Texts:Rom-E-68b-E-Pur-3

Purposes
Eight Reflective Essays

3—In Praise of Humble Heroes

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

George Eliot, Middlemarch

3:¶1

Over time, the strength and quality of a community depend on an intricate web of reciprocal influences between all its various members. The vitality of the common life springs from the unique inspiration that each person can draw from his daily contact with men who incarnate diverse competencies. The true engine of history is the inspiration that each man, for better or for worse, continually gives his peers. In view of this fact, one of the serious threats to democracy is the way it occasions in the common man a self-effacing elitism in which he comes to rely uncritically and happily on the leadership of the prominent few whom he would not presume to second guess. Rationalizing his inability to approach the top of an "open society," he accepts himself as an ordinary Joe and decides to take things as they come, leaving it to those with brains or brawn—or better yet "connections"—to exert themselves in a struggle to excel. This quiescent elitism in the many simply feeds an arrogant elitism in the few. The ordinary Joe has an interest in depicting the few as larger than life; for then their omnipotence further justifies his quiescence, and, ominously, the extraordinary few then begin to believe the popular tales of their prowess. Such relations beget mediocrity in the many and arrogance in their leaders—a dangerous combination likely, as Thucydides showed, to lead to an embarrassing demonstration that the loud talker's stick was small.

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It is important that we resist this cycle of influence, for it is the surest cause of democratic destruction. The antidote to it is a truly democratic elitism, which is nurtured by reiterating at every occasion that all does not depend on those in charge. Great leaders cannot make a people great; only a great people can make their leaders great. This matter is fundamental to the educator, to the educator that each of us is as we go about our daily deeds. Excellence is a quality that is not confined to the few, for excellence is always in a particular capacity, and it is open to each and every man to excel in doing what he, in particular, has to do: he excels by surpassing himself in the pursuit of his possibilities. Such excellence, by creating a full repertory of exemplary characters who inspire in us an appreciation of assorted abilities, is the bond that holds the community together and the fount from which its vigor flows. Human excellence is subtle and complex; it is not nurtured well in the hothouse of stereotyped virtuosities. Each youth forms his character by observing thousands and thousands of examples. To be sure, for any particular person only a few from the myriad serve as real models; but the capacity of a person to see another as his model results largely because the youth has less intimately examined many other exemplary figures and because, both with and against them, he has formed nascent standards by which he can identify his personal prototypes. In this sense, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker are the world's most important teachers, for it is in daily contact with mundane, local competencies that the children of all, of even the exalted, form their elementary standards. Hence, a community should most prize a healthy complement of humble heroes.

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A hero is a man who takes the effort to be himself. It is surprising that one should speak about "the effort to be himself," for in a very literal sense the only thing that a man can be without effort, thanks to the law of identity, is himself. But on examination such literalness proves deceptive. A man is not one of those static substances to which the law of identity was designed to apply; a man is a perpetual becoming, and to be himself, a man must continually exert effort to become something very special, his self. The self denotes for a man his potential accomplishments by which he can add to the world his unique, personal contribution. The self is always invested with a sense of opportunity, creativeness, and particularity; one sees here something that one can and should do, and one is fired by the excitement of having a function and a chance to show one's excellence in its performance, perhaps to no one but one's self! At the same time, the self is always dangerous, for the pursuit of it carries with it the threat of failure; with respect to it, one is on one's own. Ortega y Gasset put it well in his Meditations on Quixote: "to be a hero means to be one out of many, to be oneself. If we refuse to have our actions determined by heredity or environment it is because we seek to base the origin of our actions on ourselves and only on ourselves. The hero's will is not that of his ancestors nor of his society, but his own. This will to be oneself is heroism."

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It takes effort, however, to be oneself in this sense, for each of us is surrounded by ready-made images that are tendered to us by our ancestors and society, two powerful authorities, and these images beckon us to give them flesh and blood. By so inserting ourselves into the available stereotypes we add nothing to the world, nothing vital that is, but merely help it be one of those dull substances that are what they are. Like Odysseus, every hero must tie himself to his ship in order to resist the siren song; and this resistance is not easy, for at any moment the images of success will always seem much more sure and substantial than the hopes of the hero. Such resistance is particularly difficult for the humble hero because he is not a man of exalted pretentious; he must be ready not only to take real risks of failure, but to incur the derision of his fellows. The aristocrat easily plays at independence; the little man finds it hard to assert his heartfelt aspirations against the advice of those content to follow conventional wisdom and smart money. What courage, in its fullest, Socratic sense, must a shopkeeper have to risk his hard-won savings to start a local store in a time when supermarkets are the thing! But he is a man who knows that the only thing to fear is the weakness that seduces one into renouncing one's chosen way of life. Perhaps his store will fail, it may endure, it might even flourish—such uncertainties are the stuff of keeping shop; and it is not his improbable success, but his having lived in sincere fidelity to his intentions, that truly makes the man a hero.

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Excellence, however, entails esteem; and here our contemporary democracy displays its weakness. True esteem requires proximity so that a person can be valued for what he is; and it is essential that diverse persons be in proximity with one another if a web of mutual esteem is to hold the community together. This esteem is the appreciation of one another as exemplary types, as persons from whom the others can learn; and it is the recognition each receives that makes his heroic effort seem worthwhile. Like the star, the craftsman needs his audience, and he thrives on knowing that those around him appreciate his art. Unfortunately, the scale of our society often prevents such proximity; except for friends, the people around us pass from our sphere of interest before we can slowly learn to appreciate their inner strengths and weaknesses. In the place of personal esteem we substitute publicity: a pallid poster celebrating the courtesy of bus drivers who work routes we've never traveled.

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It is against this backdrop that we should judge contemporary movements towards localism. From the point of view of the aggregate, these movements may seem, in the short-run, to slow our cherished progress: black separatism may slow integration or even the growth of family income for both black and white; block associations may impede grand plans for urban renewal; and local control of city schools may upset teaching conditions and lower performance on various standardized tests. But it is not only the short-run that counts in the life of a community. Over the long-run, a community must maintain a pervasive variety of virtues to which we are all in proximity and from which we each can form significant standards. Without such a variety of virtues, publicity will induce blind arrogance in the leaders and spineless mediocrity in their followers. We have gone far in this direction, especially far in public education. The formation of policy is far removed from the locus of its effects. The average teacher seems to have renounced his self; rather than seeking esteem for his personal competence as it is judged by those who are in proximity to him, he seems content to partake in the impersonal power that can be wielded by massed publicity. By these means the teachers' leaders can provide their faceless following with higher wages and ever more rigid conditions of work. But in the long run wealth and security are merely the sweetening on insentience; the real challenge before each teacher is to realize those unique, personal qualities by which he can become a humble hero to the boy on the block.

Robert Oliver
Teachers College Record (vol. 70, no. 3, December 1968)