It’s fair to say that the Scouts are obsessed with the mythology of the heroic rescue. When I was a teenager, they would regularly circulate stories of scouts rescuing people with medical emergencies, or who fell in the water.
It is also fair to say that this obsession with heroics is shared by our culture at large. Most of our stories–not just the superhero stories–are about people taking huge risks to save everyone.
However, I think there’s a major difference between the true heroic narratives as told by Scouts vs those told in fiction. In fiction, a huge risk means nothing because the outcome is decided by the author, not by probability. In the real world, encouraging scouts to take huge risks is basically asking for tragedy.
The scouting way is not to take huge risks, it’s to be prepared. In particular, scouts take lots of emergency response training. Something the training will say over and over again: don’t put yourself in danger trying to save someone else. For example, the Lifesaving Merit Badge emphasizes avoiding direct contact with a drowning person, because they can pull you into the water. Above all else, avoid creating a situation where now two people need rescue. First, call for help, then try safe methods of rescue.
For all my negative experiences with Scouts (not getting into it), I think the emphasis on emergency preparedness and safe heroics is laudable. In contrast, I do not think our culture’s emphasis on risky heroics is very laudable at all. This is a perpetual source of moral dissonance for me.
“Risky heroics are bad actually” is narrative heresy, but is also obviously true by simple ethical principles. Our ethical assessment of any given action is determined by all possible outcomes, not just the actual outcome. After all, at the time that you make the decision, you do not know the actual outcome. Ethical guidance cannot be based on that which is unknown.
To give a basic example, if you buy a lottery ticket and win, we can still say that buying the lottery ticket was a bad decision, because at the time you made that decision, the probability of winning was extremely low.
Or, suppose a character destroys an empty building. Even if nobody was in the building, someone could have been in the building. Even if no one was hurt, destroying buildings threatens to hurt people.
Likewise, if a hero protagonist chooses a million-to-one risk to save everyone, it might still have been a bad decision even if they succeed.
Granted, stories often have mitigating factors. For instance, the hero’s alternative options might be even worse, or there may not be alternatives at all. It also depends on what would happen if the hero were to fail. However, this is distinct from standard narrative logic, which evaluates heroism not based on alternative options or counterfactual outcomes, but only based on actual outcomes.
“Risky heroics are bad actually” is obviously true. It’s only a question of how far you decide to take it when thinking about fiction. Personally, I take it a lot further than most people, and tend to be fairly critical of mainstream fiction because of it. For example, I have the very unpopular opinion that The Last Jedi is the only good Star Wars. The Last Jedi is one of the only examples of popular media that actually takes a stance against risky heroics, as a central theme. It’s quite radical, especially in the context of a franchise that otherwise values placing trust in the Force.
However, I am aware that this is an extremely moralizing way to read fiction. Do we really need fiction to constantly reaffirm our moral values? Why can’t we just suspend a bit of disbelief, and enjoy a fictional trope that is used to heighten tension? And it’s not like most fiction is specifically trying to argue that risky heroics are the morally righteous course of action. It’s usually an incidental, unintended implication.
So, although I don’t particularly like the use of risky heroics within fiction, I do not try to persuade readers of my perspective. It is understandable and justifiable to simply accept the logic of fiction.
Rather, I ask: why is fiction like this? Why do we value risky heroics? Do people believe it, or do they merely accept it within the confines of fiction? Is it a western or Christian value, or is it cross-cultural? What narratives can we use to turn it on its head?
the two heroic sacrifices that went all the way in TLJ were depicted as totally positive. one could see the aftermath of them as undercutting that depiction, but ultimately not sure they did? there is one major problem i had with the movie in full. it didn’t really show how poe’s sacrifice of other people was wrong, at least, he never seemed like he had to learn a damn thing. maybe i missed something in that. anyway, heroic sacrifices to achieve modest military success, holding actions. it was a recurring theme, the movie felt some type of way about it, but i don’t 100% get what it was saying. i do think rose was the heart of the movie and whatever she was saying about it was probably the big idea, but the movie seemed to undercut her position as well.
