Of Heroes and Villains: A Social Theory

Of Heroes and Villains: A Social Theory

Forward
After receiving a suggestion from a reader this section has been included.

To provide fair warning to the reader, I must say this is a relatively long and involved essay. I would not reccomend it for people that have no interest in this type of writing. Within the essay you will find a description of the four principle roles played by every individual in society: heroes, villains, participants, and non-participants, as well as what their purpose is in "the big picture". Each of the roles are explained through several historical and fictional examples. If this has intrigued you, please, read on. See where you "fit", a hero, a villain?. If you choose to continue reading, thank-you; it is exceedingly hard to get feedback on this variety of work. I feel it has a great deal of potential assuming I can get outside opinions on both the technical parts of the essay, as well as the validity of the theory. Feel free to reply to either aspect. Even an e-mail telling what role you think you play and why would help me advance this essay.

A Word on the Unsliced

For those readers not aware of the unsliced philosophy, it revolves around the assumption that excesses in convenience and technology will lead to the down-fall of all man kind through the fatal process of over-population acceleration through increased productivity. The term unsliced originates in a speech written by the author that amounts to a profession of these beliefs and places the start of an apocalyptic cascade of rampant technological expansion on the invention of sliced bread. With this in mind the author does not eat sliced bread in symbolic defiance and avoids things of an excessively convenient nature. Therefore, acceptable activities and philosophies are deemed “Unsliced”. After writing the speech the author has adopted The Unsliced as an alias in writing various philosophical nad other pieces consisting of theories based on various personal observations and ideas. Whether or not these professions of philosophical belief are regarded by the reader as plausible or factual is entirely at the reader’s discretion. As a matter of practicality and the fact that this is not a full academic research paper individual facts are not cited. For those interested, most of the information for this piece came from prior knowledge, personal experiences, CNN news archives, Wikipedia, and real encyclopedias (books),




