Humans, unlike other animals, are conscious of their mortality. A taunting realization that elicits debilitating levels of anxiety and fear, and an eventual suppression and denial of their demise. Ernest Becker argued that humans repress their own decay by striving for the heroic, or in more concrete terms: to take part in activities which lead one to believe they are a part of something worthy, something that will outlive their death and endow them with a form of immortality.
Our ability to think conceptually poses a terrible burden on mankind. Like all creatures, human-beings are destined to die, however, we are also the only creatures who can contemplate the inevitable nothingness which awaits us. In order to live in this world with relative composure, we alleviate our fear by striving to avoid the fatality of death. The fear of our impending doom haunts us like nothing else. It is the incentive to most of our daily activity. Activity created mostly to avoid thought, and in a sense overcome our mortality by denying it. Most people deny their death by striving for whatever it is our society finds most desirable at that time. Today that would be money, fame and status. In the process society has created a convenient “codified hero system (...), a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning” which benefits society more than the individual.
How, then, do we become heroes that transcend our own lifetime? Our psychology is programmed in such a way that living life without purpose makes us ships without a rudder, pushed and pulled by external forces. The development and maintenance of a viable sense of self-esteem (the believe that one has a significant role in the cosmic drama in which we live), is the most important, and most vital necessity for a self-conscious creature such as ourself. In order to give life meaning we do one of three things: live in the service of another, live in the service of an institution or ideology, or create a value system of our own choosing, and live in the service of that.
The latter is a modern phenomenon, and one that we as humans in a Western society view as our birth-right. To live according to our own set of values requires that we reflect on what makes a valuable life. The answers we settle on will become the building blocks onto which we create our entire existence. Yet, as error-prone, imperfect creatures, we are guided by invisible forces within ourselves, bred in the womb, incubated in the arms of our parents, that are often misguided. Or, in less abstract terms, our values can be corrupted by false believes and bad timing. What we hold highly at one point in our life, may no longer serve us at another stage. The alcoholic, for example, might value another drink; the suicidal another cut; the drug addict another high. While creating a value-system whereby to live our lives, one has to remain self-critical. As Socrates said, “ignorance is in many cases a greater cause of suffering than evil intentions.”
The terror of our demise haunts our aspirations, and force us into autopilot. Driving us towards an unreflective existence of self-affirmation, and in the process become actors written in plays written by others. To grant us the strength to make daily choices in favor of heroism we have to accept, rather than deny, our inevitable death.
Overall, to live a heroic life in accordance to a set of self-chosen values is equivocal to swimming against the tide. For as long as we can remember we, as self-conscious animals, have lived in a world of widespread corrupted of ideals. In turn, this has led most to gravitate toward distraction and empty pleasures. Yet, if you want to be one of the few who rejects the sickness of modern day conformity, it seems like you’ll have to sit stead-vastly within your values, and welcome heroism in like a bull towards the muleta.
Let’s conclude with a quote from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Alas, I have known noble men who lost their highest hope,And henceforth they slandered all high hopes. Henceforth they lived imprudently in brief pleasures, and they had hardly an aim beyond the day… Once they thought of becoming heroes: now they are sensualists. The hero is to them an affliction and a terror. But, by my love and hope I entreat you: do not reject the hero in your soul! Keep holy your highest hope!”