Ch 16 The Downside of Hero Worship
From an early age, I accepted that my favorite athletes – Muhammad Ali and Reggie Jackson – could be very flawed human beings.
I went to my first NFL game with the express purpose of seeing O.J. Simpson play. Can you imagine? We all know now what a false idol O.J. proved to be.
Consider the events of the last week – the horrific revelations of child sexual abuse on the Penn State campus that caused the firing of Joe Paterno, the winningest coach in college football history.Read more here: www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/11/16/130240/commentary-we-shouldnt-blindly.html#storylink=cpy
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Some folks just don't like heroes
Some of us are taught from early on that there is no such thing as an exceptional human being. Parents are very good at teaching this, but peers can be effective as well. Both can have passions for sullying the reputations and accomplishments of anyone. They especially have a need to find something wrong with those whom others look up to.
This is true for people in all areas of life, but particularly true when it comes to sports. According to them, a superior athlete must be on steroids (now for both men and women,) or guilty of something other.
There are rules against steroid use and moral outrage over glaring faults. No matter how great an athletic accomplishment, it's marred by either or both of these. The glory of the new record goes away almost immediately, making as if it never existed. So too with any adulation for the person who accomplished it.
Without going into a defense of the athletes themselves, let's just say that the indictments are just, and that those who expose the vices are in fact wholly virtuous. This means that the athletes really aren't worthy of respect and should be forgotten about entirely. That should score more than enough points for these suspicious parents (who've possibly never won a trophy.)
Without holding any bias against them, the problem is not so much that these parents are wrong, but more that they never seem to have any adulation for anyone. In other words, they believe that no one is all that awesome anywhere.This is the message they send to their kids and to us as well. If it were not so, they would be saddened by a hero becoming human, and make certain that a replacement was quickly on the way.
But this is seldom the case. Instead, these types of parents are elated in finding some reason to discredit a fine performance or performer. By demonstrating that the super-person is not super, it allows them to prove that "people are people, no matter how famous or successful they are." See quote above. Presumably then, the world becomes a better place for everyone.
Reading between the lines relative to the dad above, what his son and we should do is this : 1.)stumble onto a star if we must; 2.) remember that no one can shine brightly by wholly honest means;3.)find the fault; 4.)laugh and say see how smart I am; or, 5.)wait until the star shows their true colors. In short, listen to me and you'll never feel less than anyone.
There may be some truth in the dad's position. Star athletes do marginal things--things which the common people do. They may even occasionally do ones like this dad does everyday of the week. But what about the heroes that no one knows anything about, other than that they came in second? Is a silver medal status not worthy of any adulation or respect? Is a tenth of a second less on a 400 meter butterfly really all that insignificant?
Well, maybe it's "insignificant" to someone who would never stoop to being a competitive athlete! But to those who know what it is to do a 400 meter butterfly, this attitude that the upright second placers are just "losers" is horrendous.
The benevolent interpretation of this dad's refusal to acknowledge greatness is that he wants to keep his son from feeling inferior to anyone who has accomplished anything. That's a way of promoting self-esteem--not a very effective one, but one which allegedly has a good intention.
But how likely are any of us to excel if we have such an attitude? How likely are we to get any type of a lift from anyone's ability to make it in spite of incredible odds? How likely then are we to even keep at a fitness lifestyle when it feels like we're making no improvements?
For the sake of argument, maybe we'd all be better off just kicking back and enjoying life, forgetting about trying to accomplish anything. That would be easy if everyone were the same, meaning no one was outstanding. Then we wouldn't even have to care about the twenty extra pounds to say nothing of breaking one of our own records, for example a seven minute mile. None of that would matter. Same goes for not having to feel that the time for the 400 meter butterfly was truly awesome--a very handy non-feeling if we can't even make it for 100 meters freestyle without catching our breaths!
But do kids (the ones inside of us especially) really want to be like this?
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This study on Chimpanzees might interest you - when chimps are tested they prefer looking at pictures of the most popular members in their troop to getting a tasty snack - these animals who share over 99% of our genetic material will give up a tasty snack to look at a picture of a celebrity chimp!
Maybe hero worship is natural
We all know that we get hungry and want to eat. This is only natural. But the implication here is that a chimp looking at a picture of a celebrity-chimp is even more natural.
