What Makes a Hero?

With 2020 bringing a new year and a new decade, I have been inspired to reinvent myself for the upcoming years. I have set goals for myself of improving my character. Not an easy one to untangle for good goal setting, which usually entails tracking minor improvements and setbacks along the way. These goals are more internal and therefore take a little more work on the backend to set yourself up for hitting them. They are harder because they have no physical scale or measurement in which I can gather how I am doing. I typically aim for physical health and fitness goals this time of year which, although challenging to keep up with, are at least easier at knowing when you’re doing things well and when you’re slacking on them.

What’s good and what’s bad?

 In all statistics, the first step in measuring the object is determining how you are going to define the object to be measured. Character can be defined as the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual, but who determines what is ‘good’ character. There’re certain traits related to good character, but these vary depending on who you ask. It is a measurement that is determined by the individual on an individual to individual and situation to situation basis. In other words, it is a completely grey area. My wife and I recently watched the new Netflix series “You” over the break and I think the main character of the story illustrates this pretty well. In the show, we step into the mind of Joe, who is by all objective standards is a serial killer, as he thinks through his actions. Any time Joe kills a person in this series, he sees it as a necessity to protect another he feels responsible for. He rationalizes his actions as being for the greater good. If you were to ask Joe what good character is, he’d tell you it’s being willing to do anything to protect the people you love, even to the point of murder. Sounds pretty crazy to categorize something like murder with good doesn’t it? But just how far off is Joe?

The Superhero

When’s the last time you’ve watched or read a superhero story? Superhero movies have been dominating the movie screens the last summers with a handful coming out each year. They’ve gone from Spiderman 1-3 at least three times over in the first 20 years of our century, and that is not taking into consideration the cartoon versions. Superheroes are everywhere in our entertainment. I remember my first heroes as a child were Spiderman and Batman. As a young boy, they were inspirational to me. “Pow” and “bam” and “crash” and “boom”. They kicked the bad guys’ booty! They protected the weak and innocent at any cost. They’d destroy buildings and whole cities in their epic fights to take down the bad guy. I loved these stories, I only wished the superheroes in them were real. With so much bad stuff going on all the time we need a superhero in our world, I thought. With maturity I came to face it, we have no superheroes. But let’s go back to Joe in the Netflix series “You”? Maybe he’s a real superhero in our world. He doesn’t have superpowers, but he does take down those who he thinks are bad and a threat to the innocent he serves to protect. What separates him from some of the superheroes we idolize? Is it merely a miscalculation defining the variable ‘good character’? What about the man who shoots the intruder in his home as an act of self-defense; is he a superhero? Or what about all the men and women in the legal system who determine when a person should be charged with the death penalty? Each member of the jury is using their individual definition of ‘good’ to charge guilty or not guilty based on the information from the lawyers who likewise determined their clients as good using their own measurements. Are they all superheroes?

Superheroes

I say no. To all of them. Even my old hero’s batman and spiderman. They may all demonstrate great acts of valor defending the innocent from the villain, but at what cost? They take the matter into their own hands and the result of that is the death of the villain. Was that severe of an action justifiable? Depends on the situation again, but certainly, our legal system provides more of a fair process to determine whether or not that action is necessary than superman does. It’s better them than the others or me, he may justify. And while defending someone from an attack by another, that makes a lot of sense. But what if they get it wrong. What if the villain wasn’t such a bad person and they wrongly murdered them. Are they still a hero? I think these actions fall into defense, rather self-defense or defense of the other. Defense is a noble deed, but the situations that make our defensive actions justified or unjustified can be gray. Situation aside, to drop into a threatening situation you don’t need to be in and put your life on the line in service to others is a very courageous act no doubt about it. But in the superhero tale, they’re always the victor. And for most of the courageous acts we do in our normal lives, we take measures so that we will be the victor too. If we didn’t think we could fight back and win or at least have a chance of winning, then we probably wouldn’t risk it. From a survival standpoint, this makes total sense. But I think this is the distinction that separates heroes and their courageous acts from the real superheroes.

So what heroes help me to define ‘good character’

In my books, there is no denying a hero as truly super when they are willing to lay down their life for the one they’re protecting. This sacrificial act goes way beyond the courageous act of the hero who believes they can win or come out alive. With a sacrificial act, there is no such hope of self-survival. It’s completely given away for the other. Does this kind of superhero exist? Even though they may seem to be more far-fetch than a batman or spiderman, these superheroes actually do exist. And they will be the ones I use to define ‘good character’.

Here’s one such superhero, Maximilian Kolbe. He was a prisoner of Auschwitz in WWII. Following a prisoner’s escape, 10 men were randomly selected to die as punishment, and Kolbe volunteered his life in the place of Franciszek Gajowniczek, who was married with young children. Kolbe and the other nine prisoners were starved for weeks until he and the few others who were still alive were finally injected with carbolic acid and cremated. (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Maksymilian-Maria-Kolbe).

There’s no room for gray in this heroic tale. He simply lays himself down on behalf of the other, pure sacrifice. A pure hero.