We are Villains in Need of Heroes

In Moby-Dick, Melville writes,

Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.

This remarkable line captures the essence of the epic hero. It is this sentiment of mankind’s glory that makes myths and epic poems. Literature, in all its historic vastness has painted images of the ideal man: men like Hector, Odysseus, Aeneas, King Arthur, and Beowulf. The great Greek and Humanist sculptors of the Renaissance attempted to carve the body of this ideal man. In pursuit of this ideal, we are often willing to excuse the faults of a great man if his greatness outweighs his faults: giants, for instance, like King David, Martin Luther King Jr., and Churchill.

However artificially, we create and frame certain men as approaching the ideal – as heroes – out of a need to observe such men. If history has taught us anything, it is that mankind naturally tends toward evil; it is only through careful vigilance and the constant threat of losing our freedoms that we can maintain them. Perhaps in setting such men on pedestals and disregarding their failures, we are not such much admiring them as we are reassuring ourselves of humanity. If giants can arise out of society, perhaps there is hope for us: perhaps there is hope for humanity. Such heroes help us preserve the idea that man can be good, despite all the evil, suffering, and failure in the world.

The scandal to which we are daily exposed has perhaps destroyed our ability to believe in such heroes. The men and women who are supposed to be extraordinary, often seem to prove themselves so only by the exceptional number of their moral failures. We are reminded of Lord Acton’s famous dictum: all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Adultery, illicit affairs, financial dishonesty, and various other corruptions seem as common among politicians and celebrities as runny noses in a nursery.

On the flip side of our desire to believe that man can be great, is both the realization that a greater capacity for goodness carries an equally great capacity for evil and a secret desire to see great men fall. The danger of greatness draws us to it; he who has the greatest capacity to save life has the greatest capacity to destroy it, and the balance can easily swing in either direction. Every good and powerful man is like a man dangling from the edge of a cliff, and breathless, we watch.

When great men fall, we are secretly pleased and fascinated, even though it only inspires cynicism. When great men fall, our own failures become a little more excusable. If we can excuse great men, perhaps we can excuse ourselves. If even great men cannot escape moral failures, how are we – the ordinary – be expected to escape? If it’s inevitable, perhaps we aren’t to blame.

No one is perfect, and so every time we set up a hero, we must ignore and cover his blemishes. This is not deceit, it is elevation of the good to the point where it fills our vision and we are unable to see anything else. Heroes are men as they should be, not men as they are. No matter how good we become, they are bigger and better still, and we are to continually reach after them.

It serves us better to create heroes than to destroy them.