Debauching Heroes: A Modern Trend

First let's clarify terms: Today we understand that a hero is someone who achieved a great success in something, for example an Olympic champion or a great football player. Some other times, we call heroes to persons who risk their life saving others from death, in civil life or in war.

Without completely denying the before views, we have to be a little more precise in the definition of the word "hero": the real meaning of this term is someone who is "semi-divine".

What distinguishes man from animals is not the capability of communicating and not the bigger mental power. It is neither having natural instruments like hands or thumbs nor is it the ability to produce artifacts – but it’s the inner and mysterious link with God that makes him feel that he’s more than blood and flesh, that there is something more to him, which is not merely animalistic: his divine and immortal soul.

This feeling provides man with a transcendental view about life, i.e.: the perception of the continuation of life beyond physical death, and therefore, making him to consider, not only the daily problems, but also the great and difficult moments of his life as something transitory and illusory, thus perceiving life as a great game where the most important thing is to play according to the rules, fulfilling his duties and his destiny, regardless of the dangers and the worldly opinions.

Then, when facing enormous adversities, terrible challenges, the man who is able to constantly remember his true divine nature, confronts them without hesitation, showing his true nature, his "semi-divine" quality, becoming then a hero.

The heroes had an important role in the classical education, they were the models to follow, they were the expression of the true self and soul of the nation, and therefore the youth was educated and taught to admire and respect them. The cult to the heroes was part of the citizenship syllabus.

A nation without heroes is like a man without soul, it becomes a nation of dwarfs without giants, without horizon nor history neither destiny. The fake rulers, knowing the necessity of social models, invent fake heroes, popular fake heroes to substitute the true ones. Sports, music, theatre, cinema, etc. become the source of these fabricated heroes. Authentic heroes, in fact, are dangerous for the tyrants, because people might follow their example and overthrow the vicious rulers off their thrones.

The propaganda of the great manipulation machinery (social, economical, religious and political establishment) besides fabricating fake heroes is trying, by all means, to destroy the image of the true heroes. Therefore, it is not a surprise that the cult for the memory of the heroes has been substituted by the dwarf criticism against the heroes. Any new film or book, or magazine article about heroes, is meant to tell us that Alexander the Great (The Great!) was a drunk, that Julius Cesar and Napoleon were epileptics, that Socrates and Plato were homosexuals, that the Spartans were brutal and wild people, that Cleopatra was a prostitute… and so on.

The important thing for them is to diminish the size of those giants to their dwarf views, to below their figure, so as not to feel ashamed when confronting them with our short moral height.

We need to recover back the instinct of heroism, to recover the national models, to mirror their attitudes in ourselves. We need examples; we need to believe that we may become better, rising the divine soul inside, beyond our physical and psychological limitations. We all may become heroes, if we are able to remember our true nature, our divine heritage.