essay about heroism and the notion of sacrifice

Heroes: What They Do & Why We Need Them

A commentary on today's heroes, suffering and sacrifice: the necessary ingredients of heroism.

“Hardships prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary life.” – C.S. Lewis

This article is excerpted from:

Allison, S. T., & Setterberg, G. C. (2016). Suffering and sacrifice: Individual and collective benefits, and implications for leadership. In S. T. Allison, C. T. Kocher, & G. R. Goethals (Eds), Frontiers in spiritual leadership: Discovering the better angels of our nature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Are pain and suffering destructive experiences to be avoided, or are they opportunities for people to develop an extraordinary life? The wisdom of spiritual philosophies throughout the ages has converged with modern psychological research to produce an answer: Suffering and sacrifice offer profound gains, advantages, and opportunities to those open to such boons.

Our review of the wisdom gleaned from theology and psychology reveals at least six beneficial effects of suffering. These include the idea that suffering (1) has redemptive qualities, (2) signifies important developmental milestones, (3) fosters humility, (4) elevates compassion, (5) encourages social union and action, and (6) provides meaning and purpose.

1. Suffering is Redemptive

Christianity also embraces the redemptive value of suffering. Foremost in the Judeo-Christian tradition is the idea that all human suffering stems from the fall of man (Genesis 1:31). The centerpiece of suffering in the New Testament is, of course, the portrayal of the passion of Christ through the Synoptic Gospels. For Christians, Christ’s suffering served the purpose of redeeming no less than the entire human race, elevating Jesus into the role of the Western world’s consummate spiritual leader for the past two millennia.

Our previous work on the psychology of heroism has identified personal transformation through struggle as one of the defining characteristics of heroic leadership. Nelson Mandela, for example, endured 27 years of harsh imprisonment before assuming the presidency of South Africa. Mandela’s ability to prevail after such long-term suffering made him an inspirational hero worldwide. Desmond Tutu opined that Mandela’s suffering “helped to purify him and grow the magnanimity that would become his hallmark”.

In the field of positive psychology, scholars have acknowledged the role of suffering in the development of healthy character strengths. Positive psychology recognizes beneficial effects of suffering through the principles of posttraumatic growth, stress-related growth, positive adjustment, positive adaptation, and adversarial growth .

A study of character strengths measured before and after the September 11 th terrorist attacks showed an increase in people’s “faith, hope, and love”. The redemptive development of hope, wisdom, and resilience as a result of suffering is said to have contributed to the leadership excellence of figures such as Helen Keller, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mahatma Gandhi, Malala Yousafzai, Stephen Hawking, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Shiva Nazar Ahari, Oprah Winfrey, J. K. Rowling, and Ludwig van Beethoven, among others.

2. Suffering Signifies a Necessary “Crossover” Point in Life

Psychologists who study lifespan development have long known that humans traverse through various stages of maturation from birth to death. Each necessary entanglement on the human journey represents painful progress toward becoming fully human, each struggle an opportunity for people to achieve the goal of wholeness. According to Erik Erikson, people must successfully negotiate a specific crisis associated with each growth stage. If mishandled, the crisis can produce suffering, and it is this suffering produces the necessary motivation for progression to the subsequent stage.

A recurring theme in world literature is the idea that people must plummet to physical and emotional depths before they can ascend to new heights. In The Odyssey , the hero Odysseus descends to Hades where he meets the blind prophet Tireseas. Only at this lowest of points, in the depths of the underworld, is Odysseus given the gift of insight about how to become the wise ruler of Ithaca. The Apostles’ Creed tells of Jesus descending into hell before his ascent to heaven. Somehow, the author(s) of the creed deemed it absolutely necessary for Jesus to fall before he could “rise” from the dead.

In eastern religious traditions, such as Hinduism, one encounters the idea that suffering follows naturally from the commission of immoral acts in one’s current or past life. This type of karma involves the acceptance of suffering as a just consequence and as an opportunity for spiritual progress.

The message is clear: we must die, or some part of us must die, before we can live, or at least move forward. If we resist that dying – and most every one of us does – we resist what is good for us and hence bring about our own suffering. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung observed that “the foundation of all mental illness is the avoidance of true suffering .”

Paradoxically, if we avoid suffering, we avoid growth. People who resist any type of dying will experience necessary suffering. Those who resist suffering are ill equipped to serve as the leaders of society. Our most heroic leaders, like Nelson Mandela, have been “through the fire” and have thus gained the wisdom and maturity to lead wisely.

3. Suffering Encourages Humility

Spiritual traditions from around the world emphasize that although life can be painful, a higher power is at work using our circumstances to humble us and to shape us into what he, she, or it wants us to be. C.S. Lewis once noted, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Richard Rohr opines that suffering “doesn’t accomplish anything tangible but creates space for learning and love.” Suffering serves the purpose of humbling us and waking us from the dream of self-sufficiency.

In twelve-step programs, pain, misery, and desperation become the keys to recovery. Step 7 asks program members to “ humbly ask God” to remove personal defects of character (italics added). This humility can only be accomplished by first admitting defeat and then accepting that one cannot recover from addiction without assistance from a higher power. In the end, selflessly serving others – Step 12 — is pivotal in maintaining one’s own sobriety and recovery.

4. Suffering Stimulates Compassion

Suffering also invokes compassion for those who are hurting. Every major spiritual tradition emphasizes the importance of consolation, relief, and self-sacrificial outreach for the suffering. Buddhist use two words in reference to compassion. The first is karuna , which is the willingness to bear the pain of another and to practice kindness, affection, and gentleness toward those who suffer. The second term is metta , which is an altruistic kindness and love that is free of any selfish attachment.

Psychologists have found that just getting people to think about the suffering of others activates the vagus nerve, which is associated with compassion. Having people read uplifting stories about sacrifice increases empathy to the same degree as various kinds of spiritual practices such as contemplation, prayer, meditation, and yoga. Being outside in a beautiful natural setting also appears to encourage greater compassion. Feelings of awe and wonder about the universe and the miracle of life can increase both sympathy and compassion.

Being rich and powerful may also undermine empathic responses. In a series of fascinating studies, researchers observed the behavior of drivers at a busy four-way intersection. They discovered that drivers of luxury cars were more likely to cut off other motorists rather than wait their turn at the intersection. Luxury car drivers were more likely to speed past a pedestrian trying to use a crosswalk rather than let the pedestrian cross the road. Compared to lower and middle-class participants, wealthy participants also showed little heart rate change when watching a video of children with cancer.

