The last forty years have been a confusing time in American linguistics. Somewhere along the way we have become convinced that people need titles. Not just people of merit but everyone. Not just titles earned but titles unearned, titles that are earned simply by just being.
The growing number of esteem-boosting populist encouragers seems particularly fascinated with attaching the confusing “hero” moniker to anyone who has engaged in any act remotely pedestrian or responsibly human.
A cab driver who calls in an act of violence he witnesses is a hero. A man who takes a meal to an elderly woman spending the holiday alone is a hometown hero. People have become heroes for doing the right thing.
A woman who enters a career in elementary education is a hero. A man who is a fireman is a hero. A woman who chooses a career in law enforcement is a hero. People have become heroes for choosing careers for which they receive paychecks, salaries mostly paid by taxpayers. A paycheck is not enough? An entire professional field can be heroic now?
We have even attached the title to those who have made no moral decision at all and have gone through horrible tragedies. A child who falls victim to cancer is a hero? A teenager who dies in a school shooting is a hero? They are sad victims of the worst lots in life, assuredly, but heroes?
One of the most perplexing is the idea that every soldier is a hero. At what point did volunteering to serve, kill, and potentially die in wars fought for congressmen and corporations become heroic instead of misguided? Those opposing soldiers and civilians killed by the American soldier…. Should they be heroes in their respective countries also?
Forget the obvious ridiculousness of making heroes out of rappers, athletes, and Jenners. Those decisions are not really taken seriously to the point that they bring tears to passive observers, yet.
The real question is contained within the reason for this trend. Why are we pushing heroes and why do people need to feel like they are more valuable in their positions than they are? Somewhere along the path of normalcy, contentment has been lost in favor of continuous ego lauding. We have lost the ability to be satisfied with normal or average and we have all become world-changers. But in doing so, we must be careful that we are not replacing true heroism with simple words or titles.
In the words of Spanish General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano (1875-1951), “If things go on as they have been doing, idiots as fragile as clay toys will be turned into heroes.”