No more heroes

Here's the New Statesman's list of the 50 heroes of our time. It looks very similar to a list of the 50 most tiresome egomaniacs of our time.
Some bloggers infer from this that New Statesman readers are idiots. True. But I take another message -  the very notion of heroism is unpleasant.
What the list shows is that there's a big distinction between heroism and excellence. I reckon only a handful of the people on the list owe their position to technical excellence:  Attenborough, Sen, Yunus, Berners-Lee , Barenboim and - being generous - Gates or Dylan.
Chomsky and Dawkins aren't there for their work in linguistics or biology, but rather for their monomanic dogmatic certitude.
And this is a feature of many heroes. Taking a consistent stand for one's beliefs - especially in the face of oppression - requires a certain pigheadedness, a belief that you have the "Truth" is on your side. This rules out attractive qualities of doubt, reflection, originality and irony.
Of course, many of the heroes on the Staggers' list, such as Peter Tatchell or Aung San Suu Kyi, do indeed have right on their side. But what makes them exceptional is not that they have perceived the truth with more clarity than others - the truths they espouse are obvious - but rather that they cling to it with such strength.
But is this really admirable? Mohammed Atta had strong beliefs, for which he was to make a huge sacrifice. In this respect, he had more in common with Nelson Mandela than either had in common with me. The difference between them was that Mandela's beliefs were right and Atta's wrong.
Another nasty feature of the heroes is that many of them seek power over others. This is partly a product of their dogmatism - they have the confidence to believe they can change the world for the better. They're oblivious to the fact that - except in cases of obvious wrong such as apartheid or tyranny - such attempts fail.
Worse still, though, is that so many of us let them do this. And it's in this fact that heroism is so dangerous. The obverse of the worship of people who have sought publicity is an implicit denigration of the truly admirable qualities of modest endeavour.  This puts it best:
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:-
The paths of glory lead but to the grave....
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
The search for heroes doesn't  just denigrate  what are  wrongly called "ordinary" people, though. In looking for heroes - for other people to change our lives - we fail to take control of them ourselves. We abdicate responsibility and acquiesce in inequalities of power. If people had not wanted heroes, we'd have had no Hitler, no Stalin, no Mao Tse-Tung.

Comments

[emmanuel goldstein]

[... only a handful of the people on the list owe their position to technical excellence: Attenborough, Sen, Yunus, Berners-Lee , Barenboim and - being generous - Gates or Dylan]

Counterexamples: Stephen Hawking, Andrew Flintoff, John Carr. And probably Dawkins too. Why the conflation of excellence and technical excellence anyway?

You say that a belief that one has “Truth” on one's side rules out doubt, reflection, originality and irony. It does no such thing, and reading a biography of Mandela or Thomas More should make that evident. Second, surely these qualities (the first three, anyway) are attractive because they tend to truth?

I think you've mischaracterised heroism; it isn't (just) that the hero has the right beliefs, but that he has come about them in the right way, and has the excellence of character to act on them. Otherwise one would conclude that other black South Africans didn't believe very strongly that they weren't beasts of burden.

One ought to believe according to the strength of the evidence, so strong belief can be admirable. Atta is a villain because no reasonable person could form (and act on) the strong beliefs he did, not because he had false beliefs, even strong ones.

[James Hamilton]

"..Chomsky and Dawkins aren't there for their work in linguistics or biology, but rather for their monomanic dogmatic certitude." Or pretense at such, combined with a nose for a lucrative market. You can probably make your own guess at which of the two men I'm referring to there.

[chris]

Some good points, Emmanuel. My list of those with technical (as distinct from moral) excellence was woefully incomplete.
I wasn't (I hope) attributing dogmatism to all heroes, merely pointing out that it is a correlate of the desire to consistently express a view or to oppose injustice or pursue power.
I suspect that if (say) Dawkins took a more nuanced view of religion - granting that it brought happiness and moral courage to millions, and that it inspired great works of art and everyday endeavour too - I would repsect him even more, even though he might less less of a hero. (I write as an atheist).
And for every bit of evidence that heroes do have self-reflection, there's other evidence that they can be very hard to live with - viz, accounts of (say) Churchill.
I guess all I was doing was maing a Berlinian point, that there are few wholly good qualities.

[Simstim]

A related quote from Bertie Russell: "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."

[Monjo]

Atta's beliefs were only wrong in your opinion. They are clearly right in others'. I think he demonstrated incorrectly and technically the Koran would suggest he shouldn't have killed innocents - but who's really innocent?

[tom]

Simstim - I bet Bertrand Russell was pretty sure about that.

Chris - Emmanuel's points are good ones, yes, but you back down too quickly. (too full of doubt, I guess) Some heroes may have had doubts, but I absolutely agree with your original assertion that heroism itself (as a quality) pretty much negates qualities of meekness, doubt, and (almost) open-mindedness. Those heroes who express doubt are heroic despite, not because of, that quality.

Heroism as a quality is closely linked to leadership, and thence to control over others, to decisiveness over reflection, brutality over kindness, dogmatism over flexibility. Heroism as it is preached nowadays (in business books, for example) is something to avoid.

I'd draw a literary parallel. Odysseus was a heroic hero; Leopold Bloom was an unheroic hero. Personally, I'm all for the Leo's of the world.

[cameron]

"Monomanic dogmatic certitude"? Translation: "With perfect consistency, for longer than I can remember, Chomsky has upheld a set of beliefs which conflict with my own monomanic dogmatic certitude."

[Alex]

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