These data suggest that more powerful and wealthy people are less likely to show compassion for the less fortunate than are the weak and the poor. Heroic leaders are somehow able to guard against letting the power of their position compromise their values of compassion and empathy for the least fortunate.

5. Suffering Promotes Social Union and Collective Action

Sigmund Freud wrote, “We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.” It is clear that Freud viewed social relations as the cause of suffering. In contrast, the spiritual view of suffering reflects the opposite position, namely, that suffering is actually the cause of our social relations . Suffering brings people together and is much better than joy at creating bonds among group members.

Psychologist Stanley Schachter told his research participants that they were about to receive painful electric shocks. Before participating in the study, they were asked to choose one of two waiting rooms in which to sit. Participants about to receive shocks were much more likely to choose the waiting room with people in it compared to the empty room. Schachter concluded that misery loves company .

Schachter then went a step further and asked a different group of participants, also about to receive the shocks, if they would prefer to wait in a room with other participants who were about to receive shocks, or a room with participants who would not be receiving shocks. Schachter found that participants about to receive shocks much preferred the room with others who were going to share the same fate. His conclusion: misery doesn’t love any kind of company; misery loves miserable company.

Suffering can also mobilize people. The suffering of impoverished Americans during the Great Depression enabled Franklin Roosevelt to implement his New Deal policies and programs. Later, during World War II, both he and Churchill cited the suffering of both citizens and soldiers to promote the rationing of sugar, butter, meat, tea, biscuits, coffee, canned milk, firewood, and gasoline.

In North America, African-Americans were subjugated by European-Americans for centuries, and from this suffering emerged the heroic leadership of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jesse Jackson, among others. The suffering of women inspired Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and a host of other heroic activists to promote the women’s suffrage movement.

6. Suffering Instills Meaning and Purpose

The sixth and final benefit of suffering resides in the meaning and purpose that suffering imparts to the sufferer. Many spiritual traditions underscore the role of suffering in bestowing a sense of significance and worth to life. In Islam, the faithful are asked to accept suffering as Allah’s will and to submit to it as a test of faith. Followers are cautioned to avoid questioning or resisting the suffering; one simply endures it with the assurance that Allah never asks for more than one can handle.

For Christians, countless scriptural passages emphasize discernment of God’s will to gain an understanding of suffering or despair. Suffering is endowed with meaning when it is attached to a perception of a divine calling in one’s life or a belief that all events can be used to fulfill God’s greater and mysterious purpose.

The ability to derive meaning from suffering is a hallmark characteristic of heroism in myths and legends. Comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell (1949) discovered that all great hero tales from around the globe share a common structure, which Campbell called the hero monomyth . A key component of the monomyth is the hero’s ability to endure suffering and to triumph over it. Heroes discover, or recover, an important inner quality that plays a pivotal role in producing a personal transformation that enables the hero to rise about the suffering and prevail.

Suffering is one of many recurring phenomena found in classic hero tales. Other phenomena endemic to hero tales include love, mystery, eternity, infinity, God, paradox, meaning, and sacrifice. Richard Rohr calls these phenomena transrational experiences. An experience is considered transrational when it defies logical analysis and can only be understood (or best understood) in the context of a good narrative. We can better understand the underlying meaning of suffering within an effective story.

The legendary poet William Wordsworth must have been intuitively aware of the transrational nature of suffering, sacrifice, and the infinite when he penned the following line: “Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, and shares the nature of infinity.” Joseph Campbell connected the dots between suffering and people’s search for meaning. According to Campbell, the hero’s journey is “the pivotal myth that unites the spiritual adventure of ancient heroes with the modern search for meaning.”

For an individual or a group to move forward or progress, something unpleasant must be endured (suffering) or something pleasant must be given up (sacrifice). Humanity’s most effective and inspiring leaders have sustained immense suffering, made harrowing sacrifices, or both. These leaders’ suffering and sacrifice set them apart from the masses of people who deny, decry, or defy these seemingly unsavory experiences.

Great heroic leaders understand that suffering redeems, augments, defines, humbles, elevates, mobilizes, and enriches us. These enlightened leaders not only refuse to allow suffering and sacrifice to defeat them; they use suffering and sacrifice as assets to be mined for psychological advantages and inspiration. Individuals who successfully plumb the spiritual treasures of suffering and sacrifice have the wisdom and maturity to evolve into society’s most transcendent leaders.

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This article is based on a chapter authored by Scott Allison and Gwendolyn Setterberg, published in ‘ Frontiers in Spiritual Leadership ’, in 2016. The exact reference for the article is:

Allison, S. T., & Setterberg, G. C. (2016). Suffering and sacrifice: Individual and collective benefits, and implications for leadership. In S. T. Allison, C. T. Kocher, & G. R. Goethals, (Eds), Frontiers in spiritual leadership: Discovering the better angels of our nature . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bibliography

Allison, S. T., & Cecilione, J. L. (2015). Paradoxical truths in heroic leadership: Implications for leadership development and effectiveness. In R. Bolden, M. Witzel, & N. Linacre (Eds.), Leadership paradoxes . London: Routledge.

Allison, S. T., Eylon, D., Beggan, J.K., & Bachelder, J. (2009). The demise of leadership: Positivity and negativity in evaluations of dead leaders. The Leadership Quarterly , 20 , 115-129.

Allison, S. T., & Goethals, G. R. (2008). Deifying the dead and downtrodden: Sympathetic figures as inspirational leaders. In C.L. Hoyt, G. R. Goethals, & D. R. Forsyth (Eds.), Leadership at the crossroads: Psychology and leadership . Westport, CT: Praeger.

Allison, S. T., & Goethals, G. R. (2014). “Now he belongs to the ages”: The heroic leadership dynamic and deep narratives of greatness. In Goethals, G. R., Allison, S. T., Kramer, R., & Messick, D. (Eds.), Conceptions of leadership: Enduring ideas and emerging insights . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Campbell, J. (1949). The hero with a thousand faces . New World Library.

Cambpell, J. (1971). Man & Myth: A Conversation with Joseph Campbell. Psychology Today , July 1971.

Diehl, U. (2009). Human suffering as a challenge for the meaning of life. International Journal of Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts , 4(2).

Frankl, V. (1946). Man’s search for meaning . New York: Beacon Press.

Goethals, G. R. & Allison, S. T. (2012). Making heroes: The construction of courage, competence and virtue. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 46 , 183-235. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-394281-4.00004-0

Goethals, G. R., & Allison, S. T. (2016). Transforming motives and mentors: The heroic leadership of James MacGregor Burns . Unpublished manuscript, University of Richmond.

