Now Is Not the Time for Heroes

While the need for heroism never goes away, it is time for us to put away the western myth of The Hero for other images, symbols and archetypes.

102. Now Is Not the Time for Heroes

Core philosophical presuppositions matter. They matter far more than most people realize. Much of what makes philosophy both annoying and valuable is that much of its inquiries involve noticing and pointing out to people the underlying assumptions that drive their lives. Much of why you do things are driven by core societal “myths” — not as in “made up stories” but more “the core symbols of power.” These myths are often aspirational. They also define and set the framework within which certain actions are encouraged and certain ones are discouraged. These myths work for a society, they endure over time, inspiring and driving the actions of the members of the community, until they lose their efficacy. Our society is breaking down, and with it the myths that hold it together and drive its actions. It serves us well to surface these myths, examine them and then decide whether or not we are better served by leaning into them anew — get back to the basics of who we are — or actively setting them aside to chart new paths, allowing new myths to emerge and drive us.

One such myth operative in western civilization is that of “The Hero.” A recent Twitter dust up that we will get to in a bit got me thinking about this again in a new way. There is a short reference to this in Jacques Ellul’s Propaganda: the Formation of Men’s Attitudes that is not really developed fully. He mentions the foundational myths of the west, identifies them, then goes on to argue that propaganda really only works when it is in harmony with society’s core myths. He identifies the myths without really explicating them, assuming that their content is obvious to the reader. On page 39 of the paperback edition he says this:

“These common presuppositions of the bourgeois and proletarian are that man’s aim in life is happiness, that man is naturally good, that history develops in endless progress, and that everything is matter.”

Ellul follows this up by saying:

“In our society the two great fundamental myths on which all other myths rest are Science and History. And based on them are the collective myths that are [western] man’s principle orientations: the myth of Work, the myth of Happiness (which is not the presupposition of happiness), the myth of the Nation, the myth of Youth, the myth of the Hero.”

These basic, potent, mythological concepts form the substrate, the foundation for much of modern thought, much of the justification for why we do the things we do. They operate at the level of “things everyone knows.” They don’t need to be explained or justified. No one argues for them. They are just there, in our collective consciousness as part of the modern west. Ellul argues that if you want ideas to gain traction in society, they must always work in harmony with these core myths.

“Propaganda is forced to build on these presuppositions and to express these myths, for without them nobody would listen to it. And in so building it must always go in the same direction as society. A propaganda that stresses virtue over happiness and presents man’s future a one dominated by austerity and complication would have no audience at all.”

When looked at politically, the conclusion that Ellul comes to is that modern western society is essentially “liberal.” Thus, if you are a “conservative,” if you want your ideas to gain broad acceptance among the people, your purported conservatism must conform itself to liberal foundational myths in order to gain acceptance. This is why so much so-called “conservatism” today is largely made up of people trying to preserve older, purer, less corrupted, seemingly more vital forms of liberalism. If we can just purify our myths we will be able to make our society great again. Ellul makes this observation in his discussion of the role of myths and propaganda:

“The political Left is respectable; the Right has to justify itself before the ideology of the Left (in which the Rightists participate). All propaganda…must contain — and evoke — the principal elements of the ideology of the Left in order to be accepted.”

This is why much of the current political debate is not so much a real debate about the core ideas that drive our society, as it is about the best way to achieve the impulses contained in our core mythology. Thus, how best to achieve endless human progress dominates the discussion. This is why Make America Great Again is essentially a progressive message. It is largely why, “I didn’t leave the left, the left left me,” really resonates with so many people. Much of the opposition to the current way things comes from disgruntled liberals, most of whom think of themselves as conservative or right wing.

From a political perspective, all of these core myths, when activated, work for the system and not against it. Just because our society is now in a time of decay and people are increasingly asking how we got into this situation, does not necessarily make these myths “bad” or “evil.” The Hero myth helped build the west. The Explorer. The Conqueror. The Trailblazer. All of these various derivations of the hero mythology have helped drive western culture forward, allowing it to dominate the globe now for several hundred years.

But they also become denuded and diluted, such that everyone must participate in The Hero Myth. As is often the case with us as persons, our greatest strengths are often simultaneously our greatest weakness. We recently celebrated Mother’s Day. This coming Sunday will be Father’s Day. Mother’s are heroes. Fathers are Heroes. Policemen and firemen are Heroes. So too are teachers. And during Covid all “frontline workers” were now considered heroes. Nurses and doctors were, or course, the obvious heroes. But now also the lowly clerk at the grocery store, rather than being powerless, forced to go out like slaves or indentured servants to work while their betters, the managers, were locked up safely at home doing remote work, are now transformed through propaganda into society’s heroes. But if everyone is a hero, is heroism even a real thing anymore? Or is it just a form of social control?