The absence of heroic examples

[WolfR]

It seems to me that our generation doesn't have a single person who seems to represent a "heroic" figure of some kind. Is the era of heroes gone?
Discuss.

EDIT: I mean a leader kind of figure who is heroic, kind, selfless (see Gandhi, Mandela, Washington, Lincoln)

 

[TheComedown]

Who where the heroes from the previous generations first of all?

How do you define hero?

 

[AnnaIME]

Which generation would that be? There is more than one represented here at The Escapist.

 

[WolfR]

Definition: a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.

 

[snappydog]

'Our generation' being? Whether that's true or not depends on your definition of 'heroic' - no generation's ever had a Superman-type figure who fights evil and generally excellents in the direction of everything (yes, I just used excellent as a verb. Haters to the left.), but we still have those who stand for equality and fairness and the end of poverty and other such issues; in that regard, we've got no more or less 'heroism' in our generation, whatever you define our generation as, than any other. As for the era of heroes, I'm not sure there ever was one.

EDIT/ ADDITION: I also think we've all got our own personal heroes, and that's the way it always has been. There are no universal heroes, nor am I aware of there ever being one.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Depends...you might look at what medals for bravery your/any nation has awarded recently.

There will be alot of political machinations going on in there, but it'd be a good place to start.

 

[novixz]

We have Nelson Mandela if that counts.

 

[Scabadus]

It's rare for a hero to go 'out of date', as it were. They embody what humans see as the best qualities among us; bravery, tollerance, intellect, skill and natural charisma.

That said, there are plents of heros alive right now: sports players and atheletes are the easiest to point out since they enjoy their fame while alive, but a few scientists and mathematitions (off the top of my head: Stephen Hawking) managed to become famous while still living. Obviously people here may look to games for their heroes, and since taking a character from a game (Commander Shepard) isn't really the done thing, there are still plenty of artists and designers to look up to. People like Notch (creator of Minecraft) have created fame from themselves out of skill and determination, a desire to make a game that's actually fun for the end consumer instead of a large cheque for their company. What more can we ask of our heros?

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Nonsense, we have Justin Bieber, Snooki, Sarah Palin, and best of all, Charlie Sheen. Truer paragons of excellence have never been seen.

In seriousness, the truly heroic people are usually the ones we don't hear about, and the actual definition of hero can differ drastically.

 

[joshuaayt]

Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax.

Who is he? Oh, no one special. Just a homeless man who selflessly saved someone, and then was left to die- a death which took one hour- in the street as bystanders watched and took photos

My point is we will always have heroes, distinct from those around them, it's just not always easy to see them. Ours is not a society to champion the individual, for good or ill.

...Well, that's not true, come to think of it. R patz for life, etc. I suppose it's more that out perception of heroism has shifted. Individual exemplars of superficial qualities are championed very readily, whilst brave Tale-Yax? Forgotten within the week.

 

[Staskala]

There are plenty of human rights activists you can consider heroes, it's just that all the big stuff has already been done.
We're simply too well off to have a second MLK or Gandhi.
I guess you're talking about war "heroes", but without any real war there are no heroes to be born.
Which is a good thing, obviously.
You could also look on a smaller scale, diplomats, firefighters, scientists, those millionaires who only invest into corporations to be able to expose their misdeeds and so on.

By the way, there never were any universal role models.
People always idolized those they personally saw as someone to aspire to be, thus different people look up to different heroes.

 

[WolfR]

A hero is, in my opinion, a leader kind of figure who is truly selfless, courageous and noble.
Not a single leader that I can think of nowadays is like that, except perhaps Nelson Mandela, as novixz pointed out.
Like Gandhi, Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, Lincoln and many more, these kind of heroes I mean, sorry for being so broad in the opening

 

[Scalli]

I think maybe the question answered itself kinda... the 'era of heroes' might be done. There's just too much going on in our world - with almost instant connection to every 'newsworthy' story that happens across the globe, there isn't time for any one heroic act to gather enough praise and acknowledgement before we move on to the next story.

Not to say there aren't heroic deeds being done; I'm sure there are thousands occurring each day, but each one is lost in the sea of information we are cascaded with constantly, before it has time to reach that epic status.

Just off the top of my head, I can recall a few news headlines over the past few years that might have managed to elevate someone to 'hero' status in past generations, but we just move on much faster, it's just how the world works these days it seems.

Not necessarily a good thing, or a bad thing, just a thing.

 

[Kryzantine]

I would say the world is too polarized and too peaceful to have too many heroes. Also, heroes are generally born after their heroic deeds have been done. Before 1991, not nearly as many people would have considered Nelson Mandela a hero. It was his work throughout the 90s that raised him to the status he has today.

In time, we might remember some people we would consider heroes - reluctant to name names, though I will throw Ai Wei Wei as an example. But progress up to this point has been the result of a group of people more than the actions of a singular individual.