Goethals, G. R., Allison, S. T., Kramer, R., & Messick, D. (Eds.) (2014). Conceptions of leadership: Enduring ideas and emerging insights . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gunderman (2002). Is suffering the enemy? The Hastings Center Report , 32, 40-44.

Hall, Langer, & Martin (2010). The role of suffering in human flourishing: Contributions from positive psychology, theology, and philosophy. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 38 , 111-121.

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3 thoughts on “ suffering and sacrifice: the necessary ingredients of heroism ”.

What a fantastic article! I feel often that people having faced and overcome adversity & pain really “mature” into who they truely are. Food for thoughts for parents (like me & my wife) who are so trying to avoid pain to our children. Now I am not pushing them into pain but I am looking at when they feel pain and show how they can grow from it. Not easy either but great process. thx for sharing your wisedom Thierry http://www.ontheroadtohonesty.com

Thank you for your comment, Thierry. It takes patience to ride out the storm, trusting that good things will result from the pain. I appreciate your sharing.

If life hands you lemons– make lemonade. It’s very true that suffering and sacrifice can build character. It can also make people bitter and cynical. That’s the difference between the heroes and villains, I suppose.

It also raises a disturbing thought. We aspire to create a better world, free of suffering and want– but if that goal is achieved, would it only create a society of shallow and unfeeling reptiles? Is it possible to have it both ways?

Comments are closed.

Sacrifice in Heroism Essay Example

Although heroes usually wear capes, showing sacrifice is what everyone should picture when they hear the word hero. Picture sacrifice when thinking of heroes because sacrifice is the ultimate form of heroism. Not only do heroes not wear capes, heroes are everyday people risking what they have for what is right.

Heroism is being brave while overcoming challenges, as well as sacrificing what you have. In the poem "A Man" by Nina Cassian, a man loses his arm. This poem shows the man realizing what he can not do anymore but without worry. Although, in the end, it is a good thing. "And where the arm had been torn away a wing grew." (Cassian 75) He shows bravery and sacrifice because he overcame losing his arm without any doubt. Another example of sacrifice is in the article "Soldier Home After Losing His Leg in Afghanistan" by Gale Fiege. This article explains a story of a man that loses his leg while driving over a bomb in Afghanistan. The article explains what he was feeling during physical therapy and the outcome that came with it. Physical therapy was a rough journey for him, "The rehabilitation was rigorous and I pushed it, building back my muscles and learning to use the prosthetic leg." (Fiege 79) He sacrificed his time and effort to get back to 100%. When he was strong enough to walk again, he won the Purple Heart award for overcoming a challenge that came to him in war. This article shows heroism because the man never gave up and overcame an ambitious challenge. Harriet Tubman is another example. Harriet was the woman that saved the majority of slaves from plantations through the underground railroad. The underground railroad was a network of secret tunnels and safe houses underground. Harriet showed bravery by risking her life and saving others by leading them through the underground railroad to freedom. All three of these examples showed heroism because they all sacrificed what they had to help out a bigger problem.

Heroism is about standing for what you believe in. Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States. Lincoln was an avid antislavery supporter. Being the president, Lincoln was exposed to lots of slavery and protests about slavery. Lincoln decided to take a stand and put it to an end. Lincoln helped pass the 13th amendment in 1864, ending slavery in America. Lincoln made bright lives for those in the future. "The light of his brightening prospects flashes cheeringly to-day athwart the gloom occasioned by his death..." (Gurley 89). This means that Lincoln impacted people for many years to come. Lincoln showed sacrifice by going against the ways of America and doing what he sought right. On the other hand, Frederick Douglass was a former slave. In 1855 Douglass escaped his plantation and settled in Massachusetts. Douglass published an antislavery newspaper to open the minds of slave owners. Douglass was appointed by Lincoln himself to be his adviser during the Civil War. Later, Douglass was raised to a position in the U.S. government, which was never achieved before by an African American. This played a big role in the African American community, still affecting lives to this day. "...but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.” (Hayden 95) Douglass took a stride towards freedom and he crossed the finish line by not backing down on his beliefs.

Heroism is caring about others over yourself. In my personal life, my parents have shown the most heroism. Almost every single day my parents sacrifice what they have for me. Let it be the food they were going to eat, or maybe they were trying to save money but purchased something I wanted to make me happy. No matter how their day has been, whatever I need my parents are there for me. This exemplifies heroism because they give up what they worked for and let go of what they have so I can be happy. A piece of literature that I have read that shows heroism can be found in Harry Potter: The Sorcerer's Stone. In this book, the three main protagonists, Harry, Ron, and Hermione, are stopped in their path by an oversized board of Wizard's Chest. In the middle of the game, the three get stuck in a situation where the only way to win is through sacrifice. They need to sacrifice Ron's piece, the Knight. Ron realizes what he needs to do and tells his friends that he needs to sacrifice himself. The others beg him not to, but he says, "Harry, it's you who has to go on. I know it. Not me. Not Hermione. You." and proceeds to sacrifice his Knight to let Harry get a checkmate on the King and win the game. This shows heroism because Ron sacrifices himself for the greater good to save his friends and others. My third example of heroism is two YouTubers named Mark Rober and Mr Beast. Instead of focusing on their careers, these two individuals started a funding program called TeamSeas. TeamSeas was designed to take the trash out of the ocean. They made this foundation for poorer countries that do not have the option of recycling, which leads to oceans overflowing with garbage. Every dollar donated to TeamSeas would take one pound of trash out of the ocean. Their goal was $30,000,000 donated, but they surpassed that with around $32,000,000 donated. They showed sacrifice because they took time out of their lives for others in need of help.

As a result, all of these examples take sacrifice to overcome. Instead of doing their everyday things, these heroes decided to sacrifice what they had to make their life, and the lives of others better. Wearing a cape or hiding your identity does not make you a hero. The real heroes are people taking time out of their day for whatever seeks need. In conclusion, heroism is not about getting acknowledgement for what you do but sacrificing what you can not get back.

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A Lesson Before Dying

Ernest gaines, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

During one of Grant ’s visits to Jefferson near the end of the novel, he gives Jefferson his definition of a hero: “A hero is someone who does something for other people.” The broader implication of Grant’s definition is that heroes sacrifice their own interests for the interests of other human beings. Grant insists that he himself is not a hero—in fact, he says that he’s only looking out for his own interests as an educated black man—but that Jefferson is capable of being a hero.

Gaines explores the ethics of heroism and sacrifice in A Lesson Before Dying . In his earliest encounters with Grant, Jefferson rejects heroism, personal sacrifice, and all morality—there’s no point in caring about others, he tells Grant, since he’s going to die soon. It’s up to Grant to convince Jefferson that he does have the desire and the ability to be a hero.

