We Can All Be Heroes

Commentary and Analysis,

Superman-is-a-HeroBy Chelsea Chico

The common persona of a hero is that of the savior of a vast city. With the new millennium, however, our image of heroes has been changing. An important question that we should all be asking ourselves is this: How do we distinguish real heroes from phony ones, especially in our confusing modern times?

Heroes come in many shapes and sizes but the precise definition, image, and character of a hero should be shown through all the colors of light. We should all agree on a few defining principles of heroism: Heroes exceed what is expected of them, they make a positive impact on people’s lives, and they rise above and beyond the ordinary.

We have our daily heroes who barely get any recognition, the most prominent of which are school teachers who mold the minds and lives of young people. Heroic teachers live on small annual paychecks compared to most people who pursue non-heroic careers. Higher paying jobs may require more schooling but why do we associate bigger paychecks with heroic merit? The people in our society with the highest paychecks seem to receive the greatest recognition of their so-called “heroism” at work.

When assessing heroism, it is important to consider motives. Lawyers, police officers, and firefighters are the “protectors” of society, you might say. They fight fires and criminals — but do they do it out of the kindness of their hearts or for the money? m29440204_514x260-Rochester-HeroesIf they are motivated by money, would you put your life in their hands? The genuine heroes seek to help others; they don’t serve others to acquire material gain. True heroes are caring, compassionate individuals who want to save and improve people’s lives independent of external rewards.

Heroism is contagious. One act of heroism inspires another individual to act heroically, as well as another, creating this wonderful domino effect. A single heroic action can have ripple effects that can transform an entire community; the community then affects the city, and the city can inspire a nation and the world. Never underestimate the cumulative social impact of heroism.

Heroism in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary has several definitions:

1 : A mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability.

2 : An illustrious warrior.

3: A man admired for his achievements and noble qualities.

4 : One who shows great courage.

Notice that heroism is not limited by gender. Nor is it restricted by race, occupation, age, height, or weight. Anyone can be a hero, whether a mythological figure or an ordinary citizen. Adopting this broad perspective of heroism makes it clear that heroes need not have a title, a degree, or a large paycheck. Heroism only requires a willingness to selflessly serve others. And YOU can be that hero.

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Chelsea Chico is a first-generation Colombian-American studying Biology with aspirations to become a surgeon or dentist. She is 18 years old and completing her first year of post-secondary education. Some of the things she is passionate about are: electronic music, soccer, family, and standing up for what she feels is right.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: Heroic Dancing Virtuosos

Artist Heroes, Celebrity Heroes,

By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals

One popular genre of hero stories focuses on the tale of the buddy heroes.  These are heroes who pair up, enjoy great chemistry, display friendly friction, and perform heroic acts together that they could not perform individually.  Buddy hero stories have long graced the silver screen, television, and novels.  Examples include Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Thelma and Louise, Starsky and Hutch, Cagney and Lacey, The Hardy Boys, Tango and Cash, and The Blues Brothers.  Buddy hero stories differ from hero-sidekick stories in that buddy heroes are equals with complementary skill sets.  With buddy heroes, there is no dominant star; each is a force, and working together they can produce magic.

In the performing arts, perhaps no pair of heroes was more dominant and more revered than the dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  As with many buddy heroes, Astaire and Rogers were an unlikely pair.  Astaire was balding, less than handsome, and somewhat awkward as an actor.  His dancing, however, was poetry in motion, astonishing in its rhythm and technical virtuosity.

Ginger Rogers was beautiful, seductive, and comedic.  Her dancing was a notch below that of Astaire, but her playful coquettish style and natural charisma complemented him well.  Katherine Hepburn once observed, “He gives her class and she gives him sex.”  Together, Astaire and Rogers were greater than the sum of their parts.  No other dance team could compare.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers appeared in ten musical films together and revolutionized the musical film genre.  They dazzled audiences with their inventive flair.  Astaire was especially singled out for his skill and creativity on the dance floor.  Famed theater producer Jerome Robbins noted that “Astaire’s dancing looks so simple, so disarming, so easy, yet the understructure, the way he sets the steps on, over or against the music, is so surprising and inventive.” His perfectionism was legendary, yet he remained humble.  “I’ve never yet got anything 100% right,” he said. “Still it’s never as bad as I think it is.”

