While attending this year’s "Beyond Growth" conference, I was wondering why humanity puts itself in danger, why we fail to address challenges such as climate change head-on. And maybe the problem is with our obsession with heroes.
Here below, I’ll share a real story that happened to me.
A couple of years back, I was walking towards my subway when I heard, behind my back, a bunch of loud voices, screaming in the tunnel leading to the subway platform. I naturally looked back to see who was making all the noise: three aggressive looking youngsters. The subway was deserted. One of the three yelled at me: “What are you looking at? You have a problem?”
I naturally responded: “No, do you?” Obviously, he was looking for a fight. He approached threateningly with his fists clenched. I quickly remembered my basic Judo training and got close enough quicker than he could anticipate, and avoided the first punch. I had the element of surprise. I then grabbed him in a typical Judo technique and threw him over my back onto the floor. His two buddies raced towards me to punish my insolence. I started running. I wasn’t ready for a 2v1 fight. One of them was faster than the other, which enabled me, after a few dozen meters, to abruptly turn around and land a well-placed kick that knocked the first runner off-balance and backwards. I started running again. But then I heard a voice coming from the third one, close behind: “You’re dead! I’ll kill you!” I didn’t dare turn around. I jumped above the mechanical doors of the subway, higher than I would have ever thought possible and virtually slid down the stairs onto the platform. By whatever beautiful coincidence, the metro was there, waiting for me, the signal of closing doors buzzing just as I was racing towards the door. I managed to throw myself inside the subway just as the doors closed shut behind me. I turned around, trying to catch my breath, and saw the third guy holding a knife, looking at me in anger from the other side of the door, as the metro was pulling away.
Now, this is what actually happened. I didn’t reply “No, do you?” I just smiled and tried to be friendly, fainting ignorance of what their true aims or intentions were. I knew they were looking for a fight, and I wasn’t going to play along for them to get one. Finally, one of the guys told the aggressive one: “Hey, let’s just leave him alone. Look, he’s all friendly and nice, let’s just drop it.” And I walked away without turning around.
Be honest, if this were a movie, which one would you go see?
Did you ever watch the YouTube series: “How it should have ended?” It’s full of alternative movie plots which circumvent all the useless intrigue, struggle, action and drama, and fast-forward to an uneventful quick and simple ending. In the video below, Frodo flies directly to Mount Doom carried by one of Gandalf’s eagles, and drops the Ring of Power into the lava while Aragorn and the others distract Sauron.
But this kind of logic has its limits. It doesn’t reflect what life truly is. Whenever we watch movies about dinosaurs, we want to see a T-Rex chasing after its prey, or a herd of Brachiosaurs fleeing from a volcanic eruption. The reality is that 99% of the time, the life of dinosaurs were as uneventful as watching a bunch of cows munching grass in a field. A lion doesn’t run around hunting every minute of the day. Most of its time is spent licking its intimate parts, having sex (sometimes over 20x a day), sleeping around and playing with his cubs.
The obsession with heroism is well illustrated in the opening scene of the movie “Team America”, where a bunch of elite “Team America World Police Force” stops terrorists by destroying Paris even better than any terrorist could have dreamed of, the remedy becoming even more deadly than the poison.
It’s also the theme of movies like “Batman vs. Superman”, where humanity ponders whether having a “hero” like Superman around isn’t a double-edged sword. While Superman can easily recover from a battle against powerful enemies, the battlefield (planet Earth and humans) on the other hand, might not withstand such confrontations.
As humanity, I believe this obsession with drama has us artificially creating “obstacles” and challenges for ourselves, just so we can heroically overcome them, or artificially delaying our responses to challenges such as climate change or revamping our economic systems, just so we can experience the thrill of escaping death by a narrow margin, postponing the key measures and solutions to the very last minute just so we can get an extra kick of adrenaline in our obsession with thrill-seeking experiences.
Imagine if tomorrow every single human worked hand in hand to advance towards sustainability. No more opportunities to manifest in the streets, to run away from abusive cops, to scream at irresponsible politicians or big oil CEOs, to rant about evil billionaires. Everyone wants to be a kind of “hero”: the academic who heroically denounces the power elites and proposes politically incorrect solutions and recommendations in public, the student who protests in the street, the big oil CEO who protects the interests of his shareholders by pushing against evil freedom-killing “eco-communists”. And what a show! Almost as entertaining as a Marvel movie. Ever day there are new scandals, new protests, new oppositions and drama. In the process, we do “evolve”, through the artificial challenge of fighting amongst ourselves, throwing wrenches at each other. Thus instead of “ascending to a higher plane”, as a hero that has successfully overcome some kind of external challenge, we become challenges to each other and artificially evolve via overcoming man-made obstacles: twisting the hand of this irresponsible CEO, shooting down that conspiracy theorist, demoting that pseudo-scientific academic pretending like climate change doesn’t exist…
And yet, we want it both ways. We complain about the fact that things don’t go fast enough, that temperatures are rising, that natural disasters are more common, that governments are too passive, that big corporations are too powerful, while at the same time, we continue to obsess over heroism and adventure.
Collectively, we thus manifest death-threatening events, or delay responses to life-threatening challenges, just so we can “feel” that we are alive and satisfy our craving for being a “hero”. But that might just kill us all. Those who go out of their way to face death in order to experience the thrill of narrowly escaping it rarely live up to a ripe old age. And yet, many such heroes are glorified as role models to follow.
As a collective, it’s time we heal this craving and settle for living life more organically. Sure, we might come face to face with death. But that’s no reason to proactively seek it just so we can feel more “alive”.
Finally, perhaps our collective attitude, our thrill-seeking and obsession with the hero is a kind of immature unconscious collective “revenge”, acting out against “God”. It’s a bit like a teenager who is angry at his parents for some reason, and puts him/herself in danger to punish his parents by scaring them, and simultaneously “prove” to him/herself that he/she is in control, that he/she is free to do whatever he/she wants. At humanity’s level, it’s as if we are saying to God, who is a kind of symbolic “parent” to humanity: “See? We could kill ourselves if we wanted to. But we won’t. We have free will! We can do whatever the fuck we waaaant, la lala lalaaaaaaaa laaaaaaaaa!”
Maybe it’s time for us to grow up and get over the fact that “God” didn’t “raise” us properly, and take responsibility for our actions, like a young adult would. A teenager acting in such a way only proves one thing to him/herself and others: not that he/she is “free” or “in control”, but that on the contrary, he/she isn’t mature enough to handle “reality”.
