Putting Our Heroes In Context

Our heroes occupy a curious place in our psyche.

Photo by Jack Cohen on Unsplash

We marvel at their ingenuity and intelligence. We admire their persistence in the face of considerable odds and elevate their achievements to the strata of legends. 

At the same time, we gloss over the other aspects of their lives and characters. We airbrush over their failings or fully ignore them. We assume their contributions represent the entirety of who they were/are. 

So when we hear about their failings, we’re confused, or, worse, we’re up in arms. 

We’re confused because this new information changes our worldview and what we’ve come to believe has to be re-thought, re-contextualized. We’re angry because we feel those raising the issues are simply trying to erase what our heroes have done, to rewrite history. 

Really, though, we’re upset because what’s actually being challenged is us and our boxes. Those boxes we’ve developed over our lifetimes, the ones that sit atop our long held beliefs and convictions and worldviews, now have to be questioned and, worse, rethought. We think we need to create new boxes. 

We don’t actually. 

What we need to accept is that neat little boxes don’t work when it comes to human beings.That reality doesn’t sit at one end of the spectrum or the other, it’s actually complex and nuanced. 

The reality is that our heroes are neither good nor bad. They are complex characters with as many personal successes and failures as they’ve had professional successes and failures. Just like each and every one of us.  

It’s important, therefore, to contextualize - to put what our heroes have done in perspective. To accept that there are good things they’ve done but also that there is plenty about them we should not model ourselves on nor accept as appropriate. And, as such, any attempt to create an airbrushed, polished image is, simply, wrong. 

The fact is we’ve all done good and we’ve all done bad. This is the reality of human existence. Let’s not pretend otherwise.