christianity is western culture’s expression of heroic sacrifice, but asia is lousy with it too. i don’t know what their model for it is, but one could maybe find an answer in knowing more about those buddhist monks that self-immolated for protest. i get seeing the willingness to die to demonstrate your values as courageous, and that it would achieve that demonstration if nothing else, would inspire others.
part of that may spring from reptile machismo. when somebody threatens me, i want to fight, even if it is totally foolish or futile to do so. i usually resist the urge, which is why i’m not dead right now, but when somebody threatened to shoot my brother and i, he started walking faster and i couldn’t keep myself from walking slower. letting fight do the thinking.
if that’s true, it is less about heroism than about egotism, flexing how cool you are.
In the west, at least, there’s a tradition of heroic literature going back thousands of years, with sagas and tales of improbable feats and derring-do from Scandinavia to Rome and Greece. All of it caring only about actual outcomes and not counterfactuals. So, it seems pretty culturally ingrained.
I can’t speak to other cultures though. Those that also had fairly early literacy (notably India and the far east) should have left ample evidence whether they were similar or not, so perhaps someone more familiar with their literary traditions could weigh in?
@Bebe Melange
You could be right about The Last Jedi. It seemed to say that you shouldn’t make foolish sacrifices, only make sacrifices where it really counts. But where the story decided it counts may not have followed a very coherent logic.
Your comment also makes me think about sacrificial heroism, which is related to but distinct from risky heroism. It doesn’t bother me in quite the same way, since it’s not necessarily ignoring counterfactual possible outcomes.
true i went off on a tangent there. i probably just have less to say about risky heroism, can’t call much to mind on the topic. maybe it bothers you the way logical inconsistencies in time travel stories bother some people, and others can just shut off the brain and run with it. certainly i don’t recall being bothered by it at any point.
!!! I also loved how “The Last Jedi” went against the tropes about big risky heroics. In Star Wars movies, the heroes always have a complicated and risky plan, and then something goes wrong but they think on their feet and they’re able to succeed anyway, because it’s a movie… I have probably spent too much time thinking about the scene where C-3PO is telling Han the odds of successfully flying through the asteroid field are something like a million to one, and Han is like “NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS” and wow turns out he’s able to fly through the asteroid field. Like, what is this, the odds are a million to one, but if you’re really badass then you can overcome that? So this “million to one” statistic was calculated under the assumption that someone much less badass was flying through the asteroid field? Or what? It’s like, stats in movies are not treated as an actual description of reality, but just as a way to show how amazing the heroes are because they’re the rare exception.
Christianity is the wrong place to look for the origins of heroic literature. The Homeric epics are a much better starting point, although much of the ethos of Homeric heroism can be seen in germ in earlier epic literature, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh about a thousand years earlier. Suffice to say you really can’t talk about later ideas about “heroes” without going back to archaic Greece – the word itself is Greek, meaning originally a revered warrior who is the focus of ancestor worship. We still carry with us much of what we inherited from Homer when it comes to these ideas.
The key thing to note about Homeric heroes is that they are greater, stronger, more excellent (arete) and closer to the gods than lesser men. This is because they belong to a specific generation or race – the Heroic Generation or Men of Iron – that represents a last flowering of this kind of grandiosity before the time of lesser men, our time. The mythic schema found in Hesiod’s Theogony posits that there were once Men of Gold who lived very long lives and knew not pain, war or hunger, who gave way to less elevated Men of Silver and they in turn gave way to Men of Bronze. Then there was the Heroic race, and finally normal men like us. So, straight away, they are to be viewed as something altogether different from normal people. They are not straightforwardly role models to emulate, in the way later epic such as Vergil’s Aeneid would make its heroes. They are larger than life. Many had divine parentage, and most can rely on divine favour to help them achieve their goals. Achilles’ mother Thetis helps get him impenetrable armour from Hephaestus for instance, and Odysseus is aided by Athena in most of his endeavours.
