1 Soul Bound
1.2 Taking Control
1.2.3 An Enchanting Original
1.2.3.3 Sharpe Lecture: heroism (part one)
Kafana spent a pleasant morning working in the infirmary and the still room with Isabella. They spent a while discussing Flavio and Dottore, but mostly they talked about the deities. Kafana had been worried about Cov resenting Mor’s new influence upon Vittoria and Torello, which led into a long discussion about past religious wars, how people thought the deities interacted with each other, and what their sources of information were.
It turned out that direct spoken communication from a deity was a rare event - one that most priests would never experience. Most of what people believed about the deities came from books discussing legends where deities had intervened to save or curse a larger-than-life figure such as Happy Hubbard (whose laughter was so infectious that three days after she left a village, everyone’s face was still set in a grin stretching from ear to ear) or Glenda the Walker (who strode so far and fast that she ended up walking right off the planet).
It reminded her of a lecture back at UCL, about myths and heroes.
The Dr. Sharpe in her memory from 15 years ago had been full of energy; not just passionate but incisive. Looking back, she realised she’d suffered from a severe case of hero worship, swept along by his charisma into doing things that were out of character for her. Not that that was a bad thing. It had brought her out of her shell, and given her an appreciation for boldness that had served her well in life.
“Let me tell you a story”, he’d said.
He sat cross-legged at the front of the stage, instead of behind the podium. The lights were turned low, and the projector screen was filled with a high resolution image of a full moon in the night sky above a mountain that seemed almost close enough to touch.
“Selene was a Titan, mighty as all Titans were, and every night she rode a snow-white bull across the heavens, drawing the moon behind her. And every night as she travelled, she looked down from above and spied upon the mortals living their lives on the Earth below.”
“One mortal in particular, a shepherd named Endymion, caught her attention. Just a carefree youth, playing a shepherd’s pipe with youthful passion; nobody to hear him except his sheep. And Selene above.”
“Bound by her duty, Selene was fascinated by Endymion’s freedom. Fascination became obsession, and finally Selene beseeched Zeus, crying ‘If I cannot be with Endymion, I see no point in continuing to live, and who then will draw the moon?’.”
“Zeus replied, ‘You shall be with Endymion if you wish. But be warned: all things come at a cost.”
“Selene responded. ‘Above all things, that is what I wish for. Let it be as you have said.’.”
“Zeus, true to his word, arranged for Endymion to leave his sheep to be with Selene and in the due course of time Selene had a daughter named Pandeia, whose beauty was so great that it shone brighter than all the other goddesses put together. Selene was content, and would have happily spent eternity thus, with Pandeia and Endymion by her side.”
“But Endymion was troubled. He did not resent being taken from his sheep, for he had grown to love Selene and his daughter Pandeia. But mortal man is not built to last; he sensed his youth departing from him and knew Selene would not long survive him. Therefore he too called out to Zeus, saying ‘O Zeus Horkios, Zeus Agathos, Zeus Hupatos, I heard your words and carried them out. Will you now hear mine? I am mortal and thus must die, but grant me this: that I may choose the means of my own death.’.”
Dr. Sharpe was a masterful storyteller. Though he stayed sitting, his voice rolled and flowed with the words, and his invocation to Zeus, in the manner of the earnest young shepherd, rung through the lecture theatre, filled with entreaty. Nadine could hear a couple of the more emotional students sob quietly.
“Zeus agreed, and Endymion chose to be sent into an eternal sleep that preserved his youthful looks, in a roof-less tomb on top of the mountain where his sheep had grazed, that Selene could continue to look down upon him and thereby gain strength to keep drawing the moon across the sky.”
“And that is why we still have the moon, and why it glows brightly for only part of each month. It is because each month Pandeia visits her father’s tomb in secret, so she can bring word back to her mother. Each year, on the last full moon of spring, the folk of Athens hold a festival to celebrate Pandia, and honour the sacrifice Endymion made.”
He slowly raised the lights and returned to the podium, giving the audience a chance to absorb the story.
“It is a good story, don’t you think? But, after a few hundred years, the folk of Athens forgot it. They still held the festival, but they couldn’t remember why. But humans being humans, rather than admit that, they tried to work out what the reason must have been. And so they accidently created a King who never lived. They started off with the name, King Pandion, and added stories enhancing how great a king he must have been, to explain why a festival called ‘Pandia’ was held in his honour. Within a generation, Pandion was numbered among the great heroes of the 4th age, along with Prince Theseus who dared the Minotaur’s Labyrinth and Perseus who slew Medusa the Gorgon and saved Princess Andromeda from Ketos the Kraken. They even built him a cenotaph, and a shrine above it where cultists would leave worship offerings, hoping to tap into any lingering remains of the power of their heroic king, Pandion the Great.”
“The Greeks really liked their hero stories. To them, heroes were larger than life figures with extreme abilities such as being the strongest or the most cunning man alive. They were brave, but not what we’d think of as being morally strong - they were as likely to start wars of aggression as to be righteous defenders, to carry women off as to rescue them, to steal cattle and plunder treasures as to right wrongs. The stories may give them a divine parent (though one suspects such stories got invented to avoid accusing a wife of infidelity when a child didn’t take after the mortal father), but the hero was mortal, and usually suffered a miserable later life followed by a violent or tragic death. No ‘happily ever after’ as a reward. For every god supporting them, there was usually another (often the first god’s outraged spouse) who threw difficulties in their path.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“The reward for heroes was kleos - poetic epics or lyric songs that glorified the hero, granting them immortality of a different sort: universal reputation, leading to whole constellations of stars being named after them.”
