To Lead Is To Be Alone
“Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you -- and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!”
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, from ‘The Brothers Karamazov’
Forgive my upcoming vagueness on details. Nobody is perfect…
There was a portion of a ‘talk’ I attended, many years ago, that I cannot remember exactly the context (I think it was a lecture of sorts, maybe at a North Wales language retreat. Maybe), or the name of the lady who delivered the ‘talk’, but it included an image, a simple concept, that has stuck with me.
She spoke of ‘the lonely stair’. The speaker used this motif in reference to the role of a leader:
“You’re there, alone, with only a guardrail to aid you. Nobody else ascends the stair, but plenty will call at you from the bottom step. Some will plea for aid, some will criticise you, others shout messages you cannot hear, given your lofty position”
The speaker used the analogy well - a leader, she claimed must realise that the staircase goes both ways; those pleas can be answered and the unheard calls heard clearly if you descend a few steps. But she maintained the idea of the ‘lonely’ stair;
“Some leaders will claim things like ‘I won’t get you to do any task I wouldn’t do myself’ when what they really mean, or should mean, is “I wouldn’t get you to do any task I haven’t done myself.” It’d be a colossal waste of time for a headteacher to spend half a day scrubbing the toilets. That’d be a school that either needs better cleaners, or more likely, doesn’t need a headteacher”.
(I wish I could remember who she was so I could credit her, but hey, that’s memory folks. I was about 15 and a little drunk… don’t ask).
One of the first impressions I can remember after the talk concluded, and one that I have retained, is the non-idealised view of ‘the leader’ that the speaker portrayed. Indeed, it seemed that she thought this to be an impossible notion - you cannot please everyone, which could be read conversely as a sentiment I’ve expressed above: nobody is perfect, least of all those tasked to lead. And, perhaps especially, those who seek to lead.
There are alternative systems, of course, other means of organising that do not seem to necessitate having a leader at all. In reality, however, these alternative modes of governance tend to collapse into tyrannies (or are inherently tyrannical in the first place).
What struck me most of all was that I’d spent so many years in school being told of the importance of ‘leadership’ - taking it, using it, even tacitly, wanting it. These messages weren’t directed at me solely, but to whole classes, whole year groups even. Hundreds of kids, all told that they should clamour for ‘leadership’.
Even with the most charitable analysis of this convention, the teachers may have meant that we should all display leadership qualities. I’m not sure such ‘advice’ is ever warranted, save to those people who already lead, or are being picked to do so some day. This isn’t to advocate for there to be no leaders, of course - let’s put it another way:
We need people for a whole range of tasks to maintain civilisation; let’s consider the role of maintaining the electrical grid. Doing this is laudable, hard work, but more than that, utterly vital. Millions would die were it not for the people who do this work. Should we be advocating to whole rooms of children that they become grid maintenance workers? I’d suggest not. A univariant focus would lead to more problems; a corruption of the role itself with unmanageable competition, the inevitable listlessness/depression for those who fail in attaining the role, and most obvious of all, there are many other necessary roles that would need filling. Collapse results. This may seem a rather hyperbolic analogue, but it’s worryingly close to the situation faced in many Western nations today. Perhaps trite, reductive dictums like “be a leader” has ushered this forth.
Can this example of poorly-applied advice apply to other ‘roles’?
A similar, if an even more complex role, is that of the ‘hero’. One that, on considering the role whilst using a similar mode of thought to the one outlined above, fills me with a sort of dread.
In my estimation, to be a hero is not be upon ‘the lonely stair’, but to be discussed by others, in glowing terms, as you hide beneath them. Or to have been tied up and put there.
Reality’s Checkmate
“I am the hero of Africa.”
- Idi Amin, President of Uganda who killed between 80,000 and 500,000 people, overwhelmingly fellow Africans, during his 8-year reign
In reality, nobody is perfect. In fiction, a ‘perfect’ character is a boring character.
The hero of the tale can be nearly perfect without ruining the immersion, or the quality of the piece. It doesn’t have to be that way either - anti-heroes and deeply flawed protagonists are fun too, but still - without some flaws, there are no challenges, and thus, no adventure. In a classical sense, the hero must be virtuous, or must learn to be, and must prevail in the end. Otherwise, how can they be considered a hero? Indeed, even if the hero sacrifices themselves, it is often so that the side of Good can prevail. They don’t simply win. They win by earning it.
