The Evolution of Heroes and Villains

What happens when a society villainizes

its heroes and humanizes its villains?

Civilizations have always had heroes,

real and fictional figures that represent extraordinary traits

we seek to emulate.

More than a role model,

which embodies attainable virtue in daily life,

a hero embodies exceptional greatness

that inspires the pursuit of excellence.

Heroes aren't perfect, nor are they meant to be.

Achilles famously chose a short life with immortal glory

over a long, normal life with his family.

He represents unparalleled courage and strength,

but not so much humility or devotion to family.

You've probably heard the phrase, slay your heroes.

This is sensible advice.

Discard the illusion that a hero is flawless.

But don't do what the West did,

which kind of discarded the very concept of admiration.

The West has a tendency to put its heroes

under a microscope and elevate their flaws over their virtues.

Alexander the Great, himself an admirer of Achilles,

is a long-revered hero figure.

Yet in modern storytelling, you'll almost always find him presented with a huge asterisk.

Yes, he did conquer half the known world

and lay the building blocks of Hellenistic civilization,

but lest we forget, he was also ruthless and overall deeply flawed.

forgot before, but we must be constantly reminded

so we don't accidentally praise a man of such moral compromise.

And it's not the acknowledgement of his flaws that's troubling,

it's the persistence with which they're elevated

beside or even above his undeniably heroic qualities,

as if constantly communicating that this hero of the ages

is actually unworthy of admiration.

We could argue that societies change over time,

as do their values and therefore their heroes,

but that argument falls apart when old heroes are discarded and not replaced with new ones.

Now, most people will say they don't need a hero to aspire to virtue,

and that's true and great, but

we're not looking at the current individual perspective,

but at the generational, civilizational one.

The illusion that we have evolved beyond hero worship

implies that we've reached the pinnacle of humankind,

and that's a surefire path to complacency and subsequently decay.

A society's choice of heroes serves as a sort of personified north star.

Not only do we aspire to their virtues,

but we connect over our shared reverence.

Taking away hero figures seems harmless at first,

but it removes an ideal from the horizon.

And one day, suddenly, you have a young generation,

with no direction and nothing to aspire to,

who'll inevitably fill that void with less role models,

or nihilism, or both.

We've not yet touched on what's perhaps the most disturbing

simultaneous development.

The rehabilitation of the villain.

The wicked fairy that became the betrayed protector,

the icy snow queen that became the misunderstood heroine,

the evil stepsister that became an unfairly maligned outcast.

There's nothing wrong with creative storytelling,

with twisted plots and dubious protagonists.

We're talking about the unsettling,

systematic revision of some of our most beloved tales.

By villainizing our classical heroes and humanizing our classical villains,

we subliminally remove our collective ability to define good and bad.

What happens to a society that can no longer tell good from bad?