Americans love political villains. For some on the left, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., accommodated that need last week. His statement that he wouldn\u2019t accept the speakership of the House if he had to give up time with his family was met with swift charges of hypocrisy. But aren\u2019t we really looking for heroes whenever we\u2019re so quick to identify a villain?<\/p>\n
Ryan\u2019s sin, in Erin Gloria Ryan\u2019s words, was spending \u201cmuch of his political career fighting laws that promote realistic work-life balance for parents of all socioeconomic levels.\u201d If he hadn\u2019t, she wrote \u201casking for family time would make him look more like a hero and less like a hypocrite.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jessica Valenti at The Guardian separated the message from the messenger though. \u201cIt\u2019s fantastic to see a male politician prioritize his family life as he considers a national position of power,\u201d she wrote, before concluding, \u201clet\u2019s point out Ryan\u2019s hypocrisy and take him to task on his policies \u2014 but let\u2019s do it strategically.\u201d<\/p>\n
That strategic approach isn\u2019t how Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and former Maryland Gov. Martin O\u2019Malley responded to the revelations about Exxon\u2019s climate change research. The two Democratic presidential candidates joined a few members of Congress and a small chorus of scientists and activists calling for an investigation by the Justice Department.<\/p>\n
As I wrote last week, the oil giant funded research which reportedly showed links between burning fossil fuels and the rise in global temperatures. However, their public position has been that human activity isn\u2019t contributing to climate change. If that\u2019s true, did they break a federal law?<\/p>\n
The problem is a criminal investigation would more than likely put Exxon on the defensive and seriously delay a full release of their findings. For anyone who believes climate change is the greatest threat to civilization, the critical need is to put a spotlight on that information, not identify a villain. Like Valenti\u2019s nuanced approached to Ryan\u2019s story, we need to slow down and look for ways to leverage Exxon\u2019s research toward a greater good. <\/p>\n
If we can avoid turning Ryan and Exxon into villains, do we still need heroes for these causes? Who would they be and what purposes could they serve? <\/p>\n
Scott T. Allison is professor of psychology at the University of Richmond and has written several books about heroes and leadership. \u201cHeroes show us the secrets to unlocking our fullest potential as human beings,\u201d he wrote when reflecting on the legacy of Nelson Mandela. \u201cThey do so by role-modeling virtue, by clarifying complex and paradoxical life truths, by equipping us with emotional intelligence, and by revealing how their journey can be our journey, too.\u201d <\/p>\n
Like Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered as America\u2019s civil rights hero. His story leads us to the nonviolent resistance effectively practiced by Mohandas K. Gandhi. And one of the primary influences in Gandhi\u2019s life was Henry David Thoreau\u2019s essay \u201cCivil Disobedience.\u201d <\/p>\n
For many in America\u2019s environmental movement, Thoreau\u2019s book \u201cWalden\u201d earned him the title of national hero. But in a recent New Yorker article titled \u201cPond Scum,\u201d Kathryn Schulz questions why we admire him at all given \u201chis hypocrisy, his sanctimony, his dour asceticism, and his scorn.\u201d For evidence, Schulz quotes directly from Walden. \u201cSometimes, when I compare myself with other men\u201d Thoreau wrote, \u201cit seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, Thoreau\u2019s personality was villainous. And he never led a movement or brought about change in his time. Maybe that\u2019s because, as Schultz pointed out, he was too absorbed in his own little world. <\/p>\n
But Gandhi was a genuinely humble man inspired by Thoreau\u2019s writings. He never glamorized Thoreau\u2019s life or focused on his faults. In following Gandhi\u2019s model, King also separated the message from the messenger and applied it to his cause. The hero was born from an idea, not the person. <\/p>\n
We\u2019re not supposed to worship real life heroes. They\u2019re not gods, and we don\u2019t want to be reduced to a cult. As Allison suggests, our journey can mirror theirs if we look at them as teachers instead of heroic personalities. <\/p>\n
\u201cBe the change that you wish to see in the world,\u201d Gandhi famously said. Whether its family values, climate change or any other issue that means looking inward first, if we can discover the hero within us there would be less of a need for superheroes, both fictional and real. And maybe then we wouldn\u2019t spend time looking for villains to condemn. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Rich Moniak lives in Juneau and is a retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience in the public sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Americans love political villains. For some on the left, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., accommodated that need last week. His statement that he wouldn\u2019t accept the speakership of the House if he had to give up time with his family was met with swift charges of hypocrisy. But aren\u2019t we really looking for heroes whenever we\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8487"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}