The Downside of Hero Worship

For years now I have warned people about the very real downsides of hero worship, how it clouds our judgement and makes us susceptible to the whims of scam artists, snake oil salesman and cult leaders. It is, without question, one of the very real problems that we have in society today. It could be the worst problem that we have today. If you are always looking to some concept of a perfect human being to inform your every action and direction in life, they will eventually steer you off course. It is not a question of if, but of when. It will occur. It is inevitable. This does not have to be because of malice. There often is not a conspiracy to misinform folks. It often occurs in a way that is organic and unintentional. Someone may truly believe, for example, that women are inferior to men. They may find this observation to be correct because the women they have interacted with in life have not been as intelligent or moral as they are. But this observation is, of course, anecdotal and incomplete. There is not enough factual information to support this claim. I have to recognize that lack of data when I am interacting with a hero of mine that gives me bad advice, otherwise I will be misled into a world of misogyny and ignorance. I will not become wiser because of such information, but instead I will close myself off to a whole world of knowledge from some very smart women. The easiest way to avoid being misled in this way is to avoid having heroes altogether. That is not to say that I think I am better than everyone else or that I do not acknowledge anyone's talent. I only mean to say that placing an individual on a pedestal as if they are somehow set apart from the rest of us normal humans is a huge mistake that needs to be rectified and, really, abandoned altogether as an acceptable societal practice. There is no need to worship any man or woman for that matter. It serves no purpose other than gleaning bits and bytes of stories and quotations that one uses to motivate themselves, and, if I so desire that form of motivation, all I have to do is read from the internet or a book. The person who wrote down that motivating information is irrelevant because, inevitably, for every few things they are correct about, they will most certainly be wrong about something else. This is the main reason that, when you go to college, they encourage you not only to have references, but also to check the quality of said references. Who owns the publication. Who are the shareholders. In what nation is the publication based. Who is providing the funding. What are the political leanings and biases of all the parties involved. What are their various political affiliations attempting to accomplish. What is it that they are wishing me to take from this article, and, most importantly, why. The average person is not consuming information in this way. They find someone that, for whatever reason, they trust or like, and just assume that they are a good source of information. This is incorrect. Even someone with good intentions can engage in fallacious thinking that leads them to the wrong conclusion. Further, it is incorrect to assume that everyone has mostly good intentions. The internet in particular is full of folks motivated purely by the need for more money and power. That is not to say that money and power will always lead to be bad, but it is to say that it often does. We should be concerned only with the truth when it comes to information that is given to us by those we like or respect. It does not matter if we may want to agree with them out of some sense of awe of their talents. When the time comes, and they are wrong, we must be able to call them out on that. We cannot be silly and look at all the others around us agreeing with that person because of hero worship and simply follow the herd. We have to access our individuality. The same goes for when they are correct as well. We cannot disagree with them just to be unique or contrarian.

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