Alastair Macaulay from the New York Times once wrote, “Dancing together, Astaire and Rogers expressed many of love’s moods: courtship and seduction, repartee and responsiveness, teasing and challenge, the surprise of newfound harmony, the happy recapture of bygone romance, the giddy exhilaration of high spirits and intense mutual accord, the sense of a perfect balance of power, the tragedy of parting and, not least, the sense of love as role playing.”

Fred Astaire himself acknowledged that Ginger Rogers was by far his best dance partner.  “After a while everyone else who danced with me looked wrong,” he said.  “Ginger was brilliantly effective. She made everything work for her. Actually she made things very fine for both of us and she deserves most of the credit for our success.”  Although Astaire was singled out more often for his dancing prowess, many people appreciated Rogers’ great talent and believed she was underrated.  Said one fan, “Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, backwards and on high heels.”

Below is a collage of dance routines performed by the great Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Chiune Sugihara: The Hero Who Didn’t Walk Away

Unsung Heroes, War Heroes

By Jesse Schultz

There is a surprisingly profound line towards the end of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  It is uttered by Professor Dumbledore, who says “It takes great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends”. This idea is particularly true in warfare where actions by enemy troops are vilified, while actions by friends and allies are often excused or ignored. We see this phenomenon play out even today as the United States struggles with whether “enhanced interrogation” techniques are legal and ethical, and with the legitimacy of killing civilians during drone strikes.

This was a situation facing a man named Chiune Sugihara in the waning years of Imperial Japan when he bore witness to the beginning of one of the most abhorrent acts of evil ever committed.  Born in Yaotsu, Japan on January 1, 1900, Chiune Sugihara was raised in a middle-class rural family. His physician father had wished him to follow in his footsteps but Chiune purposely failed the required exams and instead majored in the English language and passed the Foreign Ministry Scholarship exam. He was soon recruited by the Japanese Foreign Ministry and sent to China.

It was in China that hints of his future acts of heroism would come to light. During this time Japan had invaded China and the mistreatment of the locals was commonplace. In protest of the way the Chinese were being treated, Chiune resigned his post as Deputy Foreign Minister in Manchuria.

In 1939 Chiune was then sent to the Japanese Consulate in Lithuania. On September 1st of that year Nazi Germany invaded Poland and the persecution of Jews began almost immediately. By 1940 Jewish refugees from Poland and from within Lithuania itself began to seek ways to flee the country. This required visas and many countries were refusing to issue them. Japan itself had stringent requirements that the refugees did not meet. Chiune inquired to his superiors three times requesting instructions, but in all cases requests to issue the visas were declined.

It might have been easier to simply walk away and do nothing but instead, in July of 1940, against orders, Sugihara started issuing visas and even directly negotiated with officials of the Soviet Union to allow the refugees to pass through Russia on their way to Japan. He continued to write visas, reportedly spending 18-20 hours a day until September 4th when the Consulate was closed. During the night prior to the closing, Chiune and his wife Yukiko spent the entire night writing visas, and Chiune was reportedly even preparing them en route to the train station where he threw them out the window of the train to waiting refugees as it left the station. In a final act of desperation he resorted to throwing blank pages with the Consulate seal and his signature, which could be filled out later.

The exact number of Jews saved by Chiune Sugihara is not known but estimates put the number around 6,000. By comparison Oskar Schildler saved around 1,100 to 1,200 lives.  Chiune’s actions seemed to have given him few accolades immediately after the war. The Japanese foreign office asked him to resign due to downsizing —  though some have suspected it might have stemmed from his activities in Lithuania. To make a living he began selling light bulbs door-to-door and later he found work in an export company.

Finally in 1968 he was located by one of his beneficiaries and later visited Israel. In 1985 he was awarded the Righteous Among the Nations award by the Israeli government. In June of the next year Chiune Sugihara passed away in Kamakura, Japan.  Today he has streets in Lithuania named after him, an asteroid (25893 Sugihara), a synagogue in Massachusetts, a memorial at his birthplace and in Lithuania, and a memorial in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles. It seems inaccurate to refer to Chiune Sugihara as an “unsung hero” due to his many honors but many more should hear his story.

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The author, Jesse Schultz, has contributed several other essays on heroism here, including Love Thy Enemy: Opposing Heroes and Night Witches: the Forgotten Aviatrixes.  Two of his previous blog posts on Merlin and The Makers of Fire will appear in our new book Heroic Leadership: An Influence Taxonomy of 100 Exceptional Individuals.