Throughout the novel, Gaines is careful to show us the small and large sacrifices the characters make for each other. The schoolchildren’s families donate wood in order to keep the school warm through the winter, and the entire community donates clothes, presents, and food for the annual Christmas play that Grant organizes. Emma and Tante Lou make enormous sacrifices for their children: Emma cooks and cares for Jefferson’s every need, and Tante Lou works harder than ever to pay for Grant’s college education, even after she sustains wounds on her feet and knees. Even Grant, who tells Jefferson that he’s a selfish man, has devoted his adult life to teaching children, for reasons he can’t entirely explain. The reason Grant does this, Gaines suggests, is the same reason that people donate their wood to the schoolhouse: humans have an innate, illogical desire to help others.

By showing sacrifice in its ordinary, everyday forms, Gaines steers us toward the conclusion that it’s human to care about others, and to sacrifice. If heroism is sacrifice, this would suggest that all people are capable of heroism. Indeed, Jefferson attains heroism by putting Miss Emma’s interests before his own and walking bravely to his death, making Emma happy and proud. It may be that all people are capable of such displays of heroism, even if only a few of them ever prove it.

Ultimately, Gaines implies that sacrifice and heroism aren’t lofty ideals; they’re acts that all humans can perform with the proper encouragement. Even if few of us will become martyrs, it’s possible to be a hero in other ways—with this in mind, Gaines points us to the quiet heroism of Emma, Lou, and even Grant.

Heroism and Sacrifice ThemeTracker

Heroism and Sacrifice Quotes in A Lesson Before Dying

“I don’t know when I’m going to die, Jefferson. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe today. That’s why I try to live as well as I can every day and not hurt people. Especially people who love me, people who have done so much for me, people who have sacrificed for me. I don’t want to hurt those people. I want to help those people as much as I can.” “You can talk like that; you know you go’n walk out here in a hour. I bet you wouldn’t be talking like that if you knowed you was go’n stay in here.” “In here or out of here, Jefferson, what does it benefit you to hurt someone who loves you, who has done so much for you?”

“Do you know what a hero is, Jefferson? A hero is someone who does something for other people. He does something that other men don’t and can’t do. He is different from other men. He is above other men. No matter who those other men are, the hero, no matter who he is, is above them.” I lowered my voice again until we had passed the table. “I could never be a hero. I teach, but I don’t like teaching. I teach because it is the only thing that an educated black man can do in the South today. I don’t like it; I hate it. I don’t even like living here. I want to run away. I want to live for myself and for my woman and for nobody else. That is not a hero. A hero does for others.”

“Do you know what a myth is, Jefferson?” I asked him. “A myth is an old lie that people believe in. White people believe that they’re better than anyone else on earth—and that’s a myth. The last thing they ever want is to see a black man stand, and think, and show that common humanity that is in us all. It would destroy their myth. They would no longer have justification for having made us slaves and keeping us in the condition we are in. As long as none of us stand, they’re safe. They’re safe with me. They’re safe with Reverend Ambrose. I don’t want them to feel safe with you anymore.

“She been lying every day of her life, your aunt in there. That’s how you got through that university—cheating herself here, cheating herself there, but always telling you she’s all right. I’ve seen her hands bleed from picking cotton. I’ve seen the blisters from the hoe and the cane knife. At that church, crying on her knees. You ever looked at the scabs on her knees, boy? Course you never. ’Cause she never wanted you to see it. And that’s the difference between me and you, boy; that make me the educated one, and you the gump. I know my people. I know what they gone through. I know they done cheated themself, lied to themself—hoping that one they all love and trust can come back and help relieve the pain.”

Jefferson continued to look at Paul, a long, deep look, and the deputy felt that there was something else he wanted to say. Murphy and the other deputy were still waiting. “Well,” Paul said, and started to walk away. “Paul?” Jefferson said quietly. And his eyes were speaking, even more than his mouth. The deputy looked back at him. Murphy and Claude did too. “You go’n be there, Paul?” Jefferson asked, his eyes asked. Paul nodded. “Yes, Jefferson. I’ll be there.”

Several feet away from where I sat under the tree was a hill of bull grass. I doubted that I had looked at it once in all the time that I had been sitting there. I probably would not have noticed it at all had a butterfly, a yellow butterfly with dark specks like ink dots on its wings, not lit there. What had brought it there? There was no odor that I could detect to have attracted it. There were other places where it could have rested—there was the wire fence on either side of the road, there were weeds along both ditches with strong fragrances, there were flowers just a short distance away in Pichot’s yard—so why did it light on a hill of bull grass that offered it nothing? I watched it closely, the way it opened its wings and closed them, the way it opened its wings again, fluttered, closed its wings for a second or two, then opened them again and flew away. I watched it fly over the ditch and down into the quarter, I watched it until I could not see it anymore.

“I don’t know what you’re going to say when you go back in there. But tell them he was the bravest man in that room today. I’m a witness, Grant Wiggins. Tell them so.”

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

What Makes a Hero?

This month, Greater Good features videos of a presentation by Philip Zimbardo, the world-renowned psychologist perhaps best known for his infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. In his talk, Zimbardo discusses the psychology of evil and of heroism, exploring why good people sometimes turn bad and how we can encourage more people to perform heroic acts. In this excerpt from his talk, he zeroes in on his research and educational program designed to foster the “heroic imagination.”

More on Heroism

Watch the video of Philip Zimbardo's Greater Good talk on heroism.

Read his essay on " The Banality of Heroism ," which further explores the conditions that can promote heroism vs. evil.

Read this Greater Good essay on the "psychology of the bystander."

Learn more about Zimbardo's Heroic Imagination Project.

What makes us good? What makes us evil?

Research has uncovered many answers to the second question: Evil can be fostered by dehumanization, diffusion of responsibility, obedience to authority, unjust systems, group pressure, moral disengagement, and anonymity, to name a few.

But when we ask why people become heroic, research doesn’t yet have an answer. It could be that heroes have more compassion or empathy; maybe there’s a hero gene; maybe it’s because of their levels of oxytocin—research by neuroeconomist Paul Zak has shown that this “love hormone” in the brain increases the likelihood you’ll demonstrate altruism. We don’t know for sure.

I believe that heroism is different than altruism and compassion. For the last five years, my colleagues and I have been exploring the nature and roots of heroism, studying exemplary cases of heroism and surveying thousands of people about their choices to act (or not act) heroically. In that time, we’ve come to define heroism as an activity with several parts.

