The Ideal Hero Is Impossible

Heroes are a strange subject. They seem so simple at first, but the deeper we consider them, the more impossible they become.

For one thing, heroes are always good. If they aren't doing exactly what you think they should be, then they aren't heroic. They also must do everything at a level beyond reach, and have no negative qualities about them.

This sounds pretty extreme, but that is the ideal hero right there. Look at the people who we like to call heroes. They are heroic as long as we ignore or are unaware of their flaws. When a picture of an Olympic champion smoking marijuana is discovered, that person ceases to be a hero and just becomes some disgraceful drug user. When homerun champions get accused of steroid use, they become a disgrace to the entire sport. When Lance Armstrong finally admitted to doping, he was just a cheater and a liar.

The problem with heroes is that they're just humans. Sure, some humans are "better" than others, but nobody is perfect. And part of the reason that a person can't be perfect is that perfection is impossible. Too much of life is gray areas and comes down to opinion (hence the difficulty with the concept of goodness).

If there is a truly ideal hero, then it exists only in the aether. Humans may strive to embody that ideal, but they can never achieve it, unless they become equally aethereal.