Cause: Heroes for Andy

So Andy sent a note over facebook a while ago that prompted all of his friends to consider some questions about heroes and heroism. It took me a while to respond because I thought good and long about it. And I came up with some answers that I think are pretty solid, though they could use a little more analysis. At any rate, I think they're blogworthy, so here they are for your viewing pleasure (bolded bits are Andy's questions):

Who is your hero? Alexander Harris, the character from the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is my hero.

why? what about that person/s makes them your hero? Xander remains throughout the series the only character that does not have or develop some sort of supernatural power. Let’s look at the characters: Buffy is of course the slayer, Willow and Tara are witches, Anya is an ex-vengeance demon, Dawn starts out as a mystical key, Oz becomes a werewolf, Angel and Spike are two examples of an ever-expanding cast of vampires. Cordelia and Giles start out as simple mortals with no supernatural abilities, but in season six Giles hinders evil-Willow with some bad-ass magicks, and Cordelia goes on to become one of the Powers-that-be in the later seasons of Angel.

Xander is the only character who doesn’t get any supernatural play. But he is just as much an integral part of the Scooby gang as anyone else. The fact that he remains such a sacred part of the inner-circle even though he has no superpower is incredible to me. He’s the heart of their operation, and if you ask me, that is a much harder role to fill. Xander manages to keep up his role alongside all of these characters that have been blessed with powers outside nature while he remains an average joe. Sure, he gets frustrated every now and then, but never so much that he is willing to abandon his friends.

What traits in particular do you wish you had that he does? btw Andy, I did notice that you assume my hero is male;Xander accepts that he is “the zeppo” – the one person in the group who is un-special. He has accepted that he is never going to be supernaturally-endowed like his friends but he still acknowledges that he brings something unique to their friendset. The fact that he is OK with this, and does not compete to become the strongest fighter or the most bad-ass witch, is extraordinary. I guess that tells me that he is not jealous or competitive, which are both traits I feel I take on when I am surrounded by a set of friends who are way awesomer than I am.

what traits do you not want? I do not want to be the guy that has to be rescued all the time because he can not get himself out of the ropes he’s been tied in. And I do not want to lose an eyeball.

Who do you think an american hero is? I think an American hero is someone like a comic book superhero. Spiderman or Superman

why? I get the feeling that most United Statesians want someone to swing in on a web and rescue them from their lives and rising gas prices and terrorism. This is something that will never happen because the American hero, like Spiderman, is fictional.

who do you think a superhero is? To me, the best kind of superhero is someone like Batman or Iron Man. Someone who used to be an average citizen but was genius enough to develop ridiculous technology to make changes in the world.

why? Because it is hard for me to believe that a spaceship crash- landed into our planet and out popped a man who could save the world for us. It’s too easy. Show me a person (speaking of are there any female superheroes like I’m about to describe?) in a great mess of trouble who actually makes himself into a superhero using realistic technology and I’m a believer. I don’t care how likely it is that Iron Man could have made that suit in a day in a cave in the middle of the desert – if there’s even a small percentage of a chance that it’s possible, I’ll buy it. And I’ll like that type of hero better. Because he made a choice to do what he did.

what kind of hero do you think the US and, even bigger, the world needs? This is the hardest question. Not because I don’t know, but because the type of hero the world needs is impossible to find. The reason it’s impossible is because we need a hero that everyone can agree is a hero. And that will never happen with the massive political, cultural, and religious differences in this world. My idea of a hero, or a superhero, is not going to be the same as anyone else’s. In all of the answers that you get back from this, I doubt you will get any two that are exactly the same. And for the most part, I’m sure that the people you asked have a lot in common. Now extend your questions to the entire world, and your response is going to be an enormous clusterfuck.

And I’m not sold that we need a hero anyway. I think individual people need to start making some goddamn improvements and take the blame when they mess up. If we had a world where all people believed in the same set of morals/values and everyone lived by them, we wouldn’t need a hero to come in and fix things.

But expecting that world to exist is unhealthy and unrealistic, and so is believing in superheroes.