While perusing the Reagan posts I found myself wondering about something that might be a less contentious, though related, issue: the apparent need of the human psyche for hero-figures. The image of Reagan as duelist, standing single-handedly across the way, barring the path of the evil Reds, is so absurd, yet so viscerally appealing. What button is being pushed here?
You and I both know that few, if any, of the heroes we deify can withstand historical scrutiny and emerge with many of their feathers on. And why should they? They didn't deify themselves, we deified them.
If we see ideas and trends as products of the single great person, rather than the accumulated efforts of many anonymous ones, what does that say about us?
Does the hero make the age, or does the age make the hero?
In this country (meaning the one in which I live), the heroes of old have been elevated almost to the stature of divinities; people often wish aloud that people like that were still being born. The truth, of course, is that people like that never were born.
In some ways, though, if we must have heroes, I prefer dead ones, preferably dead ones that never existed. If we have live heroes, there will always be some who want to follow them, believe in them, trust blindly in them.
I can imagine no impulse baser, or more dangerous. |
