Heroes and Messiahs

I've recently been very interested in the concept of heroes/messiah/cult of personality, people with incredible skill that come and save us, be it a politician, the vanguard party to smash capitalism, a cult leader or even the tech support guy that Bob expect to know how to fix all his computer problems. Lots of people cling to politicians and reject the idea that they can do any wrong, going into the most wild conspiracies to defend them from the concept that they can commit mistakes, lots of communist, religious people and even fascists have been waiting their whole lives for the tipping point where something big will indubitably happen and then everything will be alright. The Greek had heroes and literally had shrines to them, although we're not so overtly religious about them anymore, recently in the world a lot of people were angry at vandalism of statues of people, even trough at the end of the day it doesn't affect these for long dead people and they were, in fact, not perfect. Still, this attack on the statue is taken personally, these dead people are a symbol of something bigger (hope?) and an attack on the symbol that represent so much to someone might as well be an attack on their deeply held beliefs, which is part of the person and thus, an personal attack. What makes us cling to these ideas of a savior? What effect they have on the human mind? I don't know much about the topic, I'm probably wrong about some (or maybe all) the things I just wrote but I really would like to know about articles, papers, books or just your opinion about this. Sory for mah bed engrish.

>>31197 Heroes and messiahs are no more. Now we have sponsored influencers. I was looking at TV today and there were news about the birthday of a k-pop dancer. There used to be poets, now we have this. If you had the skills to be a messiah would you even want to save this world? Would you even be able to do anything without backing from the corrupt?

A modern messiah/hero would have to be raised perfectly from birth until adulthood, preferably without any internet access whatsoever. Social media and the internet in general do a good job at capturing all the flawed and embarrassing moments of somebody's life, which would easily tarnish their divine image. Young people have their early sexual exploration, cringey fandom moments, etc. on NSA databanks forever.

This is a very interesting topic, and touches on a lot of modern maladies. If we remember a bit of the old great civilizations (Greek, Rome, etc) and the ones before them, of course we had plenty of heroes and god-like humans, and these were mostly the result of the creation of myths around them, in the form of religious texts for big prophets and messiahs, and epics for heroes and such. This approach could even be applied to whole nations. The Greeks and Egyptians had foundational myths that gave them a direct divine origin for their founding dinasties and the ancient Chinese held the "mandate of heaven". The Romans instructed a famous author to create a foundational myth for the Empire, which is today known as the Aeneid and I can go on an on. Even in medieval times, the right to rule of kings was supposedly handed to them by God. I think most of these manifestations had the aim of generating a tidy world for both common folk and people in the upper echelon of these societies. A world where you know exactly who is on top and at the bottom, with a "natural" order, and especially, who is to blame for things that go wrong. A world with little place for uncertainty and complexity, circumstances which I suspect we're still wired on a cerebral level to prefer. And this is when we find ourselves in this modern world, which is overloaded with "information", full of uncertainty and with a perpetual struggle to stay on your feet like being in a small boat under a raging storm. I think this thirst for leaders, saviors, strongmen, whatever you want to call it, it's pretty much what I have tried to explain in the previous paragraphs. As I said before, I think people are hardwired to look for some sort of security, a way to explain what happens in the world, both the good and bad things in simple ways. Most of us just can't deal with complexity, and issues with multiple layers. Thus the need for heroes, but we can't create myths in 2020.

