Hero Worship: Don't

Hero worship. One word: don't.

Inspired in part by the litany of recently reported wrong-doings by high-fliers in SIN city, combined with my own experiences lurking about the rich and the powerful, I just think that hero worship is unhealthy.

Now, I could easily invoke my beliefs as to why hero worship isn't a good idea, but I won't. Let's go via a more secular and rational route to convince instead of relying on faith.

So the thing is, when we idolise some person, we often do so in some particular context. Someone might idolise a specific musician because of that musician's musical abilities (it doesn't matter if it's some rock band person, or a more ``traditional'' classical musician). Some might idolise a particular rich person because of their wealth/business acumen, or a powerful person due to their political/authoritative prowess. We call these people our idols because they have some quality that we strongly acknowledge and enjoy.

That's generally fine and dandy. The problem comes when these start reaching into the realm of putting these completely human people on pedestals, and starting to see them as paragons beyond their field. In the eyes of the people then, these idols of theirs can do no wrong.

But here's the thing, just because someone has stellar skill/outcomes from a specific domain is no indication that they have an overall stellar skill/outlook on other domains, adjacent or not. In fact, I would go as far as to claim without rigorous proof that anyone who shows superlative achievements in one field is probably balanced by a flabbergasting flaw that can cause one to literally facepalm in absolute disbelief.

There's nothing mystical about the existence of such a balance---everyone passes time at the same rate [of one second per second]. Assuming that any outward demonstration of skill/talent is a literal product of hard work and effective practice means that there will always be a trade off between what someone excels at and what they ignore; something that the table-top role players will understand as a ``dump stat''.

There are of course exceptions in the form of truly gifted individuals who can reach prodigy-levels of achievement in a truly polymathic manner---but they are sufficiently rare that we do not need to worry about their existence.

What I'm getting at then is that for every hero, there is a dark side. We can acknowledge their achievements, but we should not lionise them beyond what we can see---a great musician may be a completely abusive spouse, and I think that it is fine to accept their great musicality, but condemn their abusiveness to their spouse, without breaking stride or running into a contradiction.

The problem with most people is that this type of nuanced thinking is just too much to bear. To many, life must be split completely into black and white. A hero must be worshipped thoroughly---their heroes can never do harm. And the prideful one being worshipped as a hero will often get high from all the accolades often enough that they truly start believing in themselves the way their fans believe in them, and thus lose their grounding.

And that is when the hero is most vulnerable to fall a fall that is as dramatic as it is traumatic.

Then again, maybe I'm just jaded. Maybe I am too cynical about the world, and see it not in the wonderfully vibrant colours the way those who hero-worship can. Maybe to me, everything is a shade of gray, with some being darker than others, while almost none are blindingly bright.

Maybe.

But I still stand by my words: hero worship---just don't.