The Perils of Leadership

Originally Titled "What Makes a Hero?"

What Makes a Hero?

We have many examples in various different mediums of Heroes, But what makes a Hero a Hero?

Joseph Campbell gives an example of a Hero as someone who go forth then comes back with prior unknown knowledge.

Comics give examples of Heroes as people with extraordinary abilities who do extraordinary things.

Fiction will give examples of people being put in extraordinary situations, but coming out ahead.

I think that last one is really what we can most relate to. Those who have been put in extraordinary situations and still come out ahead; be that ahead, morally, emotionally, or otherwise.

**** for the record I really do not like that the only female in a cape, the universal symbol for heroes, is what it is. I have known way too many empowered females who do not fit that shape ***

Nurses, Doctors, Emergency Personnel ... They are all Heroes. Yet very few wear capes, or fit the picture above. These are people who dedicate often a decade of their life to learning just to serve ... us sick bastards who often do not give them or their families the credit they are due.

In this day and age of massive needs of help, our normal Heroes cannot save us, so we turn to imaginary ones; Comics, T.V., Movies, Etc. Yet in doing this we forget that these people we are expecting us to save us from ourselves are human just like us. In doing this we put the expectations of the fictional characters on them. 

We set them up to fail us.

Let me repeat that ... WE set them up to fail us.

A human being is not a fictional character with extra attributes to help them in saving ourselves from ourselves. They are just as human as we are; just with a different knowledge set.

Not only are we setting up our emergency services to fail us, but we also set up our political leaders too. We expect our leaders to lead us out of this dead end cannon that we have chosen to go into, forgetting that it was our own head strong notions that got us there in spite of our leaders trying to lead us else where. 

Why is this happening? It is actually the same mentality that the Nazi's had exploited. The willingness to do things that are abhorrent if there is a person who has ordered it with sufficient believable authority to absolve you of responsibility of the act. In other words; very few of us are willing or strong enough to withstand the full weight of social pressure.

yet we punish those who do...

Those who are strong enough to withstand the onslaught of social pressure face being numbed to the needs of others to the exclusion of their ideal or destroyed emotionally, physically, mentally by those who would help them.

It is time that those of us to make up the flock decide to take responsibility for what we expect others to do for us. If you are not willing to make the decisions; aka do the job  yourself, then you need to stop telling those who are they are horrible. Instead try to understand the pressure that they are under from you and how you can change that pressure, because ...

Ultimately ...

Every leader depends on those they lead giving their power to them to lead.

It is time for those of us who follow a leader to take responsibility for the pressure we put on our leaders and give them better feed back on what we want.