 

Becoming A Hero: What’s Holding You Back?

Commentary and Analysis, , , ,

By Scott T. Allison

The ingredients of heroism are well known to storytellers. A hero embarks on a journey of some kind that begins when he or she is cast into a dangerous, unfamiliar world. The hero is charged with accomplishing a daunting task and receives assistance from unlikely sources. There are frightening obstacles along the way and villainous characters to overcome. After many trials and much suffering, the hero prevails and then bestows a gift to society.

Often overlooked in this journey is the key to the hero’s success, namely, the hero’s acquisition of an important quality that he or she lacks. All heroes start out “incomplete” in some sense. They lack some essential inner quality that they must develop to succeed. This quality can be self-confidence, humility, courage, compassion, faith, resilience, or some fundamental truth about themselves and the world.

The question I have for you, the reader, is: What inner quality are you missing that is holding you back from becoming the hero of your own life story? Another way to put it: What attributes are you missing that you need for success?

If you’re like millions of people, you aren’t sure what you’re missing. Circumstances may not yet have revealed your missing quality. Or people have yet to enter your life who can guide you. If that’s the case, be patient. Buddhists have a saying: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

Who are the teachers in your life? Let’s look at two examples of how heroes in the movies have received help from others to receive their missing qualities.

The Wizard of Oz. In the classic 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is sent by a tornado to the strange Land of Oz. Her quest is to find her way home, and she receives help from three unlikely sources—a scarecrow, a tin man, and a lion. She is mentored by a friendly witch named Glinda and, later, by a mysterious wizard. Along the way she overcomes an evil witch, flying monkeys, and apple-throwing trees.

Dorothy’s missing quality is an understanding of “home”. Her new friends teach her that she has always possessed the power to get home. She discovers that home means more than just your house or apartment. It’s wherever the people you love—and who love you—are found.

Gravity. Nominated for Best Picture in 2013, Gravity stars Sandra Bullock as Dr. Ryan Stone, a scientist stranded in space after her space capsule is damaged. Dr. Stone is terrified and appears to lack the confidence and inner resources to survive her dire situation.

Veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski, played by George Clooney, is there to mentor her and instill her with confidence. Dr. Stone summons the courage and resourcefulness to cheat death and return to earth safely.

Movie heroes are not the only ones who benefit from good mentor figures. Rocker Gene Simmons credits his mother for teaching him prudence and self-control. Actor Jennifer Lawrence has thanked her father for helping her learn how to deal with adversity. Barack Obama has said that his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, taught him the importance of sacrifice: “She’s the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life.”

In every good hero story, the hero discovers that he or she is missing something and receives help from others to acquire what’s missing. Every human life is a hero-like journey, making it imperative that each one of us identifies our missing quality.

Here are four steps you can take—not necessarily in this order:

1. Make an inventory of your strengths and weaknesses as a person.

2. Develop a list of your life goals.

3. Assess what’s missing to achieve your goals. List the strengths you lack and the weaknesses that need removal.

4. Find mentor figures to help you.

Some people do Step 4 first. A good mentor can help you identify your strengths and pinpoint what qualities are needed to fulfill your goals. Good mentors should be brutally honest about what you’re missing and how to acquire the qualities you lack.

Many of us fail, and fail badly, before we are willing to seek the help of a mentor figure. Learning from our failures and getting help from mentors is a sign of healthy human development.

Identifying missing qualities and acquiring them is essential for heroes to succeed with their missions. The discovery (or recovery) of these attributes is the basis for the personal transformation that the hero undergoes during the journey. The most satisfying heroes we encounter in storytelling and in real life are heroes who experience this transformative discovery of their missing quality.

One final caveat: Beware the dark mentor. As movies such as Whiplash and Fifty Shades of Grey show us, there are false mentors out there who will send you in the wrong direction. Choose your teachers carefully.

References

Allison, S. T., & Goethals, G. R. (2011). Heroes: What they do and why we need them. New York: Oxford University Press.

Allison, S. T., & Goethals, G. R. (2013). Heroic leadership: An influence taxonomy of 100 exceptional individuals. New York: Routledge.

Campbell, J. (1949). The hero with a thousand faces. New York: New World Library.