There comes a time in every person’s life when they reach a fundamental question, a cross roads of sorts. This fork in the proverbial road tends to arise in one form or another during or shortly after high school, often in determining career choices. The stereotypical phase of teenage angst and rebellion stems from the Herculean effort of wrestling this question and attempting to beat it into submission. Once this hurdle of life is passed, we make the transformation into a functioning (or non-functioning) part of the larger whole, and relative tranquility is achieved. This question we as people find so unsettling and disturbing: “What do I think of the world?”
Whether we realize it or not, we are forced to decide what we think of our society at the lowest level in order to determine our place in society. This question reaches far beyond just the latest news stories; it reaches to our society at its core. Are we, as a people, fundamentally good, or fundamentally evil? This decision is based almost purely on environmental factors and our response to the question comes from our up-bringing, and the world around us. The response to this question is often fairly predictable. It makes sense that a child that comes from a well off family with both parents will have a fairly positive overall view of the world around them since it has been rather good to them. On the opposite end of the spectrum, is the child that has grown up with one or no biological parents with little money to spare and all of their food coming from food stamps and welfare. It makes perfect sense that they would tend to have a decidedly negative view of society. Though these generalizations are not always true, more often than not they are. It is important to note that the individual that believes the world is fundamentally good does not necessarily believe that our society is perfect, only that it is ultimately good (or functional rather) and can be fixed from within. The individuals seeing the world as intrinsically evil, believe that society is dysfunctional beyond all repairs and can only be fixed through complete annihilation and reconstruction.
At this point it becomes necessary to define society, a term that can be very difficult to explain. One dictionary definition for the word states: "an organized group of persons associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes" and another: " a highly structured system of human organization for large-scale community living that normally furnishes protection, continuity, security, and a national identity for its members". This theory can be applied to any society be it nothing more than a high school football team, or the entirety of the United States. For practical purposes the focus will be primarily on the entire population of the United States and other nations as a whole because it is much easier to observe the theory in motion on a larger scale.
With these questions answered, we arrive at the four types of people in our society: the hero, the participant, the non-participant, and the villain. If the individual has decided that the world is fundamentally good, they will become either a participant, or a hero. Should they decide it is fundamentally flawed, they will become a non-participant or a villain. The role the individual elects to play is a relatively permanent choice, but it is not set in stone. Occasionally the person’s position on the overall nature of society may change. For their role to shift, it will generally require a fairly intense experience or event to prompt a change. The one constant is that there will never be a person that skips a role in the transformation into another: i.e., Hero to non-participant.
Generally speaking, most people will become a participant, the most common part of the whole. In the United States, they will usually continue after high school on to college or a career of some sort, after which they will become one of the cogs in the machinery of modern society. Participants will go about their lives following the law in the pursuit of happiness, which stereotypically manifests itself as a four bedroom, three bath ranch in a good suburban neighborhood. Ultimately they do little to improve society while doing nothing to directly damage or challenge it. As the name suggests they often participate in local church groups, neighborhood associations, PTA, and other various organizations that are more or less self serving.
The non-participant has determined that society is irreparably damaged, or flawed. They often become the so-called “undesirables” that represent a menagerie of life styles that are in some way separate from the whole. One well known and easily identifiable sect of the non-participants from a historical stand-point (this stereotype is changing) is the motorcycle rider. Rarely can the biker life-style be mentioned without conjuring up a mental image of an American flag-clad Peter Fonda in Easy Rider. No concern for the law, few ties to any particular place, and a complete disregard for authority characterize this group. On the opposite extreme of non-participation one finds religious groups or cults like the Amish that break away from mainstream society and form their own closed universe where they live by their own set of rules. Other less organized non-participants are the drifters and “pioneers”, unable to cope with a world where they don’t feel they want to be a part of they endlessly wander free from the burden of taxes and personal roots like a house. Perhaps one of the most notable of history’s wanderers is the American Legend of Leatherman, a recluse of unconfirmed identity other than being French, he continuously walked a 365 mile loop between the Conetticut and Hudson Rivers occasionally accepting meals from various farms along the way while avoiding any of the towns on the route for a period of about 40 years. The so called “pioneers” are the people that so despise modern life they move out into the wilderness of the west or Alaska etc, where they live a more or less solitary lifestyle away from mainstream society in the style of Henry David Thoreau.
At this point it becomes necessary to define society, a term that can be very difficult to explain. One dictionary definition for the word states: "an organized group of persons associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes" and another: " a highly structured system of human organization for large-scale community living that normally furnishes protection, continuity, security, and a national identity for its members". This theory can be applied to any society be it nothing more than a high school football team, or the entirety of the United States. For practical purposes the focus will be primarily on the entire population of the United States and other nations as a whole because it is much easier to observe the theory in motion on a larger scale.
With these two groups defined it is possible to explain their derivatives, the villain and hero. Unlike the participants and non-participants the heroes and villains wish to change the world rather than just accept it as is or escape from it entirely. Heroes and villains are created, not born (superman was not born a hero, it requires more than just superpowers to become a hero). Once a person has answered the question of the nature of society they may be taken a step beyond participation/non-participation. Usually, as in the classic comic book sense, this metamorphosis into hero or villain is prompted by a particular event, or series of events. Exposure to some moral wrong will cause the person to decide they must change the world from within, or destroy it as a means of removing what they believe is a cancerous tumor that can not be changed, as it is fundamentally evil. Looking back to the comic book we observe that our heroes often have backgrounds similar to the villains. In a particularly human comic book we find Batman. Prompted by his parents being killed by a mugger when he was just a boy, he attempts to "fix" Gotham City by forcefully defending the innocent, and smiting the guilty while disguised as a creature of the night. Batman’s archenemy, The Penguin, has a story remarkably similar to Batman’s; shortly after birth The Penguins well-to-do parents abandoned him due to his physical deformities leaving both the hero and villain to grow up devoid of biological parents. Though they have similar stories, their roles in their fictional society are polar opposites. As stated before Batman is the defender of the innocent whereas the Penguin’s ultimate goal is to destroy the city that had been so cruel to him via Penguin backpack launched missiles (1992 Tim Burton Film).
Returning to the non-animated world, villains are numerous while having less easily delineated transformations from non-participant to villain. An ideal example of the classical villain is a home-grown American domestic terrorist by the name of Timothy McVeigh. Responsible for what has been called the bloodiest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, McVeigh detonated around 5000lbs of Ammonium Nitrate/Nitro methane high explosive in front of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. There were 168 killed and 850 injured by the blast. Few would dispute that this was a direct attempt at the destruction of societal organization considering the governmental nature of the building, which contained offices of the Social Security Administration, the FBI, DEA, and BATF.
