“Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Happy is the country which requires no heroes?” Bertolt Brecht
Watching an aide enraptured with visiting royalty, [Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau] said bluntly, as they looked out the parliamentary window: “Always remember, they shit too.” Just Watch Me, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, John English
Why do we pay such attention to the talented, rich and famous? Why are we so anxious for autographs and photographs? Name-dropping is part of it. I wrote an earlier blog about that (Name Dropping). It can be a boost to the ego if we say we know someone famous.
Idolatry is more than name-dropping. Knowing who has status, resources, and influence can be directly tied to survival. Knowing who to ally with and who not to cross can be essential in the modern rat race even though it surely evolved in small groups among the first humans.
Modern media tricks us into thinking we actually know celebrities. We see their faces repeatedly, learn details about their lives, and feel like we understand their personalities. It feels like a real relationship even though it’s entirely one-directional. This is well documented and is part of why people can feel genuine grief when a celebrity they’ve never met dies.
We can live vicariously through our heroes and imagine a version of life we don’t have access to. There’s pleasure in that fantasy independent of whether we consciously want that life or not. It’s similar to why fiction and myth work. We are drawn to lives bigger than our own.
Great talent is different than riches or fame. An appreciation for great skill seems to be independent of status-seeking. Watching someone do something extraordinarily well triggers something more like awe than envy or aspiration.
There is another darker layer we should face directly. Attention is manufactured and monetized. Celebrity culture is a genuine industry, algorithmically amplified, that profits from sustaining our attention. There is an entire apparatus of publicists, tabloids, and platforms working actively in the background to keep the “hooks” in.
Connected to that darker layer is an argument that hero/celebrity worship is a way of outsourcing significance, investing our sense of meaning in watching someone else’s extraordinary life rather than building meaning into our own lives. Some people, of course, may be motivated by watching greatness rather than diminished by it. The argument can cut both ways. We learn by imitation. Role models can be a source of inspiration.
Heroes make compelling narratives because they reveal the possibilities and the limits of human nature. Fitzgerald understood this. Jay Gatsby is not merely a man. He becomes a screen onto which anyone can project their fantasies about wealth, romance, and reinvention.
In our modern secular society athletes, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs, and political leaders have to some extent replaced the saints, prophets, and martyrs of religion. We should be on guard against charisma as a form of authority that inspires devotion. It can unite people around shared ideals, but it can also become dangerous when admiration turns into uncritical obedience.
Bertolt Brecht might ask why our heroes matter so much. If we become obsessed with exceptional individuals, will we neglect the institutions and ordinary citizens that make a healthy society possible? History is not made only by heroes. It is also made by millions of anonymous people who simply do their work well.
William Blake believed every human being possesses imaginative genius. His complaint wasn’t that we admire genius. It was that we imagine genius belongs only to a few. For Blake, every person has infinite value because every person participates in the creative imagination. The danger is not admiring genius. The danger is forgetting our own.
We need exceptional people. Without them there would be fewer great discoveries, masterpieces, or acts of courage. We also need to remember that their achievements depend on countless ordinary people: teachers, parents, coworkers, editors, engineers, nurses, mechanics, farmers, and neighbors. This is one of the central theses of Tolstoy’s War and Peace (See War and Peace, Second Epilogue).
There is an important difference between admiration and hero worship. Admiration recognizes excellence while remembering the person’s humanity and limitations. Hero worship imagines that one individual is the source of history, wisdom, or salvation.
Fitzgerald, Brecht, and even the B-52s (see below), each in their own way, warn us against crossing that line. Fitzgerald shows the tragedy of the hero. Brecht questions societies that require heroes. The B-52s expose what happens when admiration turns into obsession.
The challenge is to learn from extraordinary people without forgetting the extraordinary importance of ordinary lives. A distinction we need to understand more than ever today.