Franco, Z. E., Blau, K., & Zimbardo, P. G. (2011). Heroism: A conceptual analysis and differentiation between heroic action and altruism. Review of General Psychology, 15, 99-113.

Goethals, G. R., & Allison, S. T. (2012). Making heroes: The construction of courage, competence, and virtue. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. San Diego: Elsevier.

Smith, G., & Allison, S. T. (2014). Reel heroes, Volume 1. Agile Writer Press.

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How Hero Stories Energize Us

Commentary and Analysis, , , , ,

By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we introduced the concept of the Heroic Leadership Dynamic, which we define as a system of psychological forces that can explain the human tendency to generate heroes, benefit from them, and even become them. For as long as humans have been able to communicate through spoken language, they have told stories to each other.  These stories, we suspect, were almost always about heroes.

In Part 2, we proposed that people are nourished by hero stories in at least two essential ways. These tales serve epistemic and energizing functions. The epistemic function refers to the wisdom that hero stories impart to us. The energizing function refers to the ways that hero stories heal us, inspire us, and promote personal growth.  In Part 2 we described the epistemic or wisdom benefits of hero tales. Now we turn to the energizing benefits.

As early humans sat around fire at the end of the day, they were in need of more than just physical comfort. Yes, there was disease and injury, but undoubtedly there was also fear and despair. We suspect that people longed for some understanding of their miseries, some meaning behind the suffering they saw all around them. Storytelling provided a salve for their psychological wounds.

Hero stories served at least three important energizing functions for early man — and for contemporary humans, too. Hero stories heal psychic wounds, inspire us to action, and promote personal growth. Let’s look at each of these functions.

1.   Hero Stories Heal Psychic Wounds

Hero stories serve a healing function in several ways. First and foremost, storytelling is community-building. For early humans, just the act of gathering around fires to hear the stories established social connections with others. This sense of family or community was, and is, central to human emotional well-being.

The content of hero stories also promotes a strong sense of social identity. If the hero is an effective one, he or she performs actions that exemplify the community’s most cherished values. The affirmation of a shared worldview, told vividly in storytelling, serves an important healing function.

Group storytelling is, in a sense, a form of group therapy. Many practicing psychologists believe that group therapy owes its effectiveness to group members’ willingness to share their own personal stories of hardship and triumph. When members share their success stories, hope is engendered. Many 12-step recovery groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, also promote healing through the open sharing of members’ stories.

2. Hero Stories Inspire Us

The classic mythic hero is often an underdog or ordinary person who is summoned on a journey full of extraordinary challenges. Our research on underdogs shows that we identify with them, root for them, and judge them to be highly inspiring when they triumph. Success on the hero journey requires courage and resilience, which are two of the most inspiring traits among the Great Eight characteristics of heroes.

According to Joseph Campbell, hero stories teach us that challenges and setbacks in life are to be embraced, not avoided. According to Campbell, obstacles help us “learn to recognize the positive values in what appear to be the negative moments and aspects of your life. The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”

What Campbell means, of course, is that every human life mirrors the classic hero journey, and that this great adventure, even with its painful parts, can be a source of inspiration. The ups and downs of life are inter-connected, with the downs actually being necessary to produce the ups. This fact should encourage us all to trust that the main purpose of adversity is to transform our lives in ways that we cannot even imagine.

3. Hero Stories Promote Personal Growth

Psychiatrist Karl Stern once wrote that “the evolution of human growth is an evolution from an absolute need to be loved towards a full readiness to give love.” This developmental trend nicely summarizes the transformation that a mythic hero undergoes during the hero journey. At the outset of the journey, the hero is initially missing some important quality. It is often self-confidence, humility, or an accurate sense of one’s true purpose in life.  The hero journey is always a journey toward vast personal discovery.

The discovery, moreover, is the basis of a character transformation that enables the hero to bestow a gift or boon to his or her community.  This boon is the consummate heroic act that culminates the journey. Every good hero does more than just enjoy a voyage of self-discovery. Good heroes use the gift of transformation to change the world for the better. This type of gift-giving is apparent in 12-Step recovery groups, which require members to undergo 11 steps of self-discovery followed by a 12th and final step requiring them to “carry the message” to others in need.

Perhaps Joseph Campbell said it best: “When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.”

