Heroes

Though nothing will drive them away

We can beat them, just for one day

– David Bowie

What is a hero? If we believe popular culture then a hero is someone who beats the odds in a way which is acceptable. If we look at mythology, a hero is someone who has great challenges and overcomes them. However, this would be a too simplistic look at what is a hero. This approach is a summation on what has come before.

What do I mean by that? Well, by making a summation on what has come before, one is saying that here is the end result and ergo, this is what matters. However, if we look more closely at mythology, what Joseph Campbell calls the ‘hero with a thousand faces’, then we’ll see that the concept of the hero is more complicated than a final summation.

The hero quest is a staple of global literature and follows a formulaic process. The archetypal story is about a young man, on the cusp of adulthood, who sets out to do something which, to be blunt, he can’t. And so, on his journey he requires help. He meets an assortment of characters, wizards, ruffians who turn out to have ‘hearts of gold’, and is challenged by evil monsters, all of which he could not overcome without help. Often, on the cusp of defeat, it is a female who comes to the rescue and saves the day, for our hero to then run off, heroically leaving her behind to face the consequences of her defying the evil monster. Good examples of this can be found in the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Harry Potter, Star Wars etc. The young man then returns home having completed his quest and is given the title ‘Hero’. This completes the story and so we can trace his heroism from setting out on the quest to returning having completed the quest. We don’t ask about the ruffian or wizard or, heaven forbid, the princess who saved him. This is his story and he is the hero.

 Why is he a hero? Because he completed a task. If he had failed in the task, would he still be a hero? By this reckoning, no, failure is failure, but let us look more closely at it. At the beginning we have a young man (note: modern hero with a thousand faces style books still predominantly have a young man as the protagonist) who is set a task he doesn’t think he can do. If he accepts the task and fails, is he a hero? In the beginning of Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, the hero, Sal Paradise, sets out on the road, screws up, goes back and starts again. Sal cannot be a hero, right? Because he failed. But did he fail? He decides to set out on a quest. However, the quest goes badly and fails and he goes home. Let’s break this down. He is set a task he doesn’t know if he can do and he tries to do it. Surely this makes him a hero? If he had said it was too hard and not tried then we could attribute failure to him but that he tired to do it shows that he is a hero for heroic deeds are not dependent upon a summation on the successful completion of the said deeds, it is having the guts and strength of character to try.

‘till next time       

Do We Become More Conservative as We Get Older?

Conservates and Republicans in America love to quote the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Churchill known for his, frankly, bullying of everyone around him, did not keep this to his interactions in his private and public life. He also liked to generalise. This quote, which we shall see in a moment, is an example of generalising and many people take it as a fact from the great, wise, man. That it was not even Churchill who said it, rather a 19^th Century French academicjurist by the name of Anselme Polycarpe Batbie, is irrelevant. The argument goes- Churchill said it, I like Churchill because he thinks and acts like me, ergo, it is true.

The quote, which essentially says that if you are liberal when you are young, that’s a good sign but if you are still liberal after the age of thirty, then you have a mental health problem,

‘He who is not a républicain  at  twenty  compels one to doubt the generosity of his heart; but he who, after thirty, persists, compels one to doubt the soundness of  his mind.’

brings a sweeping generalisation and a clear biographic notion of the one speaking. However, that many people subscribe to this notion is worth considering. Often, we seek things that reassure us about ourselves. People, in general, are very insecure and so seek things that help them to allay the insecurity. Finding that a person considered great thinks like you, not only fluffs the ego, but also gives one a shield to hide behind, e.g. ‘you disagree with me? But X agrees!’. We all have been in conversations where this inanity is thrown at us.

So, if they are protecting their world views, their growing conservatism, why is this?

To start with we have to consider the notion that they were liberal to start with. Most children in schools will gang up and attack anyone who is different. This already shows that their world views are conservative. Teenage rebellion often consists of conforming to a stereotype of acceptable rebellious behaviour. That true rebellion exists is independent thinking is not something often considered as people are wedded to set notions of behaviours and thusly conform, consciously or not, to them. Right away we are seeing that the so called ‘softness of heart’ in one’s early years, may be nothing more than a conservative form of identifying as an individual amongst a crowd of like-minded people.

If we look at one’s political thinking in these ‘soft hearted’ years, then they are very conservative. They tend to go along with whatever is the zeitgeist at the time- Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Vietnam War, Iraq War, Climate Change, Gender Politics, etc.- and show little sign of an individual thinking and rebelling against one’s times. As the French philosopher, Voltaire, notes ‘Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time’.

This again raises the thought that maybe the ‘soft heartedness of youth’ is not exactly an individual liberalism, rather something else. But what?

The second part of the quote goes on to say that if you reman liberal after the age of thirty then you are soft in the head, yet looking at what we have just considered, does it not seem one and the same? When you are young, you are shaped by your nature and your nurturing. Unless you step outside of that comfort zone and seek thoughts of those who are different to you, your world view is very narrow, very conservative. This is because you are being exposed to a world, not through your own sentiments, but rather conditioned to think in a certain way. When a young person speaks of the government being corrupt or chews gum in school, the adults smile and say, ‘ah yes, I did the same when I was your age’. This so-called rebellion is then seen as nothing more than the continuation of the cycle one goes through from ‘liberalism’ to ‘conservatism’.