Of course, chimps are not people--they're not entirely like us. Certainly, they would not do well traveling the freeway, putting in an eight hour day and then returning home to parent little chimps. But, they're close to us genetically. So, studying them in an attempt to better understand ourselves may make some sense.
If so, we can say that hero worship is more important than many of us may be thinking. Too many of us have parents like the dad at the start of the chapter. That may keep us from even starting to think in this way. In many cases, for decades, we have discredited others who have excelled for reasons we might not even begin to understand.
As a result, we are now numb to greatness. For instance, the Olympics can happen, but all we care about is that the USA got more Golds than any other country. Or, we can hear that the Dolphins beat the Steelers, without caring about much other than we won the bet. In other words, we don't even begin to wonder about what any of the individuals did, where they came from, how their performance outshone anything other in their or their team's career. In short, we don't even acknowledge the existence of an exceptional individual.
The question is "is this healthy?" After all, chimps seem to be preferring super-chimps to bananas, while we're preferring banana splits to outstanding athletes. Could it be that the chimps are misguided? Of course not.
It may be a huge step from a celebrity-chimp to a Michael Phelps, or a Jack Lalanne, but it might make sense taking it. Those who admire the accomplishments of people like these would certainly agree. Their high comes from seeing Michael do a flip turn, or from seeing the late Jack outshine a counterpart one third his age. Their great feeling doesn't seem at all unnatural. In fact, it's the opposite. It's a healthy turn on. It makes their workout better, their diet easier to stay on, and their brand new supplement worth at least a month's try.
Perhaps the dad above thinks all this is just childish thinking, or playing with our emotions. Maybe he thinks it's no more than a crutch. He may be right. But, if it makes a positive difference, why ignore it? If we choose not to, then maybe we should call hero-worship child-like.
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What drives our endless fascination with celebrity worship? And more importantly, can its enticing seduction ever be harmful to our health?
The answer, it seems, depends a lot on who is doing the worshiping -- and the reasons why.
"Like most things there's a dimensional approach here; there are some people who are fascinated by celebrities lives, but also involved in meaningful activities and relationships in their own lives, and for these people star watching is usually a harmless diversion," says Eric Hollander, MD, professor of psychiatry and director of the Compulsive, Impulsive and Anxiety Disorders program at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.
For others, however, things don't go quite that way.
Hollander says there are an increasing number of us for whom the fascination with celebrities is a substitution for real life -- with the focus on a celebrity replacing the focus that should be on our own lives. And that, he says, is the point at which some folks begin to get into trouble.
Depression, anxiety, and a decrease in self-esteem are just some of the documented problems that can result when we take the focus off our own lives and instead focus all our energy on the life of a celebrity....
Fischoff, who has academically studied the cult of celebrity, says the very need to find an idol and follow him is programmed into our DNA.
Hero worship can be bad
Like anything, too much of a good thing can be bad. Too much hero worship does have a downsides.
1.)One of the downsides is that it can become a substitute for using our own heads. In the present context, this means doing what we think our heroes would do, without factoring in our own needs and aspirations. In the previous chapters, this was cautioned against.
It does no good to be someone we aren't. We're ourselves and that's a person whom we should respect and develop. Doing so makes us proud of being us. But, we'll never have this experience if we're doing anything other than staying with our well-planned fitness lifestyle--the one of daily workouts, diet and supplementation.
Keeping at this is difficult. The temptation is always there to go back to old ways. The temptation is always there to skip the workout, go out for a real burger, save the money on the supplements. This should never be allowed to happen, and it need not, if only we are always doing the right things.
That's where the heroes come in. They would never go off course; and with a little imagination we can see and hear them say "Just keep at it" in way that will make that come about.
This is why these people are important. They're examples of what keeping at it can do. Knowing that they've said no to temptation, knowing that they started out from a place even more humble than ours is a living reminder that we can make it. Of course, following their advice as best we can, and as much in keeping with what we need, is important as well. But the truth is that most of us already know what we have to do, it's just that we have a tendency to quit, or, in some cases, to never really start.
A little healthy hero worship can change all of that.
2.) Another bad aspect of hero worship is that we compare ourselves to our heroes. This can make us feel very one down as if we will never measure up to one tenth of their stature. That can be enough to make us give up entirely.