It's interesting to think the idea of this perfect hero or messiah that will solve all our problems and the villain responsible for everything that's bad is everywhere and has practically always existed. Both the scapegoat and the messiah are still used for political moves. Something in our brains just likes to believe the world is simpler and there is hope or that there is an enemy that can be defeated

>>31201 Social media influencers ARE heroes and Messiahs. The line is blurred when people with special experiences or positions present themselves as "Heroes." How many clickbait articles do you see every day about someone being a "Hero." Instead of being paragons of society and social values or shared beliefs (saints who prevailed over evil in the face of overwhelming odds), they are the driving force of a brand: sports players who take a political stand, troops who use their alleged exploits to market a new fitness, training, or "warrior" product. Elon Musk coming to save the world with "genius magic." Heroes are not ideological, they are corporate. Since you mentioned Asian idols, look at how much their lives are controlled by their brands. They have become the image they were trying to play, and any deviation from their image means suicide both as an idol or physically. The warrior hero concept is age old, but also a complex one. Medal of honor winners often state that they did nothing of value, that they only did their jobs and that the award was one of the hardest reminders of the worst day of their lives. But those who take pride in it realize that the award is not so much for them as a message to those around them. Classical heroes are not the same as modern heroes. The greek words for "good" and "evil" implied a state of beneficial action, not the contextual moral value of things applied in modern western culture. I think this can also branch off into eastern/western heroes too, because morality is different in each culture.

>>31201 >would you even want to save this world? YES by removing humanity

Adding to what has been said, I think there's always going to be a disconnect between the individual heroes and the heroic legacy. A well-enshrined hero is defined by their image more than what they do in life since societal standards will reinterpret these figures to fit their context. For example Saints are more remembered for their miracles rather than their mundane lives, Hercules is remembered for his labors rather than the murder of his family, etc. Most people don't have tightly plotted lives so the full story is never going to be flattering, the myth is always deliberate. Ergo, I believe a modern "hero" may not be clear to us yet. Historical heroes tend to rebel against conventions and only become enshrined later on. Popular animosity is something they'll face at some point, and at that stage it would difficult to tell them from just a regular asshole.

>What makes us cling to these ideas of a savior? people really like having someone to look up to. A savior can be thought of as the epitome of the "role model", someone who we attempt to imitate and who exemplifies things we consider good. It seems to me that every once in a while people fall into some kind of existential crisis in which they have no more role models, their institutions are corrupt, the future seems bleak and hopeless. It is in exactly these situations where messiahs pop up. Unfortunately almost all of them are just charlatans looking out for their own power. The need for a role model is one of the easiest things to manipulate in people. Look like how they want to be and you can get them to buy your product or vote for your platform or whatever soykaf.

>>31344 I have the 180° outlook. Savior = someone else does the job so i dont have to. Its not inspiration but delegation.

>>31291 Yeah I agree in full, I've thought about the same things, the shift to corporatism, the use of narratives, etc. In social media marketing there's a lot of talk about promoting your "brand", even if you are an individual. It's pretty sick but I think the relationship between people has changed on a fundamental level, even in commerce. I think a lot of people have become spectators to which everything is entertainment. Maybe this is a byproduct of modernity. I don't know how to deal with it in a clear way so for the time being I am lashing out against everything corporate, avoiding social media, avoiding public figures, and so on.

>>31649 > I think a lot of people have become spectators to which everything is entertainment I don't think technology or capitalism have made people magically impotent, especially since heroic narrative propaganda has been around for ages. Maybe the key word is "entertainment" in that our modern "heroes" have inconsequential struggles. They exist for their own ego or for the promotion of conformist values. Then again some heroes of the past railed against imaginary soykaf like dragons, and kings declared themselves their heirs to enforce their own rule, so maybe that's also a non-distinction.

>>31654 >I don't think technology or capitalism have made people magically impotent. When everything of value in life revolves around material resources that by their own nature are constantly shrinking, rather than infinite things like God or virtue, actually YES. People have been made magically impotent.

>>31655 I doubt serfs, peasants or laborers are more "powerful" or "heroic" than a modern person. If anything concepts like "God" just made them malleable and willing to accept supreme authority via soykaf like the divine right of kings. They didn't want to spread "virtue", they wanted a pacified population. There's a reason Greek kings all claimed to be descended from Hercules and thus Zeus. This isn't a defense of modern trends though, I mean to say that the heroic ideal is extremely easy to corrupt.

