Tiw's Day Thing: 1/18/23

generate term: “the hero we need but don’t want,” so apparently we need a Doodyman meme.

generate term: “everyone a hero”

When heroes go down
They go down fast
So don't expect any time to
Equivocate the past
- Suzanne Vega, "When Heroes Go Down"

An interaction today:

A: Many of us are still Diogenes out here hoping you find (or are) the one honest man.

B: Nobody is entirely honest. We are all terrified children in the world. Don't put the responsibility on me to be the one honest man.

I wish I had more time to write on creating and raising expectations in each community to the point that there is greater honesty and less fear. That's what we need--every man.

(I always anonymize people who aren’t me in quotes from somewhere else unless they are bona fide public figures or tell me not to. This is out of respect. If you’re A or B and want to be named, tell me.)

A big part of my thinking on social/cultural issues is a synthesis that I feel is very often ignored or deliberately uncoupled in one way or another:

How we want a problem to be solved + what “sticky” parts of human nature/fundamental human social behavior contribute to that problem + what the ROI is of efforts to defy fundamental human nature + is it actually fundamental or do we just think/want to think it is

I very often find in discussions of modern cultural issues that at least one of these components is, unconsciously or unintentionally but often cynically, removed from the equation. I find this across the entire political/ideological spectrum.

Sexual aggression, manifesting as what we call “rape,” seems like a fundamental component of “uncivilized” human behavior. We see other primates and countless other animals engaged in it, and no, other animals don’t have the same values and mental constructs that we do, but anyone who has ever been around animals has seen plenty of examples of reproductive activity that is obviously coerced, frequently violent, and is unwanted and not enjoyed by at least one other animal involved. We also know that attitudes about how immoral this is when humans do it have differed across the history of humanity.

This essay isn’t about rape or how to define it; I’m bringing it up because I think most people would agree that pursuing nonconsensual, violent sex is something that probably exists as a “primal” coded behavior in humans, and simultaneously agree that our modern society (writing from here in the Western first world) absolutely doesn’t want it as a cultural norm.

We could point to lots of other activities- infanticide, theft, murder in general- that are criminalized in modern society that have their roots in instinctive or primal human behavior.

So to an extent, we recognize that- at least from where we are here, in this moment in space and time- the “natural state” of human behavior unadulterated by any limits or controls created by social systems is not something most of us would desire or enjoy. The vast majority of us do not want to live in a pure jungle.

Simultaneously, modern history- especially very recent modern history- has demonstrated that pushing hard on “natural” human traits- e.g. that most humans are heterosexual cisgendered people that want to reproduce and form families that they will prioritize, that most people behave in predictable ways when their senses of identity or tribal affiliation are threatened, that most people are of average intelligence, etc.- fails disastrously and has destructive consequences. You can clearly only go so far in demanding that large groups of humans act outside their “nature” and expect it to be tolerated or successful. Social engineering has hard limits and ideologies that require dramatic levels of social engineering are going to have equally dramatic backlashes if they fail and meta-homeostasis is sought.

Any of the arguments in that equation above, taken without consideration of the others, is either disingenuous or just plain wrong.

So. In service of the original topic.

It is human nature to process our experiences and perceptions narratively, and this leads to tendencies that transcend time and culture to seek individual representative humans- champions- that are expected to both symbolize AND execute social values and goals.

There’s only one Jesus, one Nietzchean Superman, and so on. There’s no government currently on earth that I’m aware of that doesn’t have an individual as “head of state,” even if that individual’s powers are largely ceremonial or symbolic.

We want heroes. We want a conceptual Big Man (one we’ve never met is fine). We crave personification. It’s probably harder than it’s worth to make people’s brains and metabrains stop thinking this way (a desire I’ve heard expressed more than once by certain kinds of idealistic collectivists).

Generate term: “someone to represent all our hopes and dreams”

So, here’s how I propose we split the baby in our current milieu. Rather than depend upon person B in the above discussion to be “the one honest man,” I think it’s fine to create a narrow, well-defined way in which the people in our sphere can serve as iconic examples.

There are ways in which I believe Person B can exist, for certain people’s needs and values, as a representative and hopeful symbol of certain things: a specific kind of activism, a specific way of living one’s natural talents, etc.

I say this as someone who really dislikes the concept of parasocial relationships and finds the way they often manifest to be icky and uncomfortable, but who also engages in pseudo-personified polytheism.

So, it’s okay to have heroes, and to the extent that they can serve as role models, it’s a positive practice. But if you’re engaging in the practice of heroism, it’s a good idea to have a clear scope of what kind of hero someone is, and to be inclusive of their flaws in your perception of them, even as a hero.