I thought it would be nice to get another perspective on heroes outside of class, so I asked my good friend Donna Xia for some of her thoughts. Thanks Donna!
DONNA: I think that the best kind of hero is the ones that are chaotic good and chaotic neutral. Sure they do good, but they know when to bend the laws so they can reach the highest form of good. I believe that heroes should be able to operate outside the limits in order to save the world.
ME: What are your favorite hero stories?
DONNA: I really like Greek myths. I like Orpheus, although he's not really a hero? He did go down to the underworld with his lyre to bring his wife back from the dead, but in the end he looked back. I don't know if that's really heroic -- his intentions were definitely heroic, but he looked back in the end. I also really like Theseus and the minotaur -- he gets out and escapes the minotaur. I think Ariadne is the ideal hero. Theseus did some good stuff but Ariadne helped him, and without her Theseus would have been dead.
ME: Does failing in his quest -- looking back -- make Orpheus not a hero?
DONNA: Heroes can have heroic deaths but they aren't supposed to really mess up in that way. Like -- if Orpheus was a hero, he should have gotten a happy ending. He could have turned around in the end when he's back on Earth and embrace his wife, then been shot with an arrow. That would have been a heroic death. But he couldn't resist the temptation. Chill man. He's not a hero because that's a very human thing to do. But he did do something heroic in the beginning.
ME: So in your opinion, are heroes something more than human?
DONNA: Yeah. There's definitely an element of superiority and ideal. Even today, people look up to role models and say that they're heroes. But it's like you're infatuated -- you overestimate them in your mind and make that the reality. You don't see all the good sides of someone -- you just see what they want you to see. Like if you're a fan of an athlete, then you have a perfect image of them in your mind. You don't see them just at home chilling. There are several sides to people that you don't see.
ME: Do you know of any heroes who have become villains because of scandals? If they had been "ordinary people" do you think they would have had the same problem?
DONNA: I don't really know any heroes who have suddenly become villains but I know it's quite popular. I think if they had been ordinary people they wouldn't have had the same problem. It's always big when a celebrity -- someone "good" -- messes up, but when an ordinary human makes a mistake, they wouldn't receive the media attention. I mean obviously there are cases when somebody who's not a hero messes up, like a school shooter (that's obviously a mess-up, although that feels like too nice a term), but they didn't fall from the hero status -- they were just villains.
ME: Have you ever had any role models or hero stories as a kid that you really liked?
DONNA: I really liked this story about ants and butterflies -- maybe it was an Aesop fable? The butterfly is just goofing off in the summer and the ants are working hard and preparing for winter. In the original tale I think the ants just have a good life and the butterfly dies, but in the version I was told, the butterfly gets really cold in the winter and begs the ants for help and the ants allow the butterfly entrance into their home and give the butterfly food. The ants were my hero -- I was like, "You rock, ants."
What a unique concept for a blog post! Donna's first answer is interesting to me because it seems a lot of the class is opposed to vigilantism after we read that Goetz piece -- though Donna has a point, "objectively" (in quotes because it's really impossible to quantify helpfulness, but hopefully you get what I'm trying to say) heroes can do more if they do bypass laws or social conventions.
ReplyDeletePartly because we've been exposed to many forms of heroism during the class, I have to disagree with the idea that heroes necessarily need to maintain the illusion of perfection in order to be a hero. For me, my heroes inspire me, in one way or another, to be a better person. My heroes have a certain emotional sway over me, then, and I don't think I'd be able to be moved if my heroes didn't at least come off as human -- flaws and all.