>>31668 >I doubt serfs, peasants or laborers are more "powerful" or "heroic" than a modern person. Well, many of them went to war. And I was in direct contact with people who were really poor, with nothing to lose, yet made choices a modern person wouldn't do. It doesn't matter if the ideal is misguided, it's a higher ideal than money and the reason why this happens is that money is finite, while things like virtue are not. You can be an extremely poor person with no resources and still be a saint, but in this world where everything is about class and"success" you will never be anything. So all you can do if you are poor is to hate yourself.

>>31668 >>31671 >>I doubt serfs, peasants or laborers are more "powerful" or "heroic" than a modern person. >Well, many of them went to war. many modern people go to war, this doesn't make them better. Lionizing war is a good way to get sucked into a nationalist fantasy. Most peasant levies were pretty poor warriors too. They would be given pikes and soykafty armor, or sometimes they would just fight with farm implements. Due to malnutrition and little to no training they could be taken down by a trained force of professional soldiers fairly easily. >You can be an extremely poor person with no resources and still be a saint, but in this world where everything is about class and"success" you will never be anything. isn't this implicitly buying in to the materialist viewpoint? Saying "you will never be anything" is valuing things based on material gain. Heroism, lionization/deification, and more generally cultural signifiers, have always been things for the upper classes. Sainthood is the only way for lower classes to enter mythology, and even then most recognized saints are from the upper classes. The only difference between upper classes way back when and upper classes now is that in an imperial society, upper classes hold their power primarily through wealth, might, and popularity, rather than any kind of mandate or moral code.

>>31674 >many modern people go to war, this doesn't make them better people don't go to war today because they're conscripted, they go to war because the military is a well paying career. And I wasn't talking about peasants in ancient times, I was talking about people from a century ago who fought in WWI and WWII. I don't know why you think I glorified war either. I'm not implying those people were good because they went to war, but those people most likely prayed while witnessing it. They had an infinite resource to aid them. A modern person would be broken in this context because what are you going to clutch when they bombs are flying? Your wallet? > Saying "you will never be anything" is valuing things based on material gain. Because the true individual does not exist, and you're always part of a context. It would be wonderful if one could reject the world in its entirety and adopt a completely different set of beliefs in a vacuum, but just like every other creature on this Earth we are part of an ecosystem, and if the very air and water are polluted you have to drink it anyway. Corruption always existed, but there was still a role for higher goals. People knew it. There was a reason why people celebrated these things even if they knew the world was corrupt by greed. This is the first time where greed and complete, utter materialism are celebrated above all else. Success is just a very roundabout way of sanitizing it, you can clearly see that all the "stories" that try so much to be human are really just about making the economy go round. >cultural signifiers, have always been things for the upper classes. It takes absolutely no resources whatsoever to kneel and pray. I am not religious. This isn't strictly about religion either, God could be any other thing in this world that is not a finite resource. Obviously all fleshly things are, because the stimulus you get from your body is by its own nature asking for more. Money is. Success is, because for everyone who succeeds someone else has to fail. See? Few things are left, and those are fundamentally what religion was always built upon. Was religion also corrupted as an institution? Surely. But the goals were not. A man who's dying and thinks of God's grace will never be denied the right to believe. He's not taking that right from someone else, he's not exhausting anything limited. >The only difference between upper classes way back when and upper classes now is that in an imperial society, upper classes hold their power primarily through wealth, might, and popularity, rather than any kind of mandate or moral code. The most important difference between the upper classes way back then and the upper classes now is that the upper classes are not perceived as being upper class at all. They're perceived as people who climbed through sheer right all the way up to the pyramid. Upper classes have replaced what was in all regards God's role, people worship celebrities like they worship saints. And although that's something nobles would do, like the Japanese Emperor, when that happened those people had to actually represent what they were posing as. In a way, it ennobled their little lie, no matter if they did it for power. In a way people have a blinder faith in the rich today than they did in God before. It's absolutely ugly and disgusting.