Hero Zero

• Posted on June 13, 2013
• by Clyde Lewis
• in Articles

HERO ZERO

In my Yahoo news trends I again noticed that the book ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ by George Orwell is still selling like crazy. I don’t know if it is because of the 64th anniversary or people want to read it to see if the government is using it as a guide book to destroy everything that amounts to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
As I was doing research I stumbled upon some other recommendations for reading. These recommendations linked me to several other authors I have read over time. There was Aldus Huxley’s “Brave New World“, many of the great books by Joseph Campbell and, of course, there was “Minority Report” by Phillip K. Dick.
These authors were very influential in my young adult life. While what they wrote was at the time fiction I tend to wonder if they were prophets, agent provocateurs, or heroes.
I was moving through the internet to the essay that was written by Phillip K. Dick that was unfortunately called “The Great Satanic Blasphemy.” This essay makes you wonder about superheroes and the possibility that we all have the ability to “save the world” because we are all basically “pluriforms” of God.
The very idea is literally a Satanic or Luciferian doctrine, because what it is literally saying is that we are all gods and heroes in our own rite and that we all have the power to make decisions that are the equivalent of what God has to do throughout eternity.
This notion was first presented in the Garden of Eden. It was the snake that divulged the secret to mankind that if he took a bite of the fruit form the tree of knowledge, he would become self aware and this would make him capable of being a god.
It has always been the argument for thousands of years if the original sin of rebellion was a heroic act because it gave man the ability to question his existence rather than wandering around aimlessly in paradise.
Philip K. Dick postulated that we were all in this great council of god’s and that we agreed to come down to this prison world. In the agreement we lost our memory of our previous lives as gods and we lost our superhuman powers. The idea of attainable godhood is blasphemy in most Orthodox religions.
It is known as original sin or sin of pride. Dick believed that man did not fall. He believed that man did not sin. Dick believed that it was man’s mission to come down to Earth, which is a virtual prison.
Dick felt that it was man’s destiny to save the world and to look out for all creation. Man was a god in embryo, a potential hero that learns on earth how do regain his superhuman powers and use them to redeem the world. After he has accomplished this task he can reunite with the divine and all things would be restored, thus giving balance to all things.
In a more Gnostic view of the planet Dick was actually creating what we would call “the matrix” or the “program” deemed the “Black Iron Prison” or what most rational people call reality. Dick wrote that reality was not real at all.
He wrote that it was clever fakery created by the “great magician” the “lord of the dark realm” or “dark father” who poses as the creator. This unreality has no sense or logic to it. Thus those who believe that it is the only world become atheists or embrace religion that accepts the “dark lord” or “dark father” as the creator.
Dick wrote that true religion begins when we begin to remember that we come from the stars and that our true creator is the Lord of Light. We learn that we have the power to use the light force to bring light where there is darkness, sanity to the irrational, and balance where there is chaos.
If we accomplish all this we become heroes, we become illuminated and edified and we are eventually lifted up to be in the presence of other heroes that have endured all of the pain and suffering that exists in this prison we call earth.
Dick posed a very interesting question and that is can mankind be satisfied worshiping a god that is offered to him, or does he create a better world or a better god, savior or hero that is worthy of our adoration?
Well to answer that question one needs to look at all of the heroes, and idols that are offered to us every day.
In the “Dark Knight” film, Batman was called a hero, but a hero with a caveat, a hero that has gone into hiding because he will be hunted. He will be hunted because he took the blame for the actions of Harvey Dent. Dent, a well loved politician and District Attorney had committed a bunch of crimes. Batman, of course, did many things that were heroic and yet people were of the opinion that he was a criminal, thus he was the Dark Knight. Dent who represented the so-called law abiding protector was also a criminal but the authorities saw to it that he remained a shining knight and the reality was different.
Thus Commissioner Gordon stated “Batman is the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he’s not a hero, he’s a single guardian, a watchful protector.”
In the imaginary Gotham City, Harvey Dent was the hero that was inflated by the people, and when they poked at him he deflated and there were colleagues of his that still were trying desperately to keep his hero status inflated.
In the meantime, the true protector and hero Batman was not as glamorous or even powerful and so he had to flee or face his destruction.
It is remarkable how art can predict life and how we begin to understand just how cynical we are when it comes to determining what a hero is.
Barack Obama, like the fictional Harvey Dent, is – in our reality – a mono-mythical hero that was inflated to the position of the external savior of America. Now he is deflating and even when a less desirable “Batman” hero named Edward Snowden exposes corruption in the very government Obama runs, people are confused as to whether or not that he is the hero we deserve or need right now.
Are we really that cynical that we are debating whether or not Edward Snowden is a hero for exposing corruption and constitutional malfeasance?
What is the definition of hero in this time of confusion and corruption?
In Hollywood, heroes are made every day. They are placed on a lit screen. Their names are raised in lights on the large marquee. Their footprints are cast in cement and stars are handed to them on cracked Hollywood sidewalks. We see them get statues and plaques for pretending. It’s all make believe. It’s a dream that producers and big money movie moguls weave. It’s just a fantasy that lasts for about 90 minutes and sometimes the afterglow stays with us long after we spit out the old maids in the popcorn bucket.
However, we may or may not look at the deeper meanings of the parables that are being presented to us and why these stories are being presented. Is it really all about the revelation of the method or are we seeing the collective consciousness having a fit of retro causality?
