The story of Lance Armstrong, world-class athlete, cancer survivor, founder of an inspirational charity, conniving cheat and drug user, liar, bully, and – worst of all – destroyer of lives, is a textbook illustration of the dangers of America’s overriding addiction to heroes and hero worship.
“We can’t all be heroes,” said Will Rogers, “because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.” The current problem is that America does a lot more than clap for our heroes; we go all-in almost all the time.
It’s easy to believe that our troubles are so serious and so intractable, that only heroes can change things when we are depressed. The danger is that we can become so emotionally and psychologically invested in them that we lose all perspective regarding their faults. At that point, our hero worship becomes part of the problem. It can serve to enable misbehavior while we overlook, ignore, dismiss, or excuse bad actions. We refuse to hold them to normal standards and then wonder why they abuse our trust.
Hero worship is the idea behind many of our fictitious characters including Superman, Batman, the Lone Ranger, and Wonder Woman, to name some from my youth. We endowed them with extraordinary powers and admirable attributes and sent them out to do good for us. It was no accident that these four cases and so many others became popular during the Great Depression and run-up to World War II. We needed a national ego boost and only super-righteous superheroes would due.
World War II changed things, ordinary men and women were called upon to do extraordinary things and there were real heroes everywhere. Almost every American saw their own loved ones and acquaintances as heroes while they served the nation. However, they also knew them, and their human faults, well; therefore, they rarely put them on pedestals – they were appreciated, but not worshipped.
All that changed with the communications revolution, now we have wall-to-wall, 24/7, socialized coverage. The public is less independent and heroes in one realm have discovered they could crossover in all directions and all areas including politics, sports, entertainment, the arts, and the news – and by doing so become heroes in all realms, increase their worth, popularity, and influence.
This exposure helps the famous become the objects of extreme hero worship. We want to wear what our heroes wear, eat what they eat, drive what they drive, and vote how they vote; we seek their opinions on everything – whether they know what they are talking about or not. Worst of all, the more we invest of ourselves in heroes the less likely we are to demand they follow the standards of conduct and decency that holds our society together.
That is a critical change in philosophy; we used to pick our heroes because they represented what we honored; now our heroes depend on their status to have us disregard their dishonor – and we oblige them far too often. There was no shock in Lance Armstrong’s admissions, everyone knew what was going on, and we just chose to ignore it.
Who, then, should be our heroes? The truth is that most ordinary people are heroic, because it takes heroism to live an ordinary life – to face its trials and tribulations, challenges, and pain without the protective cocoons of fame, fortune, or power that can bend all the rules to your favor. Yet, millions of people still manage to do it every day. If you’re looking for real heroes, they are probably much closer than you think and they do not demand to be worshiped.
Marty Richman is a Hollister resident.
