes, the reason that Christ, Buddha, Mohammad, Moses, and any other religious hero is a hero is that we know so very little about them. Their deeds become imagined about, fantasized about, and eventually mythologized in our minds. As de Zengotita writes, “real heroes of the past were represented with a frugality that is almost impossible to credit today”. By contrast, today’s most likely possible heroes (sports figures, movie stars, political leaders) are so often featured, reported, highlighted, profiled, revealed, covered, and uncovered that any non-heroic flaw is exposed.

Second, perhaps a more intriguing reason as to why we have no heroes today is somewhat more subtle. Perhaps we find no heroes today, not because they do not exist, but because we are looking in the wrong place. In fact, this is precisely the argument of Dr. Miriam Polster, a clinical psychiatrist at the University of California School of Medicine in San Diego. Polster argues in EVE’S DAUGHTERS: THE FORBIDDEN HEROISM OF WOMEN (first published in 1992), that we must re-define what it means to be a hero. According to this definition, there are heroes all around us. Indeed, in order to find one, we may only need to look in the mirror.

Dr. Polster claims that most people think of heroism in public terms. The so-called hero must be a household name, a celebrity, one who has performed some extraordinary feat witnessed by thousands if not millions of others, preferably the entire world.

Yet this is precisely where we go wrong with heroism. Dr. Polster argues that few people get a chance to be this kind of hero. Furthermore, half the world's population, namely women, get excluded from heroic opportunities since traditional fields of heroic pursuits fall almost exclusively into provinces dominated by men. Dr. Polster adds that “whether the heroism occurs in warfare, in politics, or on the athletic field. There is a bias against women heroes.”
The anti-women bias in heroism started from the very beginnings of our culture. To support this claim, Dr. Polster contrasts the lesson in the story of Prometheus with that of the story of Eve.

According to the Greek myth, Prometheus made the first man. He formed man from earth and water. Zeus further delegated to Prometheus the duty of teaching and providing for man. All things could be given to man except fire. Fire was reserved for the gods only. But Prometheus wanted to insure that man held dominion over all other earthly creatures. Thus, he disobeyed Zeus and gave man fire. For this disobedience, Prometheus was chained to a rock forever. Each day a vulture would eat part of his liver. Each night the liver would grow back again, thus ensuring eternal torment.

In the Bible, Eve also disobeys. She eats the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Paradise against God's command and seduces Adam to do the same. Both are punished for this as are all humans ever after. The world's first woman becomes the world's first villain.

Dr. Polster maintains that, although both Prometheus and Eve did much the same thing, Prometheus is regarded as a “hero”, both “noble and classic in his solitary suffering”. On the other hand, Eve “is portrayed as evasive and unadmirable. She has been blamed for all the evils that subsequently plagued later innocent generations, and her willful loss of innocence stained the rest of us.” Thus, women today who aspire to heroism suffer from the legacy of Eve---they are “Eve's daughters”.

Dr. Polster writes that, ever since Eve, “for centuries, the heroic acts of women have been ignored, down-played, maligned, or misinterpreted. As a result of such gender discrimination in our view of heroes, our definition of heroism is completely out of touch with reality. As the possibility of achieving heroism in the traditional sense is virtually denied to one sex, women are prevented from recognizing their own courage and worth.”

Dr. Polster believes that “women and men, in confronting their own daily struggles, need not be limited to stereotypical male heroism, but can call upon their own innate, unique strengths and qualities--as women heroes have done for centuries--to embody true heroism, achieve goals, and realize self-fulfillment.”

An example of true heroism cited is a Boston woman who single-handedly organized people to rid their neighborhood of the drug dealers that were threatening to take it over. Another is a single mother who went to school at night and kept her family together. She writes, “So is the victim of harassment who seeks justice.”

Thus, the real heroes are all around us. Although Dr. Polster is writing about the U.S, we certainly have no shortage of Australian heroes. It may be a volunteer who works with dying cancer patients in a Sydney inner western suburb in order to make their last days on earth as pleasant as possible, a social worker who works with the bereaved (when most of us flee from such situations in response to our own denial). It could be a tireless counsellor in a Kings Cross halfway house for teenage runaways. Or it might be a mother or father holding down two jobs to pay the mortgage and going without sleep in order to play with the children.

By changing our outdated view of heroism, more of us qualify as heroes. This realization boosts the image of ourselves to ourselves while serving to empower us and strengthen us for further struggles.

Heroism takes on a more authentic and human dimension. It is a new vision of courage, cooperation, and hope that is within the reach of everyone.

There is a hero in us all.

News Archives: 2008 December: Syllogomania September: How body language can work for you August: The blues busters July: 'Mother-to-be' fantasies are pregnant with meaning June: How kids cope with tragedies May: Things that Mums say: are they true? April: Future Items March: More body miscellany February: Where there's smoke... January: Is the Yeti now extinct? 2007 December: Odd Body Miscellany November: Teenage risk-taking behaviour October: Peyronie's Disease September: The Othello syndrome August: The new wrap on swaddling July: Where did the belief in guardian angels come from? June: What is real success? May: Is a time machine possible? April: What to say to someone who's dying March: More odds and ends behaviour February: Tiny machines will change us forever January: Do you have to be manic depressive to be creative? 2006 December: Sick Sperm November: Odd Statistics 1 August: Is it more natural for children to be cruel or kind? July: Satanic Cults Won't Go Away April: Something to Panic About March: Step This Way for an Argument February: Who's Afraid of Intimacy? January: Endangered Speciesism?