How to Create Heroism in Nonheroic Times

“The crisis of modern society is precisely that the youth no longer feel heroic in the plan for action that their culture has set up.” ~Ernest Becker

Heroism. Excellence of character. Supererogation. Courage (andreia), as a moral virtue.

We all strive for it. We all honor it. We all hope to discover it. But we are surrounded by its lack. We are outflanked by heroisms opposite: comfort, conformity, cynicism, and short-term self-interest over long-term risk and sacrifice. Our nonheroic culture is drowning in banality, indifference, and even active discouragement when courage means discomfort.

Ordinary life pours hard layers of banal routine, social pressure, and fear over the soil of potential. Heroism is the quiet, persistent root pressure and upward thrust that cracks the pavement through steady, directed force toward light and air, eventually providing shade and strength for others.

So how do you break through? How do you tap that heroic impulse despite the unheroic culture that surrounds you? You must discover your own uniqueness. You must not wait. You are too unique to wait.

You only have this one life to bring your character to fruition. Your unique combination of temperament, gifts, wounds, insights, and possibilities will never exist again. To leave that potential half-realized, diluted by the surrounding mediocrity, or traded for approval is a quiet form of self-betrayal. To refuse that betrayal is to insist on becoming the fullest, most excellent version of yourself. It’s a form of heroism that is a private, sustained revolt against the gravitational pull of the ordinary.

Bringing your character to fruition is the most heroic action you can take in an unheroic world.

Here are five ways to do that…

1.) Treat Character as a daily forge:

“Heroes are meant to be forged golden from the blaze.” ~Nikita Gill

Embrace the forge. This is where you transform cultural chaos into focused character. Choose one precise quality. Practice it deliberately. Review it honestly. Then repeat. The metal (mettle) does not become strong in a single heating; it becomes strong through the steady, patient rhythm of the hammer.

The repetition itself reshapes the soul. Over time the action ceases to feel forced; it becomes second nature. Discipline is the difference between a mood and a forged character.

Forget your “mood.” Tear yourself down and build yourself back up again. This is how mettle is sharpened, how uniqueness is brought to the fore, how antifragility is carved out of fragility.

A character forged in the furnace of adversity and the crucible of risk is sharpened mettle. Use this sharpened mettle like a sword of inquisition. Cut through your comfort zone. Slice through your cultural conditioning.

As Leon said in Truth Mind, “A man has to forge himself into a weapon or he will be forged into a tool.”

Do not allow yourself to become a tool unless you are the wielder. The world will try to tell you who you are. It is your responsibility to push back and declare who you really are with ruthless decisiveness and discipline. Turn all tables. Flip all scripts. Square all circles if need be. Elevate yourself above the battlefield of the human condition lest it consume you with its triviality, banality, and pettiness.

2.) Pursue pain not comfort:

“The cure for the pain is in the pain.” ~Rumi

Transform pain into purpose. Seek out discomfort and learn how to be comfortable there. Discover your Shadow and let it guide you into resilience.

The diamond in the rough is created by the rough. Pain is mere kindling. The pebble is a mistake to the oyster but a pearl to the master. Likewise, the shadow is a mistake to the uninitiated but gold to the initiated.

Initiate yourself. Strike black gold by integrating your shadow. Allow your fortified foundations to crumble away. Dig into your innermost darkness. Discover what makes you tick, what makes you fall apart, what makes you crack. Then glue it all together into a stronger version of yourself.

Self-mastery is making your darkness conscious. It’s using the shadow like a superconductor that pierces through the darkness so you can finally see the light. Mine the gold from the abyss and then transform it into your magnum opus.

There are no shortcuts. Pain is the ultimate teacher. The Shadow is your guide through the pain. Learn from it. Let it shape you. Let it sharpen you into an instrument worthy of magnificence.

3.) Zero-in on your uniqueness:

“Live your life as an Exclamation rather than an Explanation” ~Sir. Issac Newton

Your true value is in your uniqueness. Everything else is moonshine. Your uniqueness is your deepest potential, your longing to express your own values into the world. This uniqueness is your life’s purpose, your soul’s signature, your unmatched contribution to the human condition. Home in on it. Let it boldly shine through the banality of the world.

