The nineteenth-century American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said:
But this is no longer the case in the modern world.
Fame, in our day, is foisted primarily upon celebrities and politicians,
two classes of individuals for whom the word heroic rarely applies.
And so, if as the ancient Greeks believed, a people are known by the idols they worship then it is safe to say, the spirit of heroism has all but vanished from the modern world.
If on the off-chance a true hero does emerge in the public's view, many respond with envy
and fixate on the hero's flaws and weaknesses, on the fact that their feet are made of clay.
But in choosing to venerate celebrities, politicians or else comic book and movie characters, and not real heroes of the flesh and blood, we do ourselves a great disservice.
For not only do we inhibit the rise of the heroes that could help push back against the chaos the world is slipping into,
but we also diminish our own urge to heroism, an urge that is fundamental to psychological health.
Or as the 20th century cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker put it:
In the hopes of witnessing a rebirth of the heroic and to push back against the envy ridden,
who desire to keep us all on the same petty level of insignificance
we are going to examine the psychology of the hero.
Specifically, we are going to investigate what true heroism consists of,
how the potential to be a hero exists in each of us, and how we can satiate our own heroic urge.
To understand the hero we must first understand the role of values in the hero's life
for above all else, a heroic life is a life lived in the service of values.
We all have to live in the service of something. If we don't we are like a ship without a rudder.
In the course of our life we'll be pushed and pulled by forces external to us.
We can live in the service of another person.
We can live in the service of an institution or ideology
or we can construct a self chosen value system and live in the service of it.
To choose the latter course means to make a judgment as to what we deemed to be worthy of struggling for and protecting.
It requires that we reflect on the question
What does the good life consists of for me?
To arrive on an answer, we can build on the wisdom of others.
We can look to role models for inspiration. But ultimately we must select what it is we believe will move us in the direction of a greater life
The things we settle upon become the components of our value system and as a few examples
We may choose to value freedom, truth, beauty, friendship, temperance, love.
We may value a specific pastime or craft or in the words of the author Andrew Bernstein
Values advance life. They never obstruct or harm it.
But as fallible creatures
we can be misguided as to what we judge to be a value. The drug addict, for example, believes he values another hit. The alcoholic another drink, the tyrant more power over others,
the envious destruction for its own sake.
But in such cases the object of desire is harmful to our well-being or to that of others
and so it is not a value, but an evil that tends towards suffering and death.
Values can also become corrupted with time,
some things that are valuable at one stage of life lose their life promoting quality at another stage
and so, in constructing our value system, We must be critical regarding what we choose, for as Socrates noted long ago:
Ignorance is in many cases a greater cause of suffering than evil intentions.
Building on this brief elucidation of the nature and significance of values
We can now integrate this knowledge to better understand what it means to be a hero.
Or as Bernstein explains
The hero is the individual whose commitment to values far exceeds that of normality
and whose value system serves human well-being on a mass scale.
The hero may dedicate his or her life to justice, to ameliorate the effects of human evil,
to innovation to enhance standards of living,
to knowledge to alleviate suffering or to freedom to combat tyranny and promote social cooperation.
Contrary to a common belief,
heroism does not involve self-sacrifice.
Heroism is not a zero-sum game in which the hero serves as a benefactor of mankind but suffers personally as a result.
Rather, in remaining committed to the values that move human beings towards greater flourishing
the hero simultaneously advances his or her own life goals and quest for self-realization.
or as Bernstein puts it:
As the hero lives in a manner that tends towards Self-realization while also promoting the well-being of others,
they are a rare specimen and in possession of some exceptional attributes.
Foremost among these attributes is a dauntless commitment to their values.
The hero is immune to the intimidation and discouragement that easily derails the unheroic.
They face up to challenges rather than cowering from them
and if powerful destructive forces cross their path the hero responds with great courage
and, if necessary, engages with these forces in an epic battle of David versus Goliath proportions.
The next attribute shared by all heroes is the possession of some form of extraordinary talent and skill
be it intellectual, bodily or moral.
But this towering capacity of ability possessed by the hero introduces a problem.
If the unique combination of nature and nurture that drove our development did not bestow us with the intellect of a Carl Jung,
a creative knack like Nikola Tesla or the moral fortitude and resilience of a Socrates or Frederick Douglass,
Can we still be heroes?
To answer this question and save heroism from becoming a caste system one is either born and nurtured into or forever excluded,
Bernstein introduces the concept of the "demi-hero", for just as mythology is populated with gods and demigods
(the latter being half mortal and half God) so too are there degrees of heroism.
The vast majority of us may lack the motivation or ability to shape the course of history
but all of us have the potential to be a demi hero within the sphere of our own life
And this can be accomplished by first cultivating a value system and then committing to staying on course
Even when the obstacles that confront us are immense
Each day thereafter, we will be faced with a choice that will determine the degree to which we will taste heroism.
We can, like the ancient Greek Odysseus, persevere in the midst of toil and trouble and respond to danger with courage
or we can, like the antihero,
tap out of the battles of life, surrender to our inner demons, give up the values we hold dear and succumb to a meaningless life.
or as Bernstein writes
To grant us the strength to make the daily choice in favor of heroism
We can engage in the practice of "hero worship"
to practice hero worship, we need to seek out individuals past or present
who displayed a heroic commitment to values similar to ours and then we learn the obstacles they faced,
the inner demons they battled and the powerful adversaries they fought and defeated.
In moments of solitude, we can reflect upon their struggles and their victories and allow our emotions to rise into the ethers of inspiration
Experiences accompanied by strong emotions are deeply imprinted into our brain and so
In experiencing a sense of the exalted while contemplating the lives of the heroes we admire
We fast track our own heroic education in the process we add to our arsenal a great antidote to suffering
For whenever we are weighed down by the regressive forces within, we can choose a particular hero and ask ourselves the following questions
To live a heroic life in the service of self chosen values is, in the modern day, to swim against the tide
for we live in an age when a widespread corruption of values has led the mass of men and women
to gravitate toward distraction and empty pleasures.
If we are going to be one of the few who counters this trend and rejects the sickness of modern day conformity,
we must be comfortable with going against the grain of the socially accepted.
To help us maintain our moral autonomy as we escape from the demoralizing hedonism of our age
and move towards a life of heroic proportions
we can reflect on the wisdom of Arthur Schopenhauer who claimed:
In striving for heroism, in other words,
we are not sacrificing a life of perpetual happiness, comfort and pleasure, as such a life is not open to us.
Instead, in dedicating our life to heroism,
we are choosing the best life possible, a life that is meaningful, challenging, exciting
or as Nietzsche wrote:
