The shift from physical strength to moral heroism

HostWe use the word hero for all sorts of people these days, from people in comic books to the person who stands up for what's right in a tough spot. It's a word that carries a lot of weight, but it hasn't always meant the same thing.

HostHow did we get from the ancient idea of a hero as a giant warrior to our modern idea of a hero as someone with a good heart?

GuestIt's a massive shift in how we think about what a human life is for. If you go back to the very oldest stories, like the ones from ancient Greece about Achilles or Heracles, being a hero didn't mean you were a nice guy. It meant you were more than a normal man. You were faster, stronger, and much more dangerous than anyone else. You were like a flood or a fire. If you got angry and leveled a whole town, you were still a hero because you had the power to do it. Back then, the word was more like a rank, like being a king or a god. It wasn't a reward for being kind. It was about how much room you could take up in the world and how much you could change things with your bare hands.

HostThat sounds more like a villain to us now. I mean, if a guy today just went around hitting people because he was strong, we would call the cops, not write a poem about him. Why did people back then even look up to those guys?

GuestWell, they lived in a world that was much more dangerous and raw. You wanted the strongest guy on your side because he was the only thing keeping the city from being burned down by the next tribe over. You didn't care if he was a jerk to his wife as long as he could kill the guy trying to kill you. But then things started to turn. Thinkers in the old world began to ask: what if being a good person is a kind of strength too? They started to pull the idea of being great away from just having big arms and towards having a steady mind. They began to think that the real fight wasn't against a guy with a spear, but against your own fears and your own greed.

HostBut surely it took more than just a few thinkers talking in the town square to change how everyone felt. Most people probably still just wanted the guy who could win the war for them.

GuestYou're right, it was a slow burn. But look at how stories changed as time went on. You get to the middle ages, and you start seeing the idea of the knight. Now, a knight still had to be great at fighting, but he also had to follow a code. He had to be kind to the weak and keep his word. You start to see this tension where the physical stuff is just the tool, but the heart is the driver. The big shift really kicks in when we start to value the single person who stands up against the crowd.

HostSo it went from killing the monster to being the person who says no to the king?

GuestExactly. And a lot of that comes from how we view pain. For the old heroes, losing was a shame. If you died in the mud, you failed. But later on, the person who suffers for what they believe in becomes the ultimate hero. The person in the jail cell starts to look more heroic than the guy with the sword. The win happens on the inside. We started to think that the most heroic thing you can do is hold onto the truth even when it costs you everything.

HostI don't know if I buy that we have totally moved on, though. Look at every big movie. They're all still giant men with huge muscles throwing cars at each other. Isn't that just those old Greek myths all over again?

GuestIt looks like it, but watch what those characters actually do. In the old myths, the hero wins because he's just better at fighting. In a modern movie, the hero often wins because they're willing to give up their life for someone else. The muscle is just there to make it look good on a big screen. The part that makes the audience cheer is when the hero chooses to do the right thing even when it hurts. We have made the body a backdrop for a choice. Think about someone like Rosa Parks. She didn't lift a building. She just sat down. In the old world, she wouldn't even be in the story. In our world, she's a giant. We have moved the goalposts from what you can do to the world, to what you can stand up to within the world.

HostIs there a danger in that, though? If anyone can be a hero just by being good, does the word start to lose its teeth? It feels like we call people heroes now just for doing their jobs.

GuestSome people do think we have made the word too soft. But I think it's actually harder this way. It's easy to be strong if you're born with the bones for it. It's much harder to be brave when you're scared and you have nothing to fight with but your words. The new heroism is about the fact that we're all small and we're all going to break eventually, but we still choose to stand for something. We still want to see someone face the fire, but today the fire is usually the pressure to just go along with a lie.

HostThe bus seat and the jail cell have replaced the sword, but we still look for that same iron in the blood to just stay put.