Don’t waste it. Embracing your uniqueness is all about becoming who you are and not merely defaulting to who your culture conditioned you to be. You are incomparable. Prove it! Kill your constructed and conditioned self and give birth to your discovered and reconditioned self. This is the way toward heroism.

As Euripides said, “The wisest men follow their own direction.”

Individuate your individuality. Make your own path. Live experimentally, courageously, adventurously. Practice becoming over being, presence over performance, interrogation over gravitation, and risk-taking over ritual-making.

Stop pretending to be asleep. Be your version of divergent. Be your flavor of unconventional. Be eccentric in your own way. Be Dionysian despite the Apollonian world. Dance through the mannequin culture. Thunder past the status quo junkies. Be a courage-enforcer, a mettle sharpener, a lion-awakener.

Don’t let anything else lay your uniqueness low, whether culturally, spiritually or psychologically. This is your life. This is your story to tell. As Nietzsche said, “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

4.) Create something that could only have come from you:

“No artist tolerates reality.” ~Nietzsche

The creative act allows you to come alive in a way that life simply cannot provide.

Having forged your character, transformed pain into purpose, and zeroed in on your uniqueness, you now have the wherewithal to put your stamp on reality. You now have the capacity for destiny.

The best way to “live your destiny” is to create it. Go your own way by manifesting it rather than simply going along with the fate prescribed to you by culture. This way, you are a catalyst rather than merely a cog caught up in the clockwork. You are ahead of the curve, imagining new ways to surf. You are the tip of the spear of imagination.

Imagination is that place where, as Jung intuited, “reason and understanding unite with unreason and magic.” It’s a transcendent state, a detached state. It’s where Einstein rode on a photon of light. It’s where Prometheus stole fire from the gods. It’s where the pen is always mightier than the sword.

This kind of creative heroism is a call to adventure: a Hero’s Journey. It’s a call to transcend the ordinary, to descend into the labyrinth, to seek something profound about existence, self, and the cosmos. And then make art out of it. Terribly beautiful iterative art.

It’s all yours for the making. But you must get past your fear. You must wrestle the demons disguised as angels known as Safety, Security, and Comfort. They are the threshold guardians of your comfort zone. And the only thing that defeats them is heroism. Your own inner courage.

It’s time for a Hero’s Journey. It’s time to come alive. It’s time to take responsibility for being the only extension of the universe that knows you as “me.” It’s time to stop pretending you’re not God and finally connect everything with everything else. It’s time to create your own art in your own way. The kind of art that howls your soul signature keen. The kind of art that is medicine for a sick world.

5.) Be a beacon of darkness in culture’s blinding light:

“The modern hero must not wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. ‘Live,’ Nietzsche says, ‘as though the day were here.’” ~Joseph Campbell

The most heroic thing you can do in a world blinded by its own light is to shine your darkest darkness into it. Like a healthy black thorn stuck in the side of an unhealthy tree of light. Like a black dot on the white side of the yin-yang.

The only way not to become fixed in any set pattern (pride, certainty, or reason), indeed, the only way to prevent being blinded by the light of comfort, security, and safety, is to question your cultural conditioning. Shine your darkness into its blinding light. Keep imagination ahead of reason. Keep curiosity ahead of certainty. Keep humor ahead of power.

The ego is just as likely to get lost in the light as in the dark. Just as when you are healthy, you give people hope by being a beacon of light in the darkness, when you are free, you give people courage by being a beacon of darkness in the blinding light. In both cases egoism is put in checkmate.

Do not fret. There is heroism to be mined from Plato’s Cave. Pluck the strings of destiny. Discover the magic elixir of competence. And then gift it back to the “tribe.”

The day is here. Life is too short to remain a victim. And there are too many victims in need of a hero who can lead by example. The hero’s journey is that example. It’s a beacon of light in the dark. It’s a beacon of darkness in the blinding light. It’s a psychosocial symbol for next-level transformation, individuation, self-actualization, and enlightenment. It’s heroism in its purest form.

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From The Bible by Seneh.xyz

About the Author:

Gary Z McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide-awake view of the modern world.

This article (How to Create Heroism in Nonheroic Times) was originally created and published by Self-inflicted Philosophy and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary Z McGee and self-inflictedphilosophy.org. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.