Friday, August 20, 2004

To be or not to be a hero

I've just started reading 'What would Buffy do?', which is a spiritual guide based on the characters of BTVS. There's a lot of material in there about redemption, sacrifice, forgiveness etc. I'm reading it because I'm a Buffy fan and because I'm a pop philosopher, not so much because I feel the need for spiritual guidance.

But then again, perhaps it's people who don't feel the need for it who are most in need of it...

I don't want to be a hero. I don't want to have to think of other people all the time. I don't want to care about everyone; there is enough on my plate just caring about myself, my partner, my immediate family and my friends. If anything, I'd like to care less about people outside this sphere - maybe because I feel powerless to prevent countries from invading each other, or corporations from polluting the environment. It's also because I want to live a simpler life, and it doesn't seem possible to live a simple life and care about everybody at the same time.

On the other hand, I do want to be a hero, because its such a noble thing to be. But if I was so heroic and noble, wouldn't I get all bigheaded about it and think I'm better than everyone else? And wouldn't that be ignoble?

2 comments:

Pickwick said...

I think that a main feature of being noble is to be blissfully unaware of it and thus continue to be a pinhead *chuckles*. the other possibility of heroism is to be tortured by it, a la spiderman, but that's plain tedious. You could always invent your own, new brand...

Violet said...

I wouldn't mind if I were an effortless hero