He paused.
“But why did they like such fantastic stories? What purpose did they serve in their society? Why, even today, do people want superheroes to exist, and why do they resent it when those they try to fit into that mold inevitably turn out to have feet of clay?”
“Let’s consider a man from ancient times, living alone in the barbarian wildlands beyond Greece. For convenience, I’m going to call him Larry.”
“Larry’s initial concern is his immediate personal survival. He won’t last long without air, warmth, water or food. If he needs to risk dangerous animals, infectious diseases or bone shattering mountain climbs to get them, he will.”
“Once Larry has warm feet and a full belly, he starts thinking beyond the current week. The food might be plentiful today, but what about when winter comes? He needs a house to protect him from storms and starving wolves, where he can store food and medicine. He needs weapons to stop bandits from stealing his stored resources. He needs tools, fields, hunting equipment, fishing nets - anything that will secure him a predictable supply of resources and make them easier to acquire.”
“Larry survives the winter, and the following spring he’s feeling safe with enough spare resources to make multi-day long journeys. Protecting a rich territory all by himself requires constant vigilance. He’d be better off finding a group of like-minded people and gaining acceptance into their number, so they can share between them the burden of gathering resources and defending territory. It takes Larry a while, and a couple of false starts, but two years later he’s a loyal member of a pretty good tribe. Life is looking up.”
“So now Larry starts thinking about his long term future. The instincts given to him by his genes are telling him that he needs to marry well and have lots of children. But to gain a high-status wife, he needs to raise his own status within the tribe. So he works hard, improves his hunting skills, takes on more responsibility and gets put in charge of one of the hunting parties. He builds up favours with influential leaders, gifting them with better parts of the kills, and makes sure he is seen to be exemplifying the tribe’s values, joining in punitive expeditions to take revenge on those who betray the tribe or disobey its rules.”
“Finally, Larry achieves respect and settles down with a lovely partner to raise children. So what motivates Larry now? He’s survived, safe, accepted and respected. His ‘animal brain’, full of instincts programmed by genetic evolution, is quiet. Does he just sit in a hammock? No. Larry happens to be a human, with a brain that is also capable of abstract thought. He’s capable of wondering why he does what he does, and seeking an answer to that question, seeking meaning in his life. People have a need to feel they are not faceless replaceable units. Whether they see themselves just as unique individuals or as also being part of a wider web of life, they want to be recognised and remembered. They want to have mattered.”
Dr. Sharpe clicked a button, and the slide on the projector changed to show a pyramid with 5 layers of different colours.
“This model of human motivation was devised by Abraham Maslow, a New Yorker from a deprived background who studied apes before moving onto humans. He called it the ‘hierarchy of needs’ and one of the biggest objections to it, is that it doesn’t account for heroes. People who risk themselves for others, without expectation of reward. It could be a significant risk to health, wealth or status. In extreme cases, we see people voluntarily sacrificing their own lives, to save the lives of others. Are they insane?”
“Well, that’s a tricky question to answer. Certainly they’re not psychotic. They may not fit an economist’s classical definition of a ‘rational actor’ but what actions it is rational for you to take depend upon what your objective is. There is no one single optimal ‘healthy’ personality type. Different types are optimised for different environments.”
He flashed up another slide:
Confident people who take measured risks and soon try again if a first attempt fails, do well in situations where the rewards for success outweigh the penalties for failure. Risk-averse people who take failures to heart survive in situations where the severity of penalties is difficult to predict and may be crippling.
Those who are most comfortable making detailed commitments in advance then sticking to a routine have an advantage when growing crops in fields, whereas those who are most comfortable when they retain the freedom to drop everything and pursue passing opportunities have an advantage in chaotic times that reward flexibility and quick reflexes.
Suspicious people who are slow to trust survive well in hostile situations where deceit and betrayal are common. Warm cooperative people thrive in communities with strong social bonds that eject abusers and those who pick the ‘defect’ strategy in the prisoner’s dilemma.
Those who are most comfortable in the social roles of being active and dominant do well seeking social status through leadership and wide networking. Those who are more inward focussed do better gaining status through being a useful supporter and improving their skills by interacting with just a few like-minded peers.
“These are not binary choices - each personality trait is a scale, with most falling somewhere in the middle. When you look carefully you can see they center on the same issues that Larry was concerned with: survival, safety, belonging and status.”
“But what about the peak of Maslow’s pyramid? Is there a corresponding pair of personality traits that influences how someone makes their mark on history, fulfills their own potential? Why do some look at themselves and see their potential for helping all peoples, for being heroic, while others think only of their own greatness, consider only their own dreams?”
“It turns out that the ancient Greeks were wrong. They thought that whether someone would turn out to be a hero was something determined at birth by the Moirai, the three Goddesses of fate. Studies have found personality traits that affect it: The Dark Triad (egotistic, unempathic and manipulative) versus the Light Triad (compassionate, empathic and unmanipulative). But they are just one influence. Everyone has the potential to be selfish or altruistic, and makes the choice anew every day, every moment.”
Without warning Dr. Sharpe slammed his palm against the podium, startling the students with the unexpected sound.
“But what has this to do with effective political action?”