Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbe who wrote (58301)	10/10/1999 6:42:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

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.