Fisking a Heroism-Bashing Comment

A while back, I made a post critiquing a common modern view of heroism — namely, that there is no heroism, only differing definitions of what is right. I argued against this notion, and received a large number of comments in the process. Below was one of the comments, with the original poster’s words in italics and my responses in bold.

“Heroism” is anti-egalitarian when we are looking at the concepts of heroism that come from inherently anti-egalitarian societies. And when we look at the classic, or lets say stereotypical image of heroes in the fiction of recent years, it draws very heavily from the Ancient mediterranean and 19th century Western Europe and North America. Both extremely inequal forms of society. To become a hero, a character has to be an imbodiment of the qualities that their society promotes and favors. Which in these cases is the ability to use force to subjugate anyone who isn’t part of the ruling elite and to impose their will on their environment.

Contemporary superheroes are based on the exact opposite of “[using] force to subjugate anyone who isn’t part of the ruling elite and [imposing] their will on their environment.” Virtually all of them, from paragons like Superman and Wonder Woman to gritty vigilantes like Batman and the Punisher, fight as defenders of the helpless. Time and time again, they’ve clashed with not only low-level thugs, but powerful authorities as well — in fact, Batman’s entire purpose is to sidestep official authority in favor of the greater good. “With great power comes great responsibility” is associated with Spider-Man, but it applies to pretty much every hero who is exceptional, even if not super.

These are qualities in a person that mainstream society does no longer consider virtuous. Instead, they are seen as evil. So there is a very real reason to raise the question of whether the traditional image of a hero is still worthy of admiration and able to serve as an example for ethics and morality. And when this question is raised and properly pondered, the answer for most people is no.

First, the big wave of hero deconstructions came about in the 1980s, and “all-conquering tyrant” does not describe the Silver Age comic heroes, or any pre-80s heroic characters, particularly well. Second, mainstream society has always been suspicious of those who unfairly wield power over others, even in the bad old days.

The problem is that this is really only just the first step. Once we stripped the hero character of our preconceived traits of what makes a hero, we need to start working to fill this void with new ideals. If we define “hero” as “a man who kills who he doesn’t like and gets whatever he wants without taking anyone else into consideration”, then a hero is something that has no place in our modern culture.

Except “a man who kills who he doesn’t like and gets whatever he wants without taking anyone else into consideration” isn’t the heroic ideal at all.

But instead we should define “hero” as “a person who embodies our contemporary virtues and strives to be a force to improve things for others”.

We already do and have done for a while. This type of hero is exactly what gets dragged through the mud today in all these deconstructions.

And I think this is the appeal of protagonists that start out with lots of flaws and are struggling with doing the right thing. They embody this process of realization that generic images of heroism are not actually a force for good and the struggle to redefine what they consider good and just. But it can’t end there. The character’s development has to continue to find a new ideal of heroism that can be thrived for and eventually attained.

Making my exact point from the previous post, but from the other direction. Traditional images of heroism offend those who can’t measure up, so it’s better to just show everyone “[finding] a new ideal of heroism,” which in practice means merely surviving and getting something desired. Also, who decided that classical heroism was bad, and why does that opinion have any moral weight?

Good, then, becomes a matter of who wields the most earthly power. “Might makes right” isn’t a sound basis for morality at all.

As I said before, heroism of any kind — even the contemporary kind — goes against egalitarian sensibilities because heroism implies that some people have more strength, skill, and courage than others. Being “better than” is equated with tyranny and banditry. Justice has no objective source, and egalitarian ideology fails to provide this source, since such thinking leaves no room for gods — hence all secular morality reduces to “might makes right.”

It’s no wonder everything’s so grimdark.

If you want a story of heroism, do read Sword & Flower. Unlike the leading fantasy novels, it is free of grimdark and cynicism.