Heroes, Villains, and Victims

About two weeks ago, I got into a fight.

Well, not a fight so much as a disagreement. It happened on Facebook, so it was really nothing more than a few concise messages left on one another’s “walls”.

How did it begin?

I’d joined a group (FB is big on groups) whose sole purpose was to protest the existence and request the removal of another group called, ‘Soldiers are NOT heroes’. A friend saw my status update and asked why I would ever participate in such anti-democratic nonsense. Why, he asked, would I ever want to prevent others from exercising free speech?

Although he was correct in his advice to simply avoid the offending site, I told my friend that my action was an equally democratic expression of speech: I happen to think that soldiers are heroes. This is not a stretch for me since, like Forrest Gump’s Lieutenant Dan, I come from a military family. But I am neither idealistic nor naïve in my belief. I am fully aware that while our armed forces are responsible for doing quite a bit of good both in our nation and around the world, some of the greatest atrocities of the past 100 years were committed by uniformed men who justified their actions under the guise of ‘just following orders’.

My friend and I had a couple back and forths (at one point, he told me that if I really did believe that being a soldier, in and of itself, made one a hero then I was truly lost) before we agreed to disagree. No harm, no foul.

But the exchange has stayed with me. I keep thinking about the idea of heroes and villains. It is said that one man’s heaven is another man’s hell. A variation says that one man’s hero is another man’s villain. I tend to think that one man’s villain is another man’s victim.

There isn’t a lot of agreement on the subject of modern day heroes. Maybe because no one- beyond their own private fantasies, that is- sets out to become one. There is no Hero College or Heroes, Inc. seeking applications or resumes. We like to believe that, given the right circumstance, everyone has an inner hero who will rise to the challenge. I suppose this explains why we give the heroes we do agree on such extraordinary exposure. Witness Chelsey Sullenberger, the media-crowned Hero of the Hudson. I doubt anyone would argue that a pilot who managed to spare the lives of 155 passengers by landing an engineless plane in the middle of the Hudson River wasn’t a hero.

Villains, however, are a more complicated subject, whether in the movies, on TV, in books and especially the comics. Nearly every guy has a Bond villain or two within just yearning to breathe free and utter a few choice quotes (No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to…) given the flimsiest of excuses.

We make lists of our Top 10 villains every time a particularly villainous villain (yeah, I know that’s grammatically questionable) comes along. That doesn’t happen with heroes. Once they’ve fulfilled their mission, we tend to forget them. Villains, however, can arouse our patriotic spirit, bring us together and unite us against a common enemy long after the hero is gone. We need villains, but heroes? Meh.

Can heroes survive in a gray world where the lines are so blurred and it’s so much easier (and fun) to get excited about villains? I wonder. And if they can, how long before they begin to look identical to the villains?

Personally, I believe we need more heroes. And not just the larger than life, save-a-person-from-a-fire kind, either. No, I’m referring to ordinary heroes- people willing to volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters, do the right thing when no one’s watching, and do the jobs, as Mr. Sullenberger would say, they were trained to do. Whether we call them heroes or not, we’re all just a little better off because of their efforts.

Update – I just learned that the FB group I mentioned was removed. The one I joined has been renamed ‘Do You Believe Soldiers Are Heroes?’, and touts itself as a place for ‘fair debate and discussions about the armed forces’.