To keep this from happening, we have to know where these people are coming from. That, of course, is not from outer space, but rather from a point which we may be even lower than the one we're at right now. Becoming familiar with this can thereby become as important as knowing Phelps' latest time for the 400 or Jack's unbelievable feat on his seventieth birthday.
Thus, a familiarity with everything, or as close to that as we can come, is essential. The image of these people has got to be in our heads to do it's work. Then we can be just like the chimp--happier with a celebrity image than with a couple of bananas.
What could be more really human?!
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LaLanne opened what is commonly believed to be the nation's first health club, in Oakland in 1936. In the 1950s, he launched an early-morning televised exercise program keyed to housewives. He designed many now-familiar exercise machines, including leg extension machines and cable-pulley weights. And he proposed the then-radical idea that women, the elderly and even the disabled should work out to retain strength.
Full of exuberance and good cheer, LaLanne saw himself as a combination cheerleader, rescuer and savior. And if his enthusiasm had a religious fervor to it, well, so be it.
"Well it is. It is a religion with me," he told What Is Enlightenment, a magazine dedicated to awareness, in 1999. "It's a way of life. A religion is a way of life, isn't it?"
"Billy Graham was for the hereafter. I'm for the here and now," he told The Times when he was almost 92, employing his usual rapid-fire patter.
Another time, he explained, "The crusade is never off my mind — the exercise I do, the food I eat, the thought I think — all this and how I can help make my profession better-respected. To me, this one thing — physical culture and nutrition — is the salvation of America."
January 23, 2011|By Claudia Luther, Special to The LA Times
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Pay your money and take your choice
Except for those like the writer at the start of the chapter, the one with the negative dad, we can choose whomever we might want to look up to. Actually, he can as well, but not without heroic diligence and concentration. Without a lot of introspection, he simply will feel too guilty to continue on once he starts admiring someone. That's because the dad (either the real one or the one inside his head) will be constantly reminding him that there's just no really worthy of all that adulation. Who really wants to feel this way?
To keep from this depression, we should all have a hero. But who's a good hero to choose? Jillian Michaels was talked about in previous chapters. So too was Jane Fonda and Jack Lalanne. Then too, the Rocky character has come up quite often. Now, we've heard the name Michael Phelps. All are awesome. All can work.
But Lalanne's talked about here a little more completely, maybe because he spanned two generations and did the most. Too, a considerable part of our world is better because of his eighty years of dedication.
In his words, he was once a sugar addict. But he was other things as well. He was Mr America. He was a pioneer in fitness, in fact referred to as the grandfather of fitness, establishing health clubs and designing exercise equipment. He was an author of a few books. He was a lecturer. He was an athlete who performed unblievable feats in his senior years--sustaining a fitness lifestyle with two hour daily workouts until his death at 96.
And, he lived an exemplary life. For all of those years, the worst that could be said about him is that he wore a jump suit on his TV fitness programs. Presumably his critics think he should have worn sweat pants or shorts.
Though currently deceased, he can be Googled for practical tips, speeches, quotes, and advice on the juicer he thought everyone should have. Doing that should be enough for anyone to have their own Jack internalized and ready to say whatever is needed to make it through any tough time imaginable.
Was Jack like everybody else? Yes...yes and no. He had his trials a long time ago, but he corrected his bad habits. That makes him like a lot of us. But he did such a fine job of taking off from there that he left a legacy for future generations to do the same. That is unlike what most folks do.
For certain, if he were a super-chimp. the primate above would definitely prefer thinking about him to eating a banana.
Wrapping it up
It's true that we all can get too engrossed in people greater than ourselves. That can have bad consequences. It can make us forget about what we have to do to actualize our own potential. It can make us feel inferior or hopeless. And, it can make us completely disappointed if we find that out that our heroes are just not the respectable human beings that we need them to be.
But, none of these things have to happen. Or, if they do, we can find another person to look up to. In other words, we don't have to stay unimpressed like the writer at the start of the chapter. All that's necessary is to know our heroes not only as they are, but how they were-- how they were before they've made their journey. Knowledge of those things in conjunction with knowledge of ourselves can provide the inspiration that we all need to get us from where we are to where we want to go.
For further thought on Jack Lalanne order my e-book "Think and Grow Fit."
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