Everyone Wants to be a Hero

We are fascinated by heroes. We adore them in our novels of fiction and we praise them with media coverage in real life. There is a social component to human nature, that is, we seek the approval of our peers. Those who are not leaders dream to be. We are compelled to risk our standings and sometimes our lives for the chance to prove ourselves to the greater audience of mankind. I think this is just a personal security device that is ultimately an attempt to validate ourselves as important persons within the group. Human beings have a strong desire to eradicate or hide our deficiencies and given the opportunity we will accept the challenge which defies our collective values so long as that value is strongly enough recognized by the individual.

People make mistakes though. There are those compelled by ignorance, or faulty conceptions of reality, who believe that their determined efforts will gain the praise they seek. Suicide bombers are an example of a group of people who mistakenly believe they will be rewarded with the praise of the almighty god for such heroism and sacrifice. It is because people are inherently selfish that we do kind acts. We sacrifice our resources, health, and sometimes our lives because we crave the possibility of immortality of praise. So that we do so doesn't mean that we do not care about others and that we care only for ourselves rather it means that we justifications of beneficence are always based or rooted in selfish ends, as all perceived choices in human actions are made.

Superman devoted his life to the greater good, to helping others, to upholding the American way of life. We can put ourselves in his shoes and fashion a taste of the virtues he accomplishes because they are so detailed in the comics and movies. Superman wasn't human but the same rules apply to all life. Life, as it is known is inherently selfish for the reason that evolution necessitates it. Those life forms that weren't interested in survival would not have made it, therefore they would not have successfully passed on their genes.

Heroes are not superbeings. They are normal people who managed to successfully pull off attempts at securing their values, which so happen to be conducive to the majority values of the time. Heroes usually reveal themselves to collect on the praise they expect from their peers but occasionally they are anonymous. Rarely they are anonymous. They usually get interviewed and get all worked up emotionally and sometimes cry not because they made altruism a reality but because their sacrifices were reconized and their values were validated by the greatest audience. For those that are anonymous they are truely devoted to a higher power. They are commited to believing they shall be rewarded in the afterlife. There is however a minuscule fraction that do not answer to man nor god. This is a group that is both rational yet determined in their values yet they still seek something and that is only personal validation. They seek to appease their personal insecurities which rule their lives.