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Every villain is a hero in his own mind.
~Tom Hiddleston
The modern spirit is a hesitant one.
Spontaneity has given way to cautious legalisms, and the age of heroes has been superseded by a cult of specialization. We have no more giants; only obedient ants.
~Roger Lowenstein
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Ok. I get asked a shitload about why people do the things that they do. It seems, to me, that people inherently slot behavior into good or bad, smart or stupid and even villain or hero.
Oh. If it were only that simple.
In general, we would wish our heroes are endowed with a fierce intellect, great <though not infallible> personal integrity, toughness tempered with essential compassion for the less fortunate, and a sense of humor. We would like our heroes to fiercely attack life in a way that suggests they never concede that anything is someone else’s problem. And, yet, people <who are the heroes & villains> are naturally complex and almost always filled with contradictions. The contradictions are relentless. So relentless that they almost make you rethink that being a good person is relative.
Sometimes the heroes we see in today’s society are so visibly flawed it makes you think about all the moralistic mumbo jumbo we middle-class white folk voice with regard to what is right and what is wrong. In fact, from a moralistic standpoint, we start defining some behaviors & characteristics as, uhm, as if there is a difference between bad things and bad things.
Villianry <I made up that word> gets normalized in some wacky way. What I find oddest by that is doing the right thing is a basic innate instinct.
We are all born with it.
We all certainly embrace the concept.
We all actually enjoy doing it.
We all like it in our heroes.
And, yet, it seems like more and more we are hesitating to demand it of our heroes.
I hesitate to suggest that Society has created this situation. Society, and culture, has certainly done its darn best to showcase the fact there is no such thing as a perfect person and that we should embrace the flaws in people.
And, for the most part, I agree with that.
But, what seems to be happening is that while the spirit of goodness and what is right and what we know we should demand from a hero <which shouldn’t contain any villain> remains, something is making the modern spirit hesitate to make the demands of perfection with regard to “good” in our heroes. It almost seems like we hesitate to ask for what we want and in doing so, we accept, sometimes even embrace, compromise in our heroes.
In our hesitation we are permitting some villains, posing as heroes in their own minds, to step forward and pose as heroes.
We’re born into a world where the rules are already defined. The game is out there. It’s either play or get played.
~Omar
These villains, fake heroes, choose to play the game their own way … authentically portraying a style that allows them to be true to themselves and their personal beliefs.
Sigh.
But they are ants, and we should be seeking giants.
We have to … because these ants diminish us in a slightly insidious way.
Insidious? Yeah. It’s not that in our hesitation we decide to do the wrong thing but rather in our silence the ‘less than the right things’ steps in and assumes control.
Oh. Please note that I purposefully say ‘diminish.’
I am certainly not going to suggest that this societal driven hesitation eliminates doing the right thing. That would be silly. That would suggest the spirit, modern or otherwise, can actually be extinguished and I do not believe that is possible. Spirit can be dampened, it can be smothered, it can be diminished, but it cannot be expunged from who and what we are as humans.
But the truly insidious poison offered by ants?
It creates situations in which deserving giants receive undeserved criticism and are cut down in the attempt to make them ant-sized.
My point today?
We should demand giants not ants.
We should not accept villains posing as heroes.
And while I would love to suggest that all of us should seek to be giants <and I have on occasion> for today I simply state that in a difficult, complex world we should not seek simple ants to be our heroes and light the way, but rather seek the real giants among us to help guide us.
Giants of the spirit of what is right and doing what is right. And, yeah, we should seek giants every day, every hour and every minute.
Society sometimes seems to be stealing our opportunity place real heroes in their rightful place as a giant.
Here is what I believe.
I believe we are in an age of heroes where society encourages less than heroic everyday behavior.
I believe we are in an age demanding giants where society encourages us to be ants.
I believe the modern spirit is not naturally a hesitant one.
I believe we are in an age where doing the right thing should be demanded … in Life & in business.
I believe we are in an age where we should be seeking to eliminate divisiveness, eliminate restrictions on ‘right behavior’ and eliminate the … well … hesitation of the spirit.
Look. I buy the fact no one is perfect, and I am even willing to accept that even our heroes can have flaws. But we should demand our heroes to be heroes and not villains who simply believe they are either a hero or offer themselves up as a hero.
There is certainly a complexity and inexactness of good and bad.
There is certainly a complexity and inexactness of the rules that are established ‘by the game of Life’ we play.
There is certainly a complexity and inexactness in Life, society & culture <in and of themselves>.
Yeah. I buy the fact our heroes will always have some complexity and inexactness.
But our heroes should be giants and not ants.
Every villain believes they are a hero in their own mind but, in our minds, we should know a villain can never be a hero. And we should not hesitate to demand a hero to be a hero and not a villain.
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This post was originally published on EnlightenedConflict.com and is republished with the author’s permission.
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The post Villains and Heroes and Hesitation appeared first on The Good Men Project.