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Value can be found in embracing the idea that maybe our heroes weren’t gods
Pick any country around the world and go through their history, and you will find several national heroes. Strike up a conversation with anyone, and if it gets personal enough, you’ll learn that they too have their personal heroes. Therefore, it is not at all a stretch to say that, at both an individual level and at the scale of a nation, admiration for those who do great things is a pretty consistent feature. Individuals who accomplish positive feats that are deemed out of the ordinary earn the recognition and praise of others.
Through an examination of a society’s choices of the people it elevates, we can learn what we consider admirable, what events and feats are worth remembering, and what traits and values are worth passing on to subsequent generations. An individual’s choice of their own heroes can also convey similar information about them as a person.
Haiti, obviously, is no exception. With the likes of Dessalines, Toussaint, Christophe, Sanite Belair, and more we boast our own pantheon of national heroes whose exploits could fill many books. And with good reason, for these accomplishments were world shifting. The deeds of these men and women led to the creation of the first nation of free Black men and women in the New World. This went against the established order of the world in a very literal sense. The results of their actions went beyond the limits of collective imagination, it gave birth to something once considered outside the realm of possibilities. For this, we as a nation put them on the highest pedestal.
The trouble with this, however, is that it strips these figures of any relatability. These heroes are great for setting standards for which we should strive, but they are very difficult to emulate. We already have a hard time meeting our own standards as everyday people — how could we ever possibly rise to meet those of our icons? This conundrum may even lead some to wonder what purpose having heroes serves, when they appear to do little more than remind us of all how we fall short of their lofty criterion. Others of a more pessimistic disposition could even suggest that those we consider heroes weren’t as perfect as we imagine them anyway and are thus not worthy of the veneration we show them. Facing such tough questions could lead us down a path of iconoclastic frenzy where we decide it is simpler to do away with this business of having heroes altogether. But it could lead us to inspect the heroes we choose and the way we tell their stories.
In an essay exploring the disappointment and anger fans felt for the last season of Game of Thrones, sociologist Zeynep Tufekci looked at the forms of storytelling that the show employed, particularly the ways it used “psychological” and “sociological” storytelling. Psychological storytelling, as she explains, is the form of storytelling we’re all familiar with. It usually involves a protagonist, facing some sort of conflict who arrives at a resolution, often through some kind of individual heroic exploit. These are the stories we’ve been hearing from our earliest days, they’re the novels we read, the movies and TV shows we watch, and they are also the stories we tell. Sociological storytelling takes a broader look at the events going on, and how we pull away from the individual perspective to get a bird’s-eye view. As a result, it becomes easier to see how multiple factors might come into play and lead to a situation. It also makes it easier to see and consider the motives behind any individual’s actions.
When observing people and their actions, we have a tendency to be categorical and fall into what social psychologists call “fundamental attribution bias.” This fancy term means that we have a huge double standard for judging our actions and those of others. For ourselves and those we care about, we can fully be nuanced and have a perfect grasp on how circumstances might influence our behaviours, but for anyone else that’s not the case.
Someone cuts in front of us is in a line and we immediately think them to be an inconsiderate prick, and that’s all there is to it; he does, therefore he is. But if a friend or someone else we care for were to do this, we’d stand at the ready with a litany of excuses to explain their poor behavior. Being aware of such a bias, and understanding how the different storytelling works, forces us to look at the bigger picture and consider factors that extend beyond an individual’s nature when looking at their actions.
Now, if we are to apply this reasoning to those we look upon as heroes, we’ll find that, at first, bringing our heroes down to our level might not feel like a very gratifying one. However, value can be found in embracing the idea that maybe they weren’t gods. Surely they might’ve done extraordinary things, but they weren’t extraordinary human beings, or at the very least they didn’t start out that way.
They most likely had the same feelings, the same desires, the same fears we do. External pressures also moved them as they move us, and these heroes tried to make the best decisions they could given their context and politics of their day. When we consider all those things, coupled with the benefit of hindsight, it leaves us with a sobering yet empowering revelation that our heroes were not better than us. Taking in all the challenges we face today, it’s so easy to get discouraged and think only some extraordinary, Herculean actions can fix our messes. But heroic actions don’t materialize out of thin air, and they don’t initially appear to be groundbreaking. They’re usually simply a cumulation of ordinary acts made by ordinary people taking a chance to do something different. So maybe it is best that we don’t expect heroes to save us because, after all, the only heroes we ever had were the heroes we’ve made.
Photo by Paul Clammer
