They say that 'A Hero will save us...'

Do we expect heroes to be born every generation and save society from itself? To take a look at the mess, shake his/her head and whip up a solution? It seems we do. Our movies are full of caped super-humans sent (by whom?) to save earth, punish evil doers, and set injustices right. Is it just escapism and wonder or does it lead to a mindset that great people solve great big problems?

 I heard a caller on a radio show the other day say “That Donald Trump...he’ll fix this mess we’re in”. I didn’t catch what the topic was being discussed and I didn’t even catch the reply from the host. I was caught off guard, focusing on something else when that sound clip just shattered my daydream. “What the hell” I said aloud, incredulous “Does he really believe that?”

I’m not picking on Trump, just imaging what kind of superman it would take to fix a country or even one problem in the country. We are in a debt hole that no amount of spending or borrowing can fix. Americans are entering a post Christian phase that will split the country even further along religious and ethnic lines. We don’t have a coherent answer for terrorism, immigration, health care or unemployment. It doesn’t matter if you like Clinton, Trump or a third party, change is not a top down phenomenon and the fact that many people think so feeds the hero myth.

 Ideas in the US start small. A retirement banker at Johnson & Johnson devised a way for employees to earn tax free money in a savings account. His brilliant 401K idea transformed the way businesses passed on some of savings to its workers in the form of retirement accounts. Over 90% of companies use this model today.

Or how about MIT professor ‘doc’ Edgerton who took an obscure lab instrument (stroboscope) and used it for flash photography and underwater pictures. His high speed cameras and nanosecond images of a bullet splitting an apple or an arrow going through a playing card are as much art as photography.

 Most innovations work this way. 

A person who works in an industry develops a better way to do X. The new way or technique is perfected, copied and mass produced so that everyone has access. IPhone cameras allow aspiring film makers to shoot homemade movies, while social media allows him to share it. It isn’t just cameras and investment ideas, methods for design get mass produced too.

Architecture firms are using wood instead of concrete in modern luxury apartments and urban buildings. For years wood was a no-no because of the close proximity to other buildings and the fire hazard inherent in wood. Ever seen a forest fire? Imagine a wood fire spreading in an urban area. The city would be rubble in a few hours.

 New methods for compressing the wood and covering it with a fire-retardant coating make it possible to stack layers of it together and create high rises  that are cheaper and quicker to build. A few structures exist but new materials and new ways of thinking might end up changing cityscapes in fifty years. Maybe even Donald Trump will put up a new structure in mid-town Manhattan, somewhere to store his ‘fix-it-all-before-noon’ machine.

The point is we aren’t a society where a man or women slides into office and punches the big red button (why are they always red?). We aren’t looking for heroes and we shouldn’t think that easy solutions are around the corner. Americans have financial and spiritual problems that can only be solved at the community level. Churches play an outsized role in this regard, they link communities together better than any existing organization.

The search for heroes or leaders with all the answers is a lazy way around solving the problems we have created. It’s using the credit card to go to Maui for two weeks and then calling Visa to report it stolen.

The problems facing the country are too numerous to list. The question Americans have to ask ourselves is ‘what kind of country do we want to be?’