There Are No Heroes

 

This is a topic I have been pondering for a while.  With the holiday formerly known as Columbus Day approaching it seems like a perfect time to dig into it.

At any time in my life if you asked me who my heroes are, I don't think I would have an answer.  I have never been prone to hero worship, and the more I think about it, the less sense it makes to me.  To be clear, I think there are many people who do heroic things and acts of heroism big and small should be celebrated.  But the act must be separated from the person and one act (or many) does not a hero make.  Noone is a saint.  I'd speculate that even Saints weren't saints 100% of the time!

Our contemporary society, with so much or our lives taking place in public on the Internet, is making this clearer than ever.  No idol can survive the magnifying glass scrutinizing their entire life.  So, let's not idolize anybody.  Let's idolize worthy actions and ideas instead!

Instead of celebrating Christopher Columbus, celebrate exploration.

Instead of a statue of Thomas Jefferson, erect a monument to the Declaration of Independence

Instead of naming a school after Steve Jobs, name it after the iPod or iTunes.

Things get stickier when it comes to naming things after wealthy benefactors. For already donated money, go ahead and change the name from the donor to something unimpeachable.  Yale University, for example, should drop the Yale from its name since the college's founder was a slave trader.  Can I suggest rebranding as "Wisdumb University"?  No?  Oh well. I tried.

For new donations, just make it a policy that no new wings or classrooms or whatever will be named for a person no matter how squeaky clean they seem.  Who knows what the future holds?  Maybe 400 years from now people will be disgusted that back in the 21st century people commonly ate meat from animals.  In 2422, the "Ryan Memorial Restroom" at Wisdumb University, named after me way back in 2099 for my generous donation, will have to be renamed when an Internet archivist reads this blog and discovers that I liked hamburgers and contributed to the massacre of cows and pigs so I could have a bacon cheeseburger.  I'll save future people a lot of trouble:  Don't name a restroom after me!

 Some people in our contemporary society probably think I should be canceled for this now, but that isn't the prevailing point of view, so I'm not too worried about it.  However, it isn't hard to imagine a societal shift over time that results veganism becoming mainstream and later the law of the land.

I expect my ideas presented here will outrage some people.  Heck, maybe they will outrage everyone.  To the outraged, I ask, "Why do you feel the need to worship such-and-such and put them on a pedestal?"  Instead, let the history books record the names and facts of important events for posterity but let our monuments be reserved for heroic acts and ideas rather than the person.