So You Wanna Be a Hero?
It's time to see if you've got what it takes.
Every society in human history has had its heroes. This is a constant of the human condition that you can't ever get away from. It is innate within human nature to seek for and admire the heroic, those who do things above and beyond the capacities of the regular person. The Anglo-Saxons had Beowulf. The Vikings had the Aesir (who, if Carlyle is to be believed, were originally just great kings and warriors). The Romans has Camillus and Horatius and the rest. Yet, these heroes set examples that inspired those willing to face adversity to perform daring deeds of their own. In each case, those who grew up hearing their stories were often emboldened toward their own gallantry and prowess.
Once upon a time, American society was no different. In fact, we had two sources from which to draw upon for heroic material - the Bible and our own frontier mythologies. Generations of fervent American Christians grew up reading about Joshua, King David, and the Apostle Paul. Especially resonant were the Old Testament stories of kings and warriors who exhibited a more "earthy" character, fighting battles, leading men, and invoking the help of God to gain victories. Americans in times past are often mocked today for naming their sons with monikers like Joash, Azariah, or Zechariah, but they had good reasons for doing so.
Likewise, Americans in previous generations grew up hearing stories about Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, war heroes like George Washington and Robert E. Lee, and men like Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp who helped to tame the West. The common denominator for all of these was the combination of their valor and their accessibility. Every boy could imagine himself exploring the wilderness or leading troops into battle. Indeed, a huge chunk of the popular culture at the time reflected this in everything from spaghetti westerns to everything Fess Parker ever starred in.
What we need to keep in mind is that the reason these national and biblical heroes were almost universally revered was because we had a unified culture. They formed part of the shared bonds that wove the fabric of American society together. In doing so, they reflect the unified underlying set of ideals inherited from our self-reliant frontiersmen ancestors whose deeds helped to craft that culture.
However, starting sometime in the 1980s, that sense of unified culture began to decay, crumbling under the ongoing academic pressure of "critical theory" and the constant sociopolitical assaults upon our cultural foundations. Society became increasingly secularized and the old-time religion no longer held the power to shape and define culture that it once had. Likewise, as more and more Americans were psyoped into doubting (or even despising) the fundamentals of American history through critical theory (which is not a new thing, only newly discovered by many), disagreement arose as to whether our frontier and war heroes were even heroes at all.
As a result, the old heroes lost their power to inspire. People who grew up watching Daniel Boone and heroes from the westerns like Gunsmoke saw their kids reject these heroes. Instead, their children drifted further and further into the aimless angst and nihilism of the 1990s. As it turns out, Bonnie Tyler wasn't the only one holding out for a hero, but she was about the only one who thought one really might come.
Now, the action movie heroes of the 1980s and 1990s were a cultural attempt to fill the void left by the passing of the old heroes. These were deracinated, secular heroes more acceptable to modern sensibilities. They were free of overtly moral and religious overtones, men who could mow down dozens of faceless mooks without seeking either God's empowerment nor His forgiveness. In them, there were no deeper cultural elements in view, no goals beyond "getting the bad guys" and rescuing the girl. They weren't building a society in the face of hostile aliens and untamed wilderness. They weren't doing what they did for their people or communities.
However, there was still a problem even with this kind of hero. See, by this time the radicals of the 1960s and 1970s were beginning to rise into positions of institutional power in academia, the media, and the rest of the culture creating milieu. These people were carrying with them their fundamentally anti-traditional and culturally destructive worldview and were now filling roles in which they could act to subvert American cultural bases more completely. Even the secular, mass produced action movie heroes were still too masculine, too virile, too prone to represent the virtue of law and order. They had to be done away with, so that genre as well came under ideological criticism, which is always the first step toward elimination in the progressive playbook.
The late 1990s and early 2000s were a sort of wasteland with regard to the heroic as presented in popular culture. Aimless, nihilistic works like Clerks and Dogma were much more in tune with the cultural zeitgeist as presented in Hollywood.
Culture creators were still, of course, fluttering about trying to find the next franchise which could be used to present progressivism's debased sense of the heroic while also making lots of money. Two notable attempts were the trilogy of Star Wars prequels and the series of Lord of the Rings movies. However, the former was basically locked into its canon while the latter ended up being a bit of a fluke in that it wasn't overtly hostile to its own source material (but also suffers from some of the same criticisms I'll be making below). In the main, however, this period was a dry one for movies that might inspire a higher purpose or heroic inspiration in their viewers.