First, it’s performed in service to others in need—whether that’s a person, group, or community—or in defense of certain ideals. Second, it’s engaged in voluntarily, even in military contexts, as heroism remains an act that goes beyond something required by military duty. Third, a heroic act is one performed with recognition of possible risks and costs, be they to one’s physical health or personal reputation, in which the actor is willing to accept anticipated sacrifice. Finally, it is performed without external gain anticipated at the time of the act.

Simply put, then, the key to heroism is a concern for other people in need—a concern to defend a moral cause, knowing there is a personal risk, done without expectation of reward.

By that definition, then, altruism is heroism light—it doesn’t always involve a serious risk. Compassion is a virtue that may lead to heroism, but we don’t know that it does. We’re just now starting to scientifically distinguish heroism from these other concepts and zero in on what makes a hero.

My work on heroism follows 35 years of research in which I studied the psychology of evil, including my work on the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment . The two lines of research aren’t as different as they might seem; they’re actually two sides of the same coin.

A key insight from research on heroism so far is that the very same situations that inflame the hostile imagination in some people, making them villains, can also instill the heroic imagination in other people, prompting them to perform heroic deeds.

Take the Holocaust. Christians who helped Jews were in the same situation as other civilians who helped imprison or kill Jews, or ignored their suffering. The situation provided the impetus to act heroically or malevolently. Why did some people choose one path or the other?

Another key insight from my research has been that there’s no clear line between good and evil. Instead, the line is permeable; people can cross back and forth between it.

This is an idea wonderfully represented in an illusion by M. C. Escher, at left. When you squint and focus on the white as the figures and the black as the background, you see a world full of angels and tutus dancing around happily. But now focus on the black as the figures and the white as the background: Now it’s a world full of demons.

What Escher’s telling us is that the world is filled with angels and devils, goodness and badness, and these dark and light aspects of human nature are our basic yin and yang. That is, we all are born with the capacity to be anything. Because of our incredible brains, anything that is imaginable becomes possible, anything that becomes possible can get transformed into action, for better or for worse. 

Some people argue humans are born good or born bad; I think that’s nonsense. We are all born with this tremendous capacity to be anything, and we get shaped by our circumstances—by the family or the culture or the time period in which we happen to grow up, which are accidents of birth; whether we grow up in a war zone versus peace; if we grow up in poverty rather than prosperity.

George Bernard Shaw captured this point in the preface to his great play “Major Barbara”: “Every reasonable man and woman is a potential scoundrel and a potential good citizen. What a man is depends upon his character what’s inside. What he does and what we think of what he does depends on upon his circumstances.”

So each of us may possess the capacity to do terrible things. But we also posses an inner hero; if stirred to action, that inner hero is capable of performing tremendous goodness for others.

Another conclusion from my research is that few people do evil and fewer act heroically. Between these extremes in the bell curve of humanity are the masses—the general population who do nothing, who I call the “reluctant heroes”—those who refuse the call to action and, by doing nothing, often implicitly support the perpetrators of evil.

So on this bell curve of humanity, villains and heroes are the outliers. The reluctant heroes are the rest. What we need to discover is how to give a call to service to this general population. How do we make them aware of the evil that exists? How do we prevent them from getting seduced to the dark side?

We don’t yet have a recipe for creating heroes, but we have some clues, based on the stories of some inspiring heroes.

I love the story of a wonderful nine-year-old Chinese boy, who I call a dutiful hero. In 2008, there was a massive earthquake in China’s Szechuan province. The ceiling fell down on a school, killing almost all the kids in it. This kid escaped, and as he was running away he noticed two other kids struggling to get out. He ran back and saved them. He was later asked, “Why did you do that?” He replied, “I was the hall monitor! It was my duty, it was my job to look after my classmates!”

This perfectly illustrates what I call the “heroic imagination,” a focus on one’s duty to help and protect others. For him, it was cultivated by being assigned this role of hall monitor.

Another story: Irena Sendler was a Polish hero, a Catholic woman who saved at least 2,500 Jewish kids who were holed up in the Warsaw ghetto that the Nazis had erected. She was able to convince the parents of these kids to allow her to smuggle them out of the ghetto to safety. To do this, she organized a network.

That is a key principle of heroism: Heroes are most effective not alone but in a network. It’s through forming a network that people have the resources to bring their heroic impulses to life.

What these stories suggest is that every one of us can be a hero. Through my work on heroism, I’ve become even more convinced that acts of heroism don’t just arrive from truly exceptional people but from people placed in the right circumstance, given the necessary tools to transform compassion into heroic action.

Building on these insights, I have helped to start a program designed to learn more of heroism and to create the heroes of tomorrow.

The Heroic Imagination Project (HIP) is amplifying the voice of the world’s quiet heroes, using research and education networks to promote a heroic imagination in everyone, and then empower ordinary people of all ages and nations to engage in extraordinary acts of heroism. We want to democratize the notion of heroism, to emphasize that most heroes are ordinary people; it’s the act that’s extraordinary.

There are already a lot of great heroes projects out there, such as the Giraffe Heroes Project . The HIP is unique in that it’s the only one encouraging research into heroism, because there’s very little.

Here are a few key insights from research we’ve done surveying 4,000 Americans from across the country. Each of these statements is valid after controlling for all demographic variables, such as education and socioeconomic status.

Heroes surround us. One in five—20 percent—qualify as heroes, based on the definition of heroism I provide above. Seventy-two percent report helping another person in a dangerous emergency. Sixteen percent report whistle blowing on an injustice. Six percent report sacrificing for a non-relative or stranger. Fifteen percent report defying an unjust authority. And not one of these people has been formally recognized as a hero.

Opportunity matters. Most acts of heroism occur in urban areas, where there are more people and more people in need. You’re not going to be a hero if you live in the suburbs. No shit happens in the suburbs!

Education matters. The more educated you are, the more likely you are to be a hero, I think because you are more aware of situations.

Volunteering matters. One third of all the sample who were heroes also had volunteered significantly, up to 59 hours a week.

Gender matters. Males reported performing acts of heroism more than females. I think this is because women tend not to regard a lot of their heroic actions as heroic. It’s just what they think they’re supposed to do for their family or a friend.

Race matters. Blacks were eight times more likely than whites to qualify as heroes. We think that’s in part due to the rate of opportunity. (In our next survey, we’re going to track responses by area code to see if in fact these heroes are coming from inner cities.

Personal history matters. Having survived a disaster or personal trauma makes you three times more likely to be a hero and a volunteer.

Based on these insights into heroism, we’ve put together a toolkit for potential heroes, especially young heroes in training, who already have opportunities to act heroically when they’re kids, such as by opposing bullying.