Author Ken Wilbur believes that heroic transformation often begins with the hero first harboring an elitist view of the world and then eventually moving toward an egalitarian view.  Famed psychologist Erik Erickson also saw the classic human trajectory as beginning with ego-constructing activities early in life and then moving toward a stage of generative activities late in life. When we are generative, we are giving to others what was given to us.

In short, the remarkable personal growth we witness in hero stories serves as a blueprint for our own growth journeys. We need only trust that the path of the hero is our own path toward redemption and growth. When we embrace that path, with all its inherent hurts and fears, we are charting our own course toward beautiful transformation. In this way, hero stories energize us toward self-improvement and selfless action.

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This series is based on a chapter in our book, Conceptions of Leadership, published by Palgrave Macmillan. The citation for this chapter:

Allison, S. T., & Goethals, G. R. (2014). “Now he belongs to the ages”: The heroic leadership dynamic and deep narratives of greatness. In Goethals, G. R., et al. (Eds.), Conceptions of leadership: Enduring ideas and emerging insights. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9781137472038.0011

The Role of God in the Heroic Journey

Commentary and Analysis, , ,

By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals

In November of 2012, Paramount Pictures released a film called Rise of the Guardians, based loosely on William Joyce’s The Guardians of Childhood book series.   The opening scene of the movie is jarring.  The dead body of an adolescent boy, Jack, floats upward toward the ice-covered surface of the lake in which he has just drowned.  We see what Jack would see were he alive – a jagged hole in the ice above him, growing closer as he rises in the water, and beyond that hole we see an impossibly big, beautiful full moon shining down on his lifeless body.

You probably know the rest of the story.  Not because you’ve necessarily seen the movie or because the story is particularly predictable.  You know it because the tale of the hero’s journey has been told countless times in different forms across all human cultures.  Our hero, Jack, is dead physically but not dead in spirit.  That beautiful moon, which pulled him toward its light, decides to endow Jack with immortality along with the power to create instant snow and ice.  He is now Jack Frost.

Rise of the Guardians is a secularized version of an ancient tale of God’s role in creating and assisting heroes on their journeys.  The moon, of course, symbolizes a divine or higher power, a source of immense light, wisdom, and authority.  The moon is also a mystery to Jack; he does not know why the moon has transformed him into Jack Frost, nor does he understand why the other guardians of the world – Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy — wish to recruit him into their heroic fold to fight the story’s villain.  Jack’s efforts to infer the moon’s intentions and motives are a recurring theme in the film.

The spiritual significance of the hero’s journey has been aptly described by Richard Rohr in his 2011 book Falling Upward.  Rohr argues that all heroes are summoned by a higher power to a great journey, and that the catalytic agent of this journey is some type of death, deficit, or wounding suffered by the hero.  The story is as old as the fall of Adam and Eve in the first chapter of Genesis, and it emerges in countless stories of ugly ducklings, Cinderellas, and other underdogs who through magic or divine intervention turn their wounds into triumph.

In Rise of the Guardians, the large, luminous moon pulls Jack toward its light in a manner consistent with many accounts of near-death experiences.  His physical failing is necessary for his spiritual rising and for his true identity to emerge.  In his new life as Jack Frost, the boy is tormented by the fact that no one can see him or his icy cold handiwork.  For centuries he remains unrecognized and unloved, and he is haunted by his lack of memory over the circumstances of his death in the icy waters.

With the help of another character, Baby Tooth, Jack’s memory is restored.  He comes to understand that he died on the icy lake while saving his sister’s life, thus illuminating his destiny as a deserving guardian.  This knowledge empowers Jack to complete the heroic journey that the moon set in motion centuries earlier.  He uses his wounds to transform himself and to redeem the world, much like the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament.  Richard Rohr argues that nearly all hero stories follow this pattern.  Unlocking the divine secret of our wounds is the surest path to heroism.

Rise of the Guardians is not the best film of 2012, nor is it the best hero story of the year.  But it skillfully uses the classic elements of the hero’s journey to craft a compelling tale of loss, pain, transformation, and redemption.  The moon’s portrayal of a higher power that instigates the entire journey is unmistakable.  Richard Rohr believes that a higher power summons all humans on this heroic path.  Our falling is necessary for our rising, with setbacks serving as the essential redemptive seeds of our own heroism.  Rohr quotes Julian of Norwich: “First, there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall.  Both are the mercy of God.”