Eventually, the perfect solution was found in comic book movies, and especially those existing within the shared Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The source materials for these movies were familiar enough to viewers to be mass marketable, yet presented heroes who could be written tabula rosa enough so that anything could be coded into their on-screen political and social personalities. In this, the progressive culture makers found the ideal replacements for the embarrassingly gauche champions of America's past. These proxy heroes, typified by the MCU, reflect the character of their creators - hip, snarky, small-minded, with most of their dialog seemingly taken from a series of comedy house shorts. You have a 100 year old World War II veteran who would likely be entirely cool with his great-grandson "transitioning." There's also an Asgardian demigod who allows himself to go to seed and wallow in obese self-loathing rather than facing his demons. The perfect heroes for a soyjack generation.
Even seemingly incorruptible, morally black and white heroes like Batman and Superman (both drawn from the DC universe) have been debauched into morally ambiguous antiheroes. Superman, the paladin of Americana for decades, now no longer even fights for "the American way" as he strives to be more tolerant and inclusive. In every way, these new "heroes" fully present the values and priorities of progressive hipster culture creators.
This replacement really represents a much larger macrotrend in American society that has been going on for decades. This is the bifurcation of American society and subsequent ethnogenesis of two distinct competing groups among America's predominating population. The first of these groups really is the continuation, with modifications, of America's traditional Heritage population - the blue collar, working class, and middle class folks who actually make America work, but who are largely shut out of mass culture creation due to their lack of access to the relevant cultural machinery. The other is a small minority in terms of population, but constitutes the managerial caste that has succeeded in taking control of our institutions and turning them into endogenously self-perpetuating preserves for the progressive elite.
Culture is downstream from power. As such, culture - at least in its officially approved expressions - can be modified by elites into directions which they find amenable to themselves. There have always been official state cults, rituals, and ideologies sanctioned by rulers as part of their efforts to mold social systems to their liking. Modern America is no different. Today's cultural heroes, including but not limited to the on-screen comic book saviors, are presented in such a way as to shift cultural perceptions of heroism away from traditional emphases on moral perfection, protection of their particular community or people, and rugged masculinity. Heroism has been melted down and recast to represent moral ambiguity and "global" concerns, more fitting to a morally bankrupt transnational elite and its underlings. Who cares about America when you need to stop Thanos' threat to the entire universe? Who needs spiritual salvation from your sins when you're too busy watching cinematic demigods (who don't even care about sin) save the universe from existential physical threats?
Further, the heroism displayed by these cinematic marvels is inaccessible to the common man. Formerly, the Apostle Paul might inspire the Christian to a greater submission to God and to greater control over himself in God's service. Likewise, a Davy Crockett could motivate young men to harden themselves to face adversities and overcome obstacles. While the common man might not be able to attain to heroics of the same scale and magnitude as the paladins of old, they could at least seek to imitate them in substance.
But what do Marvel Comic heroes inspire anyone to do? Do any young boys really think they're going to imitate the Incredible Hulk or Ironman, outside of fantastical playacting with their friends? It's not like Johnny playing kick the can is going to be able to inject himself with an experimental serum and turn into an unstoppable rage monster. To the extent that there is any inspiration going on, it's taking place in a completely ineffective, and indeed counterproductive, fantasy world designed to draw the participant away from the realities of authentic human existence.
And that's the way the progressive elites want it to be. They don't want young men growing up looking for opportunities to lead other men or do daring deeds. They want them to be fat, lazy consumers of passive media. Their whole shift in cultural direction is meant to keep you and me docile, disinclined to doing the heavy lifting necessary to actually make the world an intrinsically better place. Especially since that would mean opposing pretty much everything they've been trying to accomplish at the political and social levels.
So what can you and I about this? Well, the first step is to disconnect. You are what you eat, so if you consume Hollywood's ideas about heroism, these will become your ideas about heroism. Stop the garbage in/garbage out dynamic that defines so much of modern American cultural output. If you want to recapture the sense of the truly heroic, then take control of your own heart and mind and stop being a passive receptacle for what progressives who hate you want to give to you.
But, there must be a positive side to this as well. Start seeking out the sources of America's heroic past, or if you're not American then seek out the analogs within your own cultural heritage. Get back into church. Read the Bible. Watch the old TV shows. Read old books about America's frontiersmen and soldiers. You can even go back further and draw upon the common cultural heritage found in our Western civilization. Imbibe the examples and mindset displayed by our true cultural heroes.
Lastly, and perhaps most important of all is to pass this recapturing of our past heroism on to your children. This is especially (but certainly not only) the case if you have boys. Teach your kids to love their heritage. Teach your kids to love their people. Inculcate in them a sense of adventure and valor. If you have sons, they should own at least one coonskin cap, a toy musket, and a pair of buckskin pants. Nurture them in the Bible and the old stories from America's past. Get them interested in watching the old shows and reading about our heroes for themselves (as of writing this, I have my son reading a young adult level biography of Zebulon Pike). If we're to see a renovation of the heroic, it has to be something passed on to future generations.