In real life, we see many people are often elevated to the status of ‘hero’. There are of course myriad examples of real heroism dating back centuries, all well documented and oft repeated, written about, taught in schools, films made about them.
But nobody, as I’ve said, is perfect.
The term itself, as with many adjectives in common parlance (awesome, amazing, incredible) has come to be very broadly applied and hyperbolic. Here are some examples that may chime with you:
You can be a ‘National Hero’, or a ‘Hero of the Republic’, for picking up refuse every weekend for 40 years. A beloved ‘hometown hero’ gets free drinks at the local bar for winning a hot dog eating contest. You too can win at ‘the 5th National Civic Heroism Awards - Sponsored by SpikedPinappleBetting.com’ (becoming recipient no.3345)! You can even be a ‘guitar hero’ for playing a musical instrument (and dressing) well or, if you haven’t the time or the skills (or the fashion sense), you can attain the same title for completing a video game of with the same name.
These terms are often benign in their usage, quite nice to hear and even nicer to say. Just glib. Sometimes, however, the term ‘hero’ inadvertently masks an important, contrary truth, robbing the public of a three-dimensional view of the person now anointed.
‘Why would you want to tear down a hero?’, some might ask.
‘Don’t you love the hero? don’t you love our/your people?’
It is often that very love that drives such questions, I’d counter. If we aren’t honest, if we don’t seek out truth, what would that ‘love’ be? Honesty in discussing figures from history, or contemporary luminaries, we elevate the actions, rather than deify people.
Let’s take a few examples.
NOTE: I’ll warn you now that as you go through these examples that you may get triggered into a reflexive defence of these figures, feeling hurt that someone you may admire is being besmirched. Try not to succumb, please: everything stated below is a matter of record;
We’ll start with a beloved figure whose personal life didn’t match his public persona - The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, the abiding symbol of hard-fought rights, equality, and dignity for black Americans, a stunning orator, and man of God, conducted numerous extra-marital affairs all across the U.S. for years. His womanising edged into civilly, and perhaps legally, dubious areas.
Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, freedom fighter and national hero of Cuba. You know his face more than his history, I’d venture, due to every person under the age of 50 having worn a t-shirt emblazoned with his visage at some point or another (quick note: I had this cool t-shirt in my youth that, after a horrific realisation, had the image of Chairman Mao in the background! So no judgment here). From the romance of his excursions across South America chronicled in his Motorcycle Diaries, to his liberatory exploits ‘saving’ the downtrodden from Cuba to the Congo, you could be forgiven for seeing Che as a latter-day Robin Hood. Forgiven, that is, were it not for the ample documentation that highlights what an utter monster he truly was. He helped establish Cuba’s first concentration camp, taking direct inspiration from the Nazi camp at Auschwitz, with a far less demonically “humorous”, utterly on-the-nose message for internees to view on entering: ‘Work will make you men’ - based on the infamous ‘Arbeit mach Frei’ (‘Work will set you free’), the grimmest irony ever expressed - proudly displayed at the camp which primarily took in gay men. For being gay. Che hated gay people. He was also a racist, a sadist, a terrible soldier, a man whose body count consisted of prisoners either tortured to death at his orders, or shot in the back of the head by him personally.
“Still, he looks great when artfully rendered on a red T, am I right comrade?”
Winston Churchill, a man who stood down the twin evils of German National Socialism and Soviet Communism like no other person in history, sent the infamously trigger-happy military unit known as the ‘black and tans’ to various parts of the British Isles, most prominently Irelnad but also to the South Wales valleys, resulting in the brutalisation and deaths of hundreds of innocent people. He also referred to Arabs as "barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung". On being asked about a Labour Party visit to China, Churchill remarked that “I hate people with slit eyes and pigtails. I don't like the look of them or the smell of them – but I suppose it does no great harm to have a look at them.” Perhaps most chillingly of all was his views on the use of chemical weapons: “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.” Then there is the role he played in the Bengal famine…
(Churchill also wrote an alternate history short story where the South won the Battle of Gettysburg, and thus the American Civil War. Robert E Lee promptly freed the slaves, allowing the UK and Canada to join the rebel cause… it’s a weird story).