A first step is to take the “hero pledge,” a public declaration on our website that says you’re willing to be a hero in waiting. It’s a pledge “to act when confronted with a situation where I feel something is wrong,” “to develop my heroic abilities,” and “to believe in the heroic capacities within myself and others, so I can build and refine them.”

You can also take our four-week “Hero Challenge” mini-course online to help you develop your heroic muscles. The challenge may not require you to do anything heroic, but it’s training you to be heroic. And we offer more rigorous, research-based education and training programs for middle and high schools, corporations, and the millitary that make people aware of the social factors that produce passivity, inspire them to take positive civic action, and encourage the skills needed to consistently translate heroic impulses into action.

We’re also in the process of creating an Encyclopedia of Heroes, a collection of hero stories from all over the world. Not just all the classic ones and fictional ones, but ones that people from around the world are going to send in, so they can nominate ordinary heroes with a picture and a story. It will be searchable, so you can find heroes by age, gender, city and country. These are the unsung, quiet heroes—they do their own thing, put themselves in danger, defend a moral cause, help someone in need. And we want to highlight them. We want them to be inspirational to other people just like them.

Essentially, we’re trying to build the social habits of heroes, to build a focus on the other, shifting away from the “me” and toward the “we.” As the poet John Donne wrote: “No man [or woman] is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; … any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

So every person is part of humanity. Each person’s pulse is part of humanity’s heartbeat. Heroes circulate the life force of goodness in our veins. And what the world needs now is more heroes—you. It’s time to take action against evil.

About the Author

Philip Zimbardo

Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D. , is a professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University, a professor at Palo Alto University, a two-time past president of the Western Psychological Association, and a past president of the American Psychological Association. He is also the author of the best-selling book The Lucifer Effect and the president of the Heroic Imagination Project .

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Very nice information. In this world this is the very difficult question that what makes people good or evil. This post has helped a lot to understand the difference. Actually in my point of it depends upon the individual that what he/she thinks. If he/she thinks negative all the time them they became evil and thinking vice versa makes them good.

Andrew | 2:31 am, January 19, 2011 | Link

I really like reading this article because there are many individuals in the world that are heroes but are not recognized.  Heroes that have help humanity progress and prosper have fought with the greatest weapons which are love, respect, sincerity, and peace.  The governments that have had the greatest fear of seeing people free have always use war for colonization, genocide, and false treaties.  However, love is much stronger than war, and thanks to the modern forms of communication and exchange of information, more people are united for peace and do not support or participate in colonization or human genocide.  Since the start of humanity most people have use peace to progress, few have participated in war and few are participating. May peace prevail on earth!

Victor | 7:48 pm, January 29, 2011 | Link

A son raising up against an evil father. A brother standing up to a bully attacking his sibling. A stranger rallying to the side of a woman being assaulted in the street.

My sons are my strength. My reason to help others, that they may find the help they need in their lives.

pops | 9:39 am, February 3, 2011 | Link

Of course religion and eduction has a big impact on a child. But once a child is trying to live a good life (earning good karma or call it whatever you want) good things will happen to that child and he or she will recognize this.

So I think you can definitely change from evil to good.. maybe you _can be changed_ from good to evil.

Massud Hosseini | 7:28 am, September 17, 2011 | Link

Actually in my point of it depends upon the individual that what he/she thinks

asalah | 9:41 pm, September 24, 2011 | Link

“Research has uncovered many answers to the second question: Evil can be fostered by dehumanization, diffusion of responsibility, obedience to authority, unjust systems, group pressure, moral disengagement, and anonymity, to name a few.”  <—What I find amazing about this statement is that anything is being branded “evil” at all.  Well, maybe not.  Relativism seems to be something that’s employed when convenient, disregarded when it’s not.

Kukri | 6:58 pm, November 6, 2011 | Link

This is a very comprehensive discussion on heroism. Victor makes a great point in his comment about how most heroes go unnoticed by the vast majority of people. I think that lack of notoriety is part of what it means to be a hero: doing that which is unexpected without the need for a pat on the back. quotes for facebook status

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When a sniper’s bullet hits one soldier and misses the person next to him, that alone does not make the wounded soldier more heroic.

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• Heroism: Why Heroes are Important
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Why Heroes are Important

The impact of role models on the ideals to which we aspire.

When I was 16 years old, I read Henry David Thoreau's book Walden for the first time, and it changed my life. I read about living deliberately, about sucking the marrow out of life, about not, when I had come to die, discovering that I had not lived, and I was electrified. Somehow he convinced me that living deliberately meant becoming a philosopher, and I have not looked back since. And I try as often as I can to remind myself of Thoreau's warning to all philosophy professors: "There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically." If - horrible thought - I should fail to earn tenure here, I would largely blame that damned quotation. But even if that disaster should strike, I know I would find solace by asking how Henry would respond to such a setback, and I know I would be a better man by following his example. Thoreau is one of my dearest heroes, and I do not know who I would be without him.

The term "hero" comes from the ancient Greeks. For them, a hero was a mortal who had done something so far beyond the normal scope of human experience that he left an immortal memory behind him when he died, and thus received worship like that due the gods. Many of these first heroes were great benefactors of humankind: Hercules, the monster killer; Asclepius, the first doctor; Dionysus, the creator of Greek fraternities. But people who had committed unthinkable crimes were also called heroes; Oedipus and Medea, for example, received divine worship after their deaths as well. Originally, heroes were not necessarily good, but they were always extraordinary; to be a hero was to expand people's sense of what was possible for a human being.

Today, it is much harder to detach the concept of heroism from morality; we only call heroes those whom we admire and wish to emulate. But still the concept retains that original link to possibility. We need heroes first and foremost because our heroes help define the limits of our aspirations. We largely define our ideals by the heroes we choose, and our ideals -- things like courage, honor, and justice -- largely define us. Our heroes are symbols for us of all the qualities we would like to possess and all the ambitions we would like to satisfy. A person who chooses Martin Luther King or Susan B. Anthony as a hero is going to have a very different sense of what human excellence involves than someone who chooses, say, Paris Hilton, or the rapper 50 Cent. And because the ideals to which we aspire do so much to determine the ways in which we behave, we all have a vested interest in each person having heroes, and in the choice of heroes each of us makes.

