As a kid growing up outside of Chicago, I had
some role models… my first role model was a
third basemen for the Cubs named Ron Santo…
and the second was more of a class of people, that of
president of the United States… I could recite all kinds of
political knowledge… the who, what, when, where, why
and how of every single president… Teddy Roosevelt died
in Oyster Bay, New York in 1919 and I knew all the presidents stats…
Today, not so much…I wanted to be two things when I grew up,
one was a professional baseball player and the other, president
of the United States… Around 13 or 14, I lost those dreams…
I realized that they were my father’s dream, not mine…
and to this day, I still don’t have a vision of what I want to be when
I grow up…these two visions, of playing baseball and being president,
were my role models growing up… and we all have some sorts of visions
of our growing up or an idea of what is next… each requiring some sort
of role model too see us clear…
role models take all kinds of ways, shapes and forms…
for over a thousand years, Jesus was considered to be a role model…
and every great hero that has ever been, has been thought of
as a role model… for the Ancient Greeks, the role models were the
hero’s of Homer lliad and the Odyssey… we see role models like
Agamemnon and Archilles and Odysseus and Paris and Hector…
for centuries, Children grew up wanting to be great hero’s like
Archilles and Hector…and our modern hero’s like George Washington
and Abe Lincoln… and MLK and Gandhi and Tolstoy…
for our modern days hero’s and objects of worship aren’t just
the Warriors of the ancient world… our hero’ are also
hero’s like Newton and Goethe and Shakespeare and Dr. Fauci…
but look around you… right here and right now… who would you
consider to be a hero? who would you want to emulate?
I see no one who is worthy of being valued in this way…
part of the failure of our age is the lack of role models,
of someone who could be a hero…
and we have plenty of anti-hero’s, in fact far too many…
we have Sherlock Holmes saying:
“Oh, do your homework. I’m not a hero, I’m a high-functioning
sociopath”
and at one point, Batman denies being a hero…
in fact, most of our modern day hero’s aren’t even real,
they are comic book figures brought to life…how sad that we can’t
even find a hero in reality… the Marvel universe is hero worship of
people who don’t even exists… that is a sad commentary about where
we are as a people…the media, for its own purposes tries to build
up soldiers and policemen and firemen as modern day hero’s…
but we see the police acting as evil as the crime they are suppose to fight…
we see policemen saying they are just doing their job…
and that is their failure… for hero’s, real hero’s aren’t there
to “do their job”, being a hero means to rise above your job
or your religion or your sexual orientation…
being a hero is more than just “doing the job”
being a hero rises above such mundane things…
we see many people being raised to be a hero
and they shouldn’t even be suggested as to being a hero…
the Kardashians for example or IQ45…
a hero is one who encourages us to become a better version
of ourselves… to become a better human being…to become something
more than what we are now…
so, we are at a loss today because we don’t have any role models,
or any hero’s…and the world is a far worse place because of that…
and what can you do about it? you can become a hero by showing us
how we can become a better person…you can be a hero by
becoming a better person…
the truth about hero’s is that they are teachers and what they teach is how
we can become better people by following their example…
so, whose example should we follow today? this is a non-super hero
category… so, who should we follow today? and in doing so, become
a better person?
Kropotkin