Nelson Mandela was a violent terrorist commander who failed repeatedly to decry the increasingly gory methods the ANC employed during his time in prison (methods like ‘necklacing’ that was used against fellow black South Africans who were - conveniently - deemed ‘traitors’), before becoming the father of the ‘rainbow nation’, the Republic of South Africa, on his release.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood in the US, was a fervent (possibly racist) eugenicist. Whatever your views on contraception - which may indeed preclude her from being a hero for you anyway - her writings and overall rationale were, to say the least, quite alarming.
Fritz Haber, the scientist who revolutionised global agriculture with his ‘Haber-Bosch process’ for synthesising ammonia, in turn saving millions of lives (some even claim billions), was so univariately focussed on leading Imperial Germany’s foray into chemical warfare during WWI, that his wife, Clara Immerwahr, killed herself with his own personal service revolver. She was a pacifist, and a woman whose career as a chemist was ended by her marriage.
(There is some doubt as to why Immerwahr took her life, but there is no doubt that Haber personally oversaw the release of chlorine gas that killed or injured tens of thousands of unsuspecting soldiers at the Battle of Ypres alone).
Do you feel angry, or disappointed at my ‘attacking’ one or more of these figures? Do you think I’m lying about one of your heroes, or that I hate them? Maybe you feel that I just have an axe to grind with all these people?
Remember, nobody is perfect, even some of the most notable people that ever lived, the people who have contributed and innovated and saved more of mankind than anyone else.
The Stories Save Again
“I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.”
- From ‘The Silver Chair’ by C.S. Lewis
One of the wonderful things about a figure like Beowulf is that he isn’t real - he’s a literary/mythical figure.
So too for Bilbo Baggins, Quetzalcoatl, Hermione Grainger, Uncle Sam, Howard Roark, Sonic the Hedgehog, Abraham Van Helsing, Mona the Vampire, Herne the Hunter, Odysseus, Hercules, Perseus, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc. (and that is a very long et cetera).
Following the example set by such characters is great, partly because doing so necessarily avoids the inevitable questions posed about real figures:
Did you know that (Heroic Figure X) did these terrible things before/after their heroic exploits?
Isn’t it true that (Heroic Figure X) plagiarised most of their work?
Wow (Heroic Figure X), really? Y’know, those rumours about their personal life are a matter of public record. You support that behaviour?
That’s not how my people tell (Heroic Figure X)’s story! What a monster!
(Heroic Figure X) is one of many such figures, most of whom are more deserving than your ‘hero’. Have you heard of (Heroic Figure Z)?
The tales the fictional/mythical characters inhabit follow a linear pattern, devoid of all the extra information that swirl about reality - nobody knows what Sonic the Hedgehog had for breakfast before he commences his ring-hunting, mad scientist disrupting mission in ‘Green Hill Zone’.
A person would seem really strange if they seriously question the underlying motives of, say, Aslan from CS Lewis’ Narnia books beyond the normal bounds of literary critique or analysis .
You can dislike the Narnia novels, sure: questioning a character’s, well, character is often an indictment of the author, or in a broader sense, the novel/story/genre/ideology; you cannot ask such questions of a fictional/mythological character (although, we should always reserve the ability to do so for the sake of comedy - we still make jokes that there was plenty of room for Leonardo DiCaprio on that floating door in Titanic - ‘Rose’ is in fact the most monstrous villain in movie history).
Such figures, as with the tales and traditions they inhabit, are open to interpretation.
Art really is, in this sense, transcendent.
Conclusion
I passionately believe in heroes, but I think the world has changed its criteria in determining who it describes as a hero.
Sir Richard Attenborough
We need heroes, both real and imagined (and everything in between). What exactly do I mean with this sentiment? Perhaps the closest I can get to explaining this is that we need heroism - the notion of the heroic as viewed in the actions of individuals.
You may think “Well, obviously! That’s what it is to be a hero, idiot!"
But, is it?
I feel that I have demonstrated that a great many people viewed as heroes, or secularised saints if you will, also have profound moral failings, and sometimes a pronounced ‘dark side’. Some figures shouldn’t be considered heroes at all, perhaps. Indeed, one person’s hero may well be another person’s villain - no devout Catholic is going to consider Margaret Sanger a hero, whereas you probably won’t find a professed feminist who doesn’t consider her a hero.
The concept needs to be separated from the real examples, viewed as an action and not as a totalising trait. Only in the stories can you have a figure good enough to truly describe as a hero, in every sense of the word.
That is why, in part, we have fiction and myth.