That is why it is so important for us as a society, globally and locally, to try to shape these choices. Of course, this is a perennial moral issue, but there are warning signs that we need to refocus our attention on the issue now. Consider just a few of these signs:

o A couple years ago the administrators of the Barron Prize for Young Heroes polled American teenagers and found only half could name a personal hero. Superman and Spiderman were named twice as often as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or Lincoln. It is clear that our media make it all too easy for us to confuse celebrity with excellence; of the students who gave an answer, more than half named an athlete, a movie star, or a musician. One in ten named winners on American Idol as heroes.

o Gangsta rap is a disaster for heroism. Just this week, director Spike Lee lamented the fact that, while his generation grew up idolizing great civil rights leaders, today young people in his community aspire to become pimps and strippers. Surely no one wants their children to get their role models from Gangsta rap and a hyper materialistic, misogynistic hiphop culture, but our communities are finding it difficult to make alternative role models take hold.

o And sometimes, the problem we face is that devotion to heroes is very strong, but directed toward the wrong heroes. In the Muslim world, Osama bin Laden and his like still have a widespread heroic appeal. We can tell how we are doing in the struggle for Muslim hearts and minds by the degree to which this continues to be true.

So what must we do? How should we address the problem? Part of the answer is personal. It never hurts us to remind ourselves who our own heroes are and what they represent for us, and to ask ourselves whether we are doing all we can to live up to these ideals. Not long ago there was a movement afoot to ask always, "What would Jesus do?" I'd like to see people asking questions like that, about Jesus or others, all the time. I confess I get a little thrill every time I see a protest poster asking, "Who would Jesus bomb?" That's heroism doing its work, right there. Moreover, those of us who are teachers - and all of us are teachers of our own children at least - have a special opportunity to introduce heroes to those we teach. And teaching about heroes really isn't hard; heroic lives have their appeal built in, all we need to do is make an effort to tell the stories. I assure you, the reason those students didn't choose Lincoln and King and Gandhi as heroes was not that they had heard their stories and dismissed them. It is our job to tell the stories. Tell your students what a difference people of courage and nobility and genius have made to the world. Just tell the stories! We should recommit to that purpose. Start by going home tonight and listing your five most important heroes.

But part of the answer to our problem is broader. It is clear that the greatest obstacle to the appreciation and adoption of heroes in our society is pervasive and corrosive cynicism and skepticism. It was widely claimed not long ago that 9/11 signalled the end of irony, but it is clear now that the reports of irony's death were greatly exaggerated. This obstacle of cynicism has been seriously increased by scandals like the steroids mess in Major League Baseball, by our leaders' opportunistic use of heroic imagery for short term political gain, and by the Pentagon's stories of glorious soldiers like Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman that - by no fault of the soldiers involved - turned out to be convenient fabrications.

The best antidote to this cynicism is realism about the limits of human nature. We are cynical because so often our ideals have been betrayed. Washington and Jefferson held slaves, Martin Luther King is accused of philandering and plagiarizing, just about everybody had sex with someone they shouldn't, and so on. We need to separate out the things that make our heroes noteworthy, and forgive the shortcomings that blemish their heroic perfection. My own hero Thoreau had his share of blemishes. For instance, although he was supposed to be living totally independently out by Walden Pond, he went home to Mother on the weekends. But such carping and debunking misses the point. True, the false steps and frailties of heroic people make them more like us, and since most of us are not particularly heroic, that may seem to reduce the heroes' stature. But this dynamic pulls in the other direction as well: these magnificent spirits, these noble souls, amazingly, they are like us, they are human too. And perhaps, then, what was possible for them is possible for us. They stumbled, they wavered, they made fools of themselves - but nonetheless they rose and accomplished deeds of triumphant beauty. Perhaps we might do so too. Cynicism is too often merely an excuse for sparing ourselves the effort.

Again, the critical moral contribution of heroes is the expansion of our sense of possibility. If we most of us, as Thoreau said, live lives of quiet desperation, it is because our horizons of possibility are too cramped. Heroes can help us lift our eyes a little higher. Immanuel Kant said that "from the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." That may well be true. But some have used that warped, knotted timber to build more boldly and beautifully than others, and we may all benefit by their examples. Heaven knows we need those examples now.

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Self Sacrifice And The Transformation Of The Hero

2020, Academic Quarter

The literary notion of a hero is often steeped in great deeds, such as vanquishing the monster, completing Herculean tasks, or protect-ing the innocent from harm. The medium of the comic book also provides numerous tales of self-sacrifice that add weight to the legitimacy of a hero and their contribution to a particular society or cause. This article will consider certain themes within the self-sacrificing hero narrative in order to gain further insight into this ph-nomenon and will draw inspiration from Greek and Norse mythology as well as the Superhero genre within comics and film. Finally, this article will consider the cyclical nature of the hero’s journey and the importance of continual heroic rebirth in sustaining their legacy for new generations of comic book readers and film audi-ences. What does their sacrifice mean when the hero and even their universe is reborn at a later date?

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This article examines the phenomenon of heroic metamorphosis: what it is, how it unfolds, and why it is important. First, we describe six types of transformation of the hero: mental, moral, emotional, spiritual, physical, and motivational. We then argue that these metamorphoses serve five functions: they foster developmental growth, promote healing, cultivate social unity, advance society, and deepen cosmic understanding. Internal and external sources of transformation are discussed, with emphasis on the importance of mentorship in producing metamorphic growth. Next we describe the three arcs of heroic transformation: egocentricity to sociocentricity, dependence to autonomy, and stagnation to growth. We then discuss three activities that promote heroic metamorphosis as well as those that hinder it. Implications for research on human growth and development are discussed.

Tommaso W . Bertolotti

The aim of the paper is to offer a non-trivial reflection about the violence embedded in self-sacrifice. Firstly, we will suggest a definition of violence which does not make self-sacrifice necessarily violent, but rather aims at being consistent with the common sense conception of sacrifice as actually violent (if self-sacrifice was not violent, then it would not be perceived as something rare and everyone would be committing non-trivial self-sacrifices wherever we laid our gaze). Framing this initial claim within the vectorial conception of sacrifice offered by Derrida (and exemplified by De Vries), we will individuate in the violence against intellect (sacrificium intellectus) the core of the violent dimension of self-sacrifice, insofar as the author of the sacrifice does not limitedly commits part of her understanding in the sacrificial practice, but all of it, since she is both the agent and the patient of sacrifice. At this point, we will have gathered enough material to spell out two fundamental violent aspects of self-sacrifice. The first concerns the exemplar self-sacrifice in Western tradition, that is Jesus Christ’s. The self-sacrifice committed by God’s own λο ́γος is the epitome of sacrifice as sacrificium intellectus, therefore the highest gradient of intellectual violence. At the same time, this is crucial as it further corroborates the interpretation of Jesus’ sacrifice as the last sacrifice: no mimetic attempt to reenact His sacrifice can hold the comparison under the fundamental aspect of intellectual violence. The second “mirror” to reflect about the violence of self-sacrifice will concern the sacrifice enacted by superheroes, namely Batman, and the extent to which the sacrifice of intellect is at play when kenotic self- sacrifice and scapegoating processes become hard to tell one from the other (i.e. when the hero’s commitment seems to reverberate internally the external blame).

Gül Erbay Aslıtürk , Büşra Hafçı

People in ancient Greece and Rome created their own heroes as leaders and believed in them. These stories passed on by word of mouth, and thanks to Iliad and Odessa by Homer, they were then written down. Even planets and star clusters are named after the gods of Rome, and even words we use regularly, such as “echo,” “erotic,” “chaos”, and “volcano” originate from Greek myths. Mythology is an abstract power that ties people and cultures. Our understanding of 'hero' also comes from Greeks and Romes. As a result of globalization, the world gets more complex and stories change form and content to keep up with their complexity. Today’s brilliant concept is to replace those myths and call them “super heroes”. These heroes first appeared in comic strips by Marvel Comics and then they were presented as films. Thus, super heroes became worldwide known.The aim of this study is to find out common points of worldwide famous super heroes and their roots in ancients myths. The Avengers film series of Marvel Comics is to be analyzed via content analysis method. There are two ways of applying myths to cinema. First method is to make a film out of a myth directly and the second method is to incorporate ancient myths in contemporary films. Since The Avengers film series uses both of these methods, it seems to be able to represent the myths very strongly. To strengthen the evaluations, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor film series are also analyzed as these characters are part of The Avengers. At first, mythology and its relation with popular culture is mentioned and secondly The Avengers film series is examined in a detailed way

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"The following essay means to compare and contrast two superheroes, Esfandiar from Shah Name by Firdausi and Achilles from Iliad by Homer. The main purpose behind making this choice is that primarily these two represent very famous and tangible examples from the world of myths. Furthermore, they can be good models for indicating the culture and beliefs of Persian and Greek people, which can be traced back in a holistic worldview about myths in general. This paper aims to show how an epic writer creates and at last destroys a typical super hero. The highlighted points in this study are; 1) the reason why they are given physical flaws, while they are considered much mightier than other ordinary human beings, and 2) why they are created in such an exaggerated way and then they are killed. The first result of this paper will point to the fact that they are bound to these flaws to be made digestible for human being’s cognition. The second conclusion is related to the fact that they will die, because the epic writer tries to convey a metaphorical message. He shows that although the balance of nature (the accepted cognitive perceptions) is apparently violated at first, but eventually, mother of nature takes control and reshapes everything back into normal even if the process takes some extreme measures such as killing and destroying some super powerful human."

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Claire Polansky

This paper explores how mythical figures and comicbook superheroes can 1) inspire personal growth, social and planetary change, and 2) explicate aspects of the deep ecology movement and transpersonal ecosophy that invite further academic inquiry while at the same time 3) speak to concerns that ignite the interests of popular culture and personal mythology. Likewise the ecopsychological significance of modern fictional characters in comicbooks, graphic novels, and films will be examined. It is divided into two parts. Part 1 provides a theoretical examination of how definitions of the terms myth and hero and hero’s journey are framed, and their implications for understanding personal and transpersonal growth. Part 2 provides portraits of individual characters from comicbook lore, their evaluation, and their significance toward raising collective archetypal awareness of the psyche’s relationship with Earth—an ecopsychological framework. In addition the paper offers practical examples of how this understanding of comicbook lore can be used for cultivating a new quality of life on a planetary scale.

Lorenzo Magnani

The aim of the paper is to offer a non-trivial reflection about the violence embedded in self-sacrifice. Firstly, we will suggest a definition of violence which does not make self-sacrifice necessarily violent, but rather aims at being consistent with the common sense conception of sacrifice as actually violent (if self-sacrifice was not violent, then it would not be perceived as something rare and everyone would be committing non-trivial self-sacrifices wherever we laid our gaze). Framing this initial claim within the vectorial conception of sacrifice offered by Derrida (and exemplified by De Vries), we will individuate in the violence against intellect sacrificium intellectus) the core of the violent dimension of self-sacrifice, insofar as the author of the sacrifice does not limitedly commits part of her understanding in the sacrificial practice, but all of it, since she is both the agent and the patient of sacrifice. At this point, we will have gathered enough material to spell out two fundamental violent aspects of self-sacrifice. The first concerns the exemplar self-sacrifice in Western tradition, that is Jesus Christ's. The self-sacrifice committed by God's own logos is the epitome of sacrifice as sacrificium intellectus, therefore the highest gradient of intellectual violence. At the same time, this is crucial as it further corroborates the interpretation of Jesus' sacrifice as the last sacrifice: no mimetic attempt to reenact His sacrifice can hold the comparison under the fundamental aspect of intellectual violence. The second "!mirror'" to reflect about the violence of self-sacrifice will concern the sacrifice enacted by superheroes, namely Batman, and the extent to which the sacrifice of intellect is at play when kenotic self-sacrifice and scapegoating processes become hard to tell one from the other (i.e. when the hero's commitment seems to reverberate internally the external blame).

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Heroism and Self-Sacrifice for the Nation? Wars of National Liberation

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Post-heroic warfare, with its aversion to casualties or preference for standoff attacks, seems to stand in direct contradiction to the war of national liberation, a conflict which practically demands sacrifice, acts of heroism, charismatic leadership and, at the point of ‘cognitive liberation’ among large sections of the population, the achievement of mass mobilization. 1 Moreover, all of these elements, particularly sacrifice or the creation of martyrs, seem crucial to the establishment of national founding myths. Yet, the first paradox of wars of ‘national’ liberation, particularly those at the close of the era of European empires in Africa and Asia, is that they often took place among peoples without a sense of national unity or even national identity, and therefore they frequently assumed the character of civil wars. Identities associated with nation-states, where they did exist, were imagined, borrowed from European ideologies, created, forged and propagated in an instrumentalist fashion by more educated vanguards.

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Nick Lloyd, ‘The Amritsar Massacre and the Minimum Force Debate’, Small Wars & Insurgencies , vol. 21/2 (2010): 382–403.

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See Joanna Nathan, ‘Reading the Taliban’, in Antonio Giustotozzi (ed.), Decoding the New Taliban (London: Hurst, 2009), pp. 23–42.

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Johnson, R. (2014). Heroism and Self-Sacrifice for the Nation? Wars of National Liberation. In: Scheipers, S. (eds) Heroism and the Changing Character of War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137362537_5

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