So what may have prompted this villainous act? To find the answer one must look back to McVeigh’s military career. He began as a border line participant, a model soldier (he received the Bronze Star, the fourth highest decoration for heroism, bravery, or meritous acts) in the U.S. army during Operation Desert Storm, before being transformed into a terrorist. According to McVeigh he held no issue with the war and his government until he was ordered to kill surrendering Iraqi soldiers. Upon returning to civilian life McVeigh led a transient lifestyle moving from cheap hotels to trailer parks and the like without holding any steady job, completing the transformation to non-participant with loose associations with survivalist and fringe groups. It has been claimed that he used Methamphetamine during the years leading up to the bombing which may have only expedited the full metamorphosis to villain. After the bombing McVeigh claimed he committed the bombing for what the U.S. government did at Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas. In the years leading up to his execution he was a firm opponent of the events and policies leading to the second war in Iraq.
On the opposite end of the spectrum we find Ron Kovic, author of the autobiography Born on the Fourth of July and decorated veteran, (also received Bronze Star) who becomes a hero after going through his own horrific experiences with war. Kovic joined the marines straight out of high school and was shipped over to Vietnam where he witnessed the massacre of Vietnamese civilians and suffered a bullet wound to his spine that caused him to be paralyzed from mid-chest down. He spent a long period of time in a horrible New York VA hospital that is infested with rats, has apathetic doctors, and has rampant drug use. After returning home Kovic distances himself from his family and resorts to alcohol, much like McVeigh’s Methamphetamine, as a means of dealing with his situation. Facing extreme disillusionment with the U.S. government and the way Vietnam vets are treated upon returning home, namely the VA hospitals, rather than blowing up a building or some other “villainous” act, Kovic opts to work within the system and becomes one of the most famous veteran peace activists to come out of the Vietnam conflict. He led numerous protests including a seventeen day hunger strike by him and numerous other disabled vets in the office of California Senator Alan Cranston. The ultimate outcome of the strike was the resignation of VA head Donald E. Johnson. Kovic remains a peace activist and veterans advocate as he continues to protest Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Again, like Batman and The Penguin, we see two people, victims of very similar circumstances that play two very different roles. This is where the concepts of participant and non-participant truly become important. The explanation for the individual reactions of Kovic and McVeigh lie deeper in their pasts than just their military experiences.
McVeigh was born April 23, 1968 in New York State. He had a fairly turbulent child hood with his parents separating, and then getting back together twice before they finally divorced when McVeigh was 10 years old. Through high school he existed primarily on the fringes of student life. As his classmates recall, he would periodically join various school organizations but drop out of them shortly after. Obviously these actions would typically indicate a non-participant, along with the potential disillusionment that would likely occur when a young child’s parents divorced. With these two factors in mind, assuming that McVeigh was a non-participant is not an irresponsible conclusion. Kovic, on the other hand, as the laws of role transformation would suggest, was most likely a participant. His child hood, unlike McVeigh’s, was very stable with his parents marriage intact as well as being a high school wrestler and exceptional student. Prior to enlisting he claims to have held his country in very high regard. Clearly these same observations of their childhoods that suggested McVeigh was a non-participant indicate that Kovic was a participant. Naturally one could fairly easily predict which would become a villain and which would become a hero when placed under similar circumstances based upon their histories and the concept of role transformation.
At this point, it is important to note that although the previous examples characterize villains as people committing “immoral” acts and heroes “moral” acts, this is not always the case. For the sake of convenience and clarity to the reader, the above examples followed the simple comic book concept of heroes and villains. By actual definition the defining factor is whether the person attempts to tear down their society, or change it from within. The concept of morals, or right and wrong, are purely a matter of personal opinion and are therefore too nebulous and inconsistent to define a relatively rigid theory. To confirm this concept one may observe Hitler and the founding fathers of the United States. By definition (not public opinion) Hitler has in fact a hero. He worked through legal and accepted channels in the German government to reach a position of political power that he then used to change his country as he saw fit, which just happened to include committing what are regarded as some of the most heinous acts in modern history. The determining factor in Hitler’s status as hero is the fact that he changed his country (society) for what he believed to be the better, from within. The Founding Fathers, on the other hand, are by definition, villains (in this case they shall be considered collectively as it is difficult to focus on just one), because there goal was to, in a sense, destroy their country (society) in order to reconstruct it as they saw fit. They openly rebelled against the society they existed in through the spread of literature critical to the British, boycotts, and ultimately outright armed conflict.
In order to have sweeping social change there must be either heroes or villains to cause the change because the participant group is relatively static. Its changes are inconsequential to massive reform and its only actions are the gradual self destructive malignancies that result from the self centered pursuit of personal gain such as social problems like poverty and environmental problems that stem from unchecked consumption (oil, deforestation, and pollution) and some people taking advantage of others for their own personal gain. One could argue that it is possible that the remaining non-participants could passively cause social reform through the organization of a separate society of sorts but this simply does not happen. No matter how anonymous an organization of non-participants is, the participating majority will invariably absorb and neutralize the non-participating group. For example, most people are aware of the punk/straight-edge punk movement that was centered around music but promoted ideals of individuality, political awareness, and a rejection of the idea of the ultimate goal in life being personal gain (clearly a conflict with participant ideals). The subculture was formed largely as a backlash against the conformity and commercialization that arose in the 1970’s on. As a small “underground” group they remained true to their ideals, but as soon as they reached a certain size the idea of “punk” became a fashion statement that simply involved wearing “unique” clothes. Once this point was reached the punk sub-culture was no longer separate from participant society, they were a part of it. Suffering a similar fate, the hippie movement was also neutralized through popularization.
So far explanations and descriptions have been offered for what happens when the four separate classes are allowed to go their separate ways, but what happens when they find themselves tossed into the realm of their opposites? It is a fairly common occurrence to find a participant thrown into the world of non-participants and the non-participants cast into the domain of the participant. In no place is this situation more easily observed than in the American high school. Since it is a place where people are given the least freedom in deciding whether or not they whish to attend and they are also reaching a conclusion to the ultimate question it may be the only place where participants and non-participants are so violently thrust into a single group. Because of this it is often possible to observe a distinct separation of the two similar to that observed when one attempts mixing oil with water. The majority of a high school population is a very cohesive mass of participants that the non-participants will almost invariable distance themselves from. The acid test, in most cases, for the non participant is the lunch room, generally speaking, if one were to observe a cafeteria from above there will be a distinct area of dense population where there are people packed four or more to a table; expanding outward there are fewer and fewer people to a table. As density decreases the people found at the edges will likely be non-participants. As most people are aware the participants in the middle rarely have much interaction with the non-participants on the fringes. Often times, forcing the groups together will cause outright conflict between the two that have an almost unexplainable disdain for one another.
On a larger scale, we periodically see the result of prolonged and extreme cases of the misplaced non-participant. Few people within today’s teenage youth are unaware of the suicide of the band Nirvana’s lead singer Kurt Cobain, who is one of the more notable victims of role misplacement. Fairly well established as a non-participant in high school, he was generally an “odd-man-out” associating himself with the undesirables such as homosexuals; he professed no desire to belong in the participating majority often doing his best to anger a homophobic society by spray-painting messages like “God is gay” on pick-up trucks. His music could be considered a personal outlet rather than being oriented toward pleasing the masses and becoming a rock star, especially considering the fact that the origins of the band were in early punk rock, a genre fairly well established as a non-participant entity at that time. The band itself started small, but quickly rose to prominence and became main-stream music that had a large following of the group Cobain had avoided in high school. It is easily argued that Cobain had no desire to have this position in the limelight; looking to his suicide note one sees the lines:

“All the warnings from the punk rock 101 courses over the years, since my first introduction to the, shall we say, ethics involved with independence and the embracement of your community has proven to be very true. I haven't felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music along with reading and writing for too many years now. I feel guilty beyond words about these things”


Cryptic, but a common message in punk music is individuality and the idea that the majority (participants) is to be avoided, which is why punk rock groups tend to be fiercely independent and refuse to become part of mainstream music. Whether he realized it or not Cobain quickly became a victim of being stuck n a position that forced him to participate in a society that under normal circumstances he probably never would have been associated with.


The ultimate outcome of this theory in action is a sort of self balancing equation. Since the role of participant and non-participant are determined by the world around them, they are quite literally a product of the system. Once this has been determined the results of catastrophic and traumatizing events are relatively predetermined to create heroes and villains. As long as society remains predominately “good” in the eyes of children there will be more heroes than villains thereby creating a situation where there are sufficient people willing to do good to counterbalance villainous destruction, be it figurative or literal. Should society become predominately “evil” in the eyes of children there will be a corresponding increase in the number of villains to tear down the system. What this does is create a situation where the majority remains satisfied with life. If the villain were somehow not permitted to destroy the system in order to rebuild the remaining classes would be forced to live in a defunct system that was beyond the repair of any number of heroes. This creates a cycle of figurative destruction and reconstruction that provides an opportunity for the cumulative damage the participants cause to be repaired. This cycle is easily observed when the histories of the world’s various nations/countries/civilizations are considered. They all feature a rise to prosperity and widespread contentment that eventually gives way to a complete implosion as it either destroys itself or its accumulated self inflicted/villai-caused damage leaves it vulnerable to destruction from the outside. A good example of this concept is the French revolution. In the several centuries prior to 1789, France became united under a central monarchy and rose to economic prominence. Within the country, the majority was more well off than before and in a sweeping generality, they could be called happy. Over time the upper classes (namely those of royal blood) became highly decadent and threw the lower classes into a state of unrest in order to pay for the monarchy’s financial irresponsibility. In response to starvation and abject poverty the non-participants rose up and tore down the old France to create a republic. Other examples of this style of revolution are numerous in modern history with such examples as the fall of Russian czarist rule and the rise of socialism, or the more recent overthrow of Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979 and the creation of an Islamic theocracy in his place.
To put it in more metaphorical terms the hero is a building maintenance worker, and as long as the tenants (society) living within the building remain happy, it only suffers minor wear and tear from the everyday activities of the tenants, which are easily repaired by the maintenance worker. If the tenants become so unhappy that they cause more damage than the maintenance worker can keep up with, the building is defunct, and the villain is there to run the wrecking ball. Once again, none of the four types are definitively “bad”, they all play a necessary part in the overall health of a population.

If you have read this far, I am greatly indebted to you. If you need someone to review anything send it my way and I will gladly read it.