As one gets older, one starts to own things. In other words, one has something to lose.  One is less likely to support local causes through tax increases as one says, this money is mine and I need it. This behaviour, learnt from childhood, continues and one becomes more scared, more protective of what one has. One might argue that this causes one’s perspective to narrow to only concerns of the self, however, if we look back at when they were ‘soft hearted’ the same principle was at play. That one can argue that if this persists in older age means that one is soft headed, is an interesting self-revelation for one behaves in the same ways as one did when one was a child, however, now one’s framing of their self has changed. No longer are they Flaubert’s young man/woman in A Sentimental Education, now they are wise, mature, adults with hard heads and hard hearts, when, in truth, they are the same person that they always were, just now taller and fatter.

‘till next time         

Why the Absurd Should Sometimes Be Considered as Truth

In the last two years, the United State Senate has started talking about aliens. Finally bored of victimising Mexicans…no, I kid, they’ll never be bored of that.

In the last two years the US Government has started taking Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) seriously. In order not to look crazy, they have started calling them Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). This, of course, is absurd and a complete waste of taxpayer money…or is it?

What is a UFO or UAP? It is something which cannot be explained. With eyewitness accounts from reliable sources such as cameras, there is a long list of objects that have been seen behaving in ways which cannot be easily explained. Whilst it may be a bit silly to assume that they are from outer space, the is one fact that should be considered: there is evidence of them existing. Whilst it is tempting to assume that they are crazy, a question must be asked- if they are not UFO/UAPs, then what the heck are they? Might they be a prank? Might they be a weather balloon? Might they be an optical illusion? Or might they be some kind of new weapon?  To ignore them is to potentially put lives at risk for if it is a new weapon, after all logic dictates that it must be something.

Human history has a long list of things being considered absurd only to be found to be actual. Only a few hundred years ago it was considered absurd to say that the earth goes around the sun, or that the moon is made of cheese (Wallace and Gromit made a documentary proving that it is), or that there is no difference between people with different skin colours.

Years ago, it was discovered that male songbirds generate new braincells in order to sing each morning. When asked if the same could apply to humans, it was dismissed with the refrain, they are birds, we are better than them. And so scientific discovery was held back until someone actually did some research and found that neurogenesis is an actual thing.

See, sometimes it pays to think that just because you think something is absurd, doesn’t mean that it actually is.

‘till next time         

Inherent Cultural Insincerity

The other day I attended a talk on how to teach children with disabilities (autism etc.). The talk also branched into other school children age and one piece of advice that we were given was to say ‘maybe’. For example, a child throws a pen. You say, ‘do not throw the pen’, the child replies, ‘X threw it first’, you reply ‘maybe they did but…’. This advice was greeted with rapturous applause but I was left feeling uncomfortable. I couldn’t work out why I was uncomfortable so I shelved it and continued to listen. I noticed that the presenter was talking to the adults in the room as though they were children, scolding them for talking or looking at their phones etc. Curious of this, I asked a question- how do you pitch your interactions with children so that you remain professional and don’t become passive-aggressive? The presenter stared at me and said ‘you think I’m aggressive?’ in a tone seemingly meant to be intimidating. I repeated the question, making clear I wasn’t talking about him, personally, rather I was asking for his advice. During his response, one person turned to another and said, ‘now, he’s just being aggressive’. I smiled and nodded and let the issue drop.

A few moments later, I heard him say to another group of adults in the room, ‘I best go and deal with that boy’, referring to me, when it is questionable even when I was young if I was ever a young boy. So, he came over and started talking, I started to reply but he shushed me, stood towering over me and spoke down at me. When he had finished, I looked him in the eye and repeated that I had just been asking a question. And then the situation ended.

Before and after our little diversion, the presenter had been explaining how it is important to always remain calm and that he has had children wielding chairs at him, convicts coming out of prison saying they wanted to kill him, and how each time he stood there calmly and talked them down. He promised, at a future event, to tell us these exciting stories, which, if they are anything like how he dealt with a question, will be a real treat! Almost worthy of an additional chapter in the works of Homer!

Whilst he was infantilising and belittling me, I had two responses in my head that I refrained from saying:

• Well, I would reply but one of us has to be the adult in this conversation (which is pretty dumb, eh?)
• Maybe it seems that way to you, but as Immanuel Kant says, ‘how things appear and how things actually are is often very different’.

The first response would have been dumb, the second one would have been smarter as I would have been using his tools against him. At this point, to end this digression, I realised why I had found his ‘maybe’ response problematic. Whilst it was seen by many to be great, if it was used on them, would they react the same way?  The ‘maybe’ response is one of the responses that people use to, essentially, discredit another. We have all experienced the frustration of being treated badly by someone (often someone in power) and speaking up only to have the retort, ‘I’m sorry if you feel that way’, i.e. what I did was right, you are wrong and if it has made you feel bad, it is your fault and nothing to do with me. This, as with ‘maybe’, shows a complete lack of compassion and empathy, it shows a level of insincerity which is morally bankrupt. But why is it part of culture? Why is it widely accepted? Why does it obtain rapturous applause and adults chanting it back at the presenter like it is some call-and-response in a church or they are singing along at a concert? (note- you should hear me singing along to Beethoven’s 9^th, much better than the trained professionals with instruments) Because, as we saw from the response of the presenter, most people are terrified of appearing human, of seeming different. There’s a wonderful quotation from the Russian author, Dostoyevsky which we will look at another time, but to leave you with it…

‘Nowadays people are terrified of appearing ridiculous and are very unhappy because of it’

The majority, if not all, of society’s ills stems from fear and insecurity. That these insecurities have become an acceptable form of being is something that should, not maybe, concern us.

‘till next time