EDIT - The # of people that might qualify to be heroes has been reduced as well. It's very rare for non-wealthy people to be remembered as heroes, and there are only a handful of such examples. I remember this one book from Rothkopf called Superclass, wherein he defines a member of a particularly select top-of-the-world social class (called a superclass) as a person who:

a. Is a multi-millionaire
b. Affects the lives of at least a million people outside of his/her nation every day

And, based on this criteria, there are around 6,000 members of this superclass in the world today. Well, less. Bin Laden died a while back.

Anyway, I just remembered it, and felt it was a good starting point in at least defining who may become a hero. These are, after all, the most powerful (not necessarily the wealthiest) people in the world.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

What about that quick-thinking pilot who got his plane into the Hudson before it crashed?

 

[AmrasCalmacil]

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/gordonandshughart.html

There are some more recent heroics on that site, but these guys always stick out to me. Glad they got put on there.

In the world that we live in, heroes often get overlooked because some celebrity looks fat and that's all the newspapers will talk about.

 

[Alon Shechter]

A guy in a parachute training got his parachute somehow stuck in the one of a tourist, and the guy disconnected his parachute, falling to his death, just to save the tourist.
That was just a random incident in Israel, but I think that guy could be called a hero.

 

[Raso719]

Being heroic isn't cost effective and being a moron or an A-hole sells better.

It's a shame too because if you look at the most successful people on the planet and world leaders they are always greedy, manipulative and often just plan, old fashion jerks. Back in the day we had people like MLK but now we have Fox News instead. Back in the day we had the peace loving hippies who had a desire for social change and peace but now we have antidepressants to make sure people stay asleep. During Vietnam America was at war for reasons many Americans neither understood or gave a crap about and the music and culture reflected that and now we have a media industry that assumes the average IQ of the world to be below 90 and all of our music is about shallow tweenage crushes or other nonsense but no songs about peace and understanding ever get made anymore.

Honestly I think if we had a hero showed up and tried to promote peace between the US and our enemies we'd shun him for "hating America" or some crap like that. If someone started talking about the world living in peace people would say he's the Antichrist because the Christians basically said "Yeah, you know that guy who wants to bring the world together and make you no longer need to rely on the church to figure out your chaotic world? He's really evil and you should fear him". If someone went around the with an army fully operational, mobile medical clinics and started providing free health care all over the globe he'd be shunned as a socialist and probably assassinated by some extremist (because letting capitalists get sick and die is more important that socialists helping their fellow man live healthy).

Our society is seemingly designed to prevent heroes from emerging. It's designed to be as dull and bland as possible to keep us from dreaming and keep our expectations down. Science Fiction movies no longer try to pretend like we'll be around long enough to explore space and focus around the USMC fighting faceless terror-aliens. Gone are the days of the dashing and charismatic Han Solo like character and in his place are sexy, young bipolar men and women who are as boring and helpless as everyone else. Every other game puts the focus on a dark and gritty caricature of the real word with the every-man citizen solder rather than the over the top action hero or demon fighting swordsman with unmatched skill or charismatic super hero. And while those aren't "real heroes" the lack of fictional heroes for us to muse about and look up to is a loss to our society.

Even though they aren't real or even realistic we no longer have people looking to Buck Rogers and saying "I want to be heroic and strong like him" and in his place we have people watching The Situation and Snookie and not really thinking about anything at all. Science Fiction helped to get a lot of people interested in math and science and many young physicists around the world will tell you they'd love to make a warp drive or light saber but without Sci-fi movies or books that push the horizon of human achievements or to show mankind in an awesome future we no longer have the same inspiration to make that future a reality (how come Japan can make robots and holograms and all America wants to do is design iPads and the "Double Down" breadless chicken sandwich? Could it be because Japan has sci-fi with star ships and giant robots and the US has sci-fi where kids from next week have their cities leveled by terror-aliens with out a single American robot, laser cannon or flying battle ship in sight?

Yeah, like I said, Heroes aren't cost effective. They make people aspire to better themselves and if people start being better then companies have to raise the bar to get our attention and money and that's more effort than they care to do. With out us constantly fighting and bickering among ourselves governments would actually have to make progress in society and that's hard. With out us spending every last moment of free time on facebook or CoD the world would movie forward.

That's my crazy rant for the week.

 

[KanHanderan]

What about that quick-thinking pilot who got his plane into the Hudson before it crashed?

That's Captain "Sully" Sullenberger, who received a key to New York City for the successful ditching (as well as a Guinness World Record).

 

[Thaluikhain]

What about that quick-thinking pilot who got his plane into the Hudson before it crashed?

I wouldn't count him a hero, as such. His actions were commendable, of course, but he did what anyone would have tried to do in that situation.

For me a hero is someone who does what people think they should do, but would find excuses not to.

Getting yourself and others out of danger isn't heroic, IMHO, choosing putting yourself in danger to get others (and preferably yourself) out is, if you see what I mean.