But risk-taking is the absolute central fact of heroic life, because while heroes are closer to the gods, they are still mortal. To achieve glory and win fame, renown and a legend (kleos) a heroic mortal must do great things and put his life on the line. Kleos is the closest they get to immortality, and they take it absolutely seriously. Even sons of Zeus like Sarpedon die in the end – it is the defining fact of their lives. Heroes are driven by a superhuman surfeit of dynamic masculine energy (menos), because if they waste their talents and achieve no kleos they are failures. Achilles ponders this a lot in the Iliad – should he leave Troy, where he is fated to die, and live in shameful obscurity, or should he live up to his heroic calling. None of the heroes in Greek myth make the latter choice by definition – we wouldn’t have heard of them if they did.
But this larger-than-life dynamic energy is as much a curse as it is a blessing. It puts you outside human norms, bringing you closer to the bestial as much as to the divine. Achilles is a terrifying figure in battle, and his self-serving rage loses him close friends and nearly ruins the Greeks’ chance of taking Troy. Odysseus, normally the supreme master of self-control, is driven to seek gifts from cannibal giants and shout out his name when he has successfully tricked them, ruining his schemes and bringing a decade of Poseidon’s wrath down on his head.
The Odyssey, however, meditates on these heroic values and the extent to which they are a bad fit for living in a prosperous, successful human society. Odysseus returns from Troy and resumes his place as king in Ithaca through a mixture of traditional heroic endeavours (aristeia) and enduring the indignities of abject poverty, hunger, cold and powerlessness that beset regular human beings. He is not a very good leader of men, and over the course of his wanderings he gets many of his companions killed and fails to protect the rest from getting themselves killed. At the very height of his most daring heroic exploit, the ultimate in superhuman risk-taking endeavours – visiting the underworld and returning alive – he meets the epitome of traditional heroism, Achilles. Achilles is dead now and repudiates the entire heroic bargain that was his life – it wasn’t worth it in the end, because glory is fleeting and cold death is forever.
When he returns to Ithaca and has to face down the 108 suitors who are trying to marry his wife, Odysseus doesn’t storm in eyes blazing and try to kill them all then and there. He has learned valuable lessons about the human condition, so he puts aside his kleos temporarily and plays the part of a wandering beggar, the lowest of the low. He visits his poor swineherd and sounds out the palace servants to see who will aid him. He plots with his son to stack the deck in his favour by hiding all the weapons and ensuring his party falls on them when they are exhausted and sluggish after a feast. He starts the slaughter by shooting the ringleaders with arrows before they can fight back, and then takes an equal place in the battle line with his three allies where their collective tactics win the day. The day after the slaughter he has to contend with the suitors’ relatives and the real-world implications of his actions, albeit this problem is solved by a final deus ex machina from Athena.
So, I think we can take from the Homeric version of heroism a sense that risk-taking behaviour was always supposed to be seen in context. It is the behaviour of a very specific group of people in a very specific historical moment and with a very specific social dynamic.It brings as much bad as it does good – often more – and the glory it can bring is disruptive and breeds social instability. Inasmuch as Homeric heroes are role models for ordinary people, their actions have consequences, and you have to be very sure of your own excellence if you want to try for the risky glory. Whatever benefits such an outlook might provide must be combined with more civic-minded and collectivist attitudes to achieve a stable and prosperous society.
Culturally speaking, I think this take on heroism reflects a move from dark-age warrior-aristocratic culture to the more settled culture of the archaic city-states. The old-fashioned, traditional Achillean heroes are not who society needs right now, though the allure of their glorious masculine power is still there and must be guarded against. Odysseus represent a new type of hero, or a hero compromising with the needs of the next generation of normal men. Perhaps this struggle is still with us today?
@cartomancer,
Thanks for your insight based on the classics!
I love how you challenge the common narrative around risky heroics. It’s refreshing to see such a nuanced perspective, especially when most stories glorify high-risk actions without considering the real-world consequences. I think a lot of us, especially in popular media, are conditioned to expect and admire the ‘sacrifice everything to save the day’ trope, but it’s true—most of the time, the risks don’t outweigh the potential harms. The concept of ethical decision-making in the face of uncertainty really makes you rethink how we frame heroism.