|
The
End of the Superhero: A Time for Collective Heroism
By John Renesch
Throughout
history human beings have been the beneficiaries of heroic actions, most
frequently those of an outstanding individual taking a committed stand
regardless of the conventional status quo, the accepted tradition or the
cultural norm. Such stands have included boldness, courage, foresight, strength
of character, passion, maturity, compassion and other traits we’ve seen
in people who have changed our lives forever. In the West, these include the
likes of Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, Jr., Winston Churchill, Florence
Nightingale, Nelson Mandela, Jonas Salk and many others.
Anthony, Mandela and
Churchill
We
have been conditioned to seek leaders who can fill those heroic slots for us,
leaders who are capable of taking strong committed stands in the tradition of
World War II heroes Churchill and Roosevelt, civil rights heroes Anthony,
Mandela and King and medical heroes such as Nightingale and Salk. But democracies
have gotten used to electing prospective political superheroes and then sitting
back and critiquing their performance – not too dissimilar to the way people
engage in detailed Monday morning post-mortems of the weekend’s sporting events,
often leveling criticism at their heroes.
In
recent years, we have entered a window whereby our society has become too
complex for any one person, or even small group of persons, to effectively
manage much less correct it when a malfunction occurs. We are finding ourselves
in situation after situation in which no one person can remedy things, where
problems seem more and more unsolvable, at least if we approach them as we have
conventionally – finding the “right” leader who is capable of
taking corrective action.
For
many Americans, Barrack Obama was that man in 2007 and 2008. He expressed
himself articulately and with confidence, giving hope to tens of millions,
particularly young people and those who had previously dropped out of the
political process. Obama the candidate then became Obama the President, sitting
smack dab in the middle of one of the most complex, powerful and dysfunctional
systems ever created by human beings. The system we know as the U.S. government
is made up of so many different special interests, so many ambitious wannabes
and private agendas, so much bureaucracy, so much history and precedent, that
making any material change occur exceeds even the superhero capabilities
Americans and many elsewhere in the world wanted to bestow on Obama.
Our
systems have become so much more powerful than the ability of any one person or
small group of people that they have become our monsters. Healthcare, climate
change, education, the economy, our legal systems and government are all
monsters who have become more powerful than their creators. Like Frankenstein,
we have created creatures who now dominate us instead of serving us as we
originally intended.
So,
is the situation hopeless? Shall we resort to cynicism, resigned to being
slaves to these creatures, and give up trying to improve things? Shall we
merely settle for doing the best we can get under the circumstances, like
accepting the breadcrumbs and accumulating the most toys? How can we bring about the course
corrections so necessary in today’s world of runaway dysfunction and
mediocrity?
As
far as I can see, there is only one way out of this mess. We need to learn how
to work together and be our own
superheroes. If we cannot learn to resolve our differences and work
collaboratively for the common good, if we continue to campaign for our “one
and only truth,” if we insist on having it our way and ignoring the needs
and wants of others, we are doomed to the future we are headed for – one
of extreme polarities, ever-widening chasms of differences, our systems becoming
even more dysfunctional to the point of collapse and, perhaps, even extinction.
Not a pretty picture!
Let’s
quit reading those comic books and having visions of Superman or Wonder Woman
ridding our world of evil and defending the just and the good. Let us grow up
and assume responsibility for the messes we have created and clean them up together, as mature adults working for
the common good, the global commons on which we depend. It is either do this or
end up like those Easter Islanders who are only known because they left some
really big stones to remind the world they once existed.
Easter Island
monuments
When
the Obama campaign generated that powerful motto “Yes we can!” it
was more than a great slogan. ‘Yes’ affirms that we want change.
‘Can’ affirms our ability to make that change happen. And
‘we’ means all of us working to together to make that change happen.
This is not just idealist rhetoric but absolute pragmatism. What is needed
cannot be done by just the superheroes alone, not even Obama, unless we all
pitch in and stop our adolescent squabbling and start working for the common
good of all.