We live in times where reality and fantasy actually collide. I would hope that we could identify a heroic act when we see it instead of creating heroes out of failures and continuing to keep them inflated when we know that they are full of holes.
We are now in the middle of an open-ended war and the heroes will not be recognized immediately because most of those heroes will wear jeans and a T-shirt. The shirt will be stained with the blood of what the empire calls “collateral damage” and layered with the sweat and body odor from the volunteer.
The heroes of the struggles to come will be common people like you and me.
Yet there won’t be any awards ceremony on television with special statuettes or trophies that will honor those who do something that is above and beyond the call of duty.
There have been surveys taken in America about heroes. Less than half of all Americans have a personal hero. In one survey a third of those surveyed stated that they believed heroes exist today.
It is also not uncommon to see that people will even call people heroes even when they fail.
There are also new contingents that have decided that the police and the military are our new heroes and should be revered as such. It can be argued that these men aren’t heroes because they are just doing their jobs.
Others say “enforcers” are not heroes. They are “task masters” who patrol the sheep. It looks as if the hero today seems to be in this scary super police force that is out to eradicate an unseen evil.
The struggle is between ideologies and the hierarchy. The ultimate end result seems to be death to innocents treated as collateral damage in the struggle of these ideologies.
Are heroes on the offensive side? Or are they on the defensive side? This is the confusion that is war. It’s hard to find a hero in a war. All because of that struggle where you wonder if murder is justified even in throes of war.
Isn’t it interesting that when the rich throw bombs it’s called a war and when the poor attack its called terrorism?
It’s one of those arguments that can be whittled down to semantics.
It is also remarkable that today as we hear about Edward Snowden exposing corruption and Glenn Greenwald reporting it as a journalist and we have politicians like Peter King demanding their arrest.
We have been told that if we see something we should say something. Ed Snowden saw something and said something and Greenwald became a champion of the fourth estate.
We all speak of someone anyone that will do something and now we are confused when someone does something. Why is this so difficult? Can we admit that we have been programmed and that we are stumped and incapable of seeing heroism that is not defined for us?
The lines seem blurred and they have been blurred for a while now because Edward Snowden had a warm up act named Bradley Manning.
Manning sent troves of classified U.S. documents in 2010 to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. The files documented complaints of abuses against Iraqi detainees, a U.S. tally of civilian deaths in Iraq and America’s weak support for the government of Tunisia a disclosure that Manning supporters said helped trigger the Middle Eastern pro-democracy uprisings known as the Arab Spring.
Manning, of course, has been treated like a terrorist. It was reported that he was held alone for nine months in a windowless cell 23 hours a day, sometimes with no clothing. This has now caught the eye of human rights groups and the United Nations’ chief torture investigator.
As I have pointed out: our anger, our cynicism and lack of respect for the Constitution is drawing the attention of other countries. This open ended war has forced us into surrendering our morality and integrity.
Politics have been playing us so that we will not recognize the conspiracy against the American people.
Name a government official who would use his large family fortune to wipe out crime? Bruce Wayne did it for Gotham City. He never became Mayor or Governor and many people still hated him. Yet he was one man who declared war on crime.
Name a religion that would use their fortunes to eliminate the horrors of war, famine, or abuse. Jesus was the ultimate hero, he healed the sick raised the dead and saved the world. What religion has done this?
All I see are religions using their fortunes to fight the scandals and crimes that they had a part in.
I know it sounds like I am on an altruistic soapbox but it is obvious why Americans lack the ability to identify heroes. The world is afraid to invest their honor of a hero. We are not only running out of them, but many that attempt a heroic act are told they are criminals.
While looking for a hero we have lowered our standards for what a hero is.
We have been sold on the idea that athletes are heroes. While some are remarkable and talented like Michael Jordan they still champion nothing.
They only continue to breed the idea of fighting. They continue to breed the ideologies of war. Yet our children look up to athletes to the point of idolatry, many of them unaware that a lot of them are adulterers, drug users, wife beaters, and gamblers.
As the story goes, perhaps they are the heroes we deserve.
How many children want to emulate a teacher or how many young kids set out to find a cure for cancer, or find ways to conserve energy, or eliminate waste and pollution? How many young people want to volunteer to eliminate starvation? Are there any teenagers out there who would enjoy spending time with an elderly person? Maybe helping them with a problem? How about cleaning their yards?
Do plastic role models like Britney Spears extol the virtues of volunteerism?
What do the Kardashians do for the world? Besides flaunt vanity and fake opulence. Is the hero of the week someone who wins on “American Idol” or a propped up androgynous product like Justin Bieber?
It was Scott Adams who said:
“Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion. The psychological explanation for this phenomenon is that life sucks and we’d all rather fantasize about being someplace else.” — Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle
We also live our lives through someone else when we should learn to get to know the hero within.
We must understand that if we don’t feel heroic, or if we feel we don’t mean anything in the big scheme of things, we may not be able to recognize others who have decided to give up everything for a heroic act.
The way to arrive at something that is heroic is to be selfless for the benefit of someone who may need help in understanding that we need to survive, that our way of life in America is important and should held to a sacred standard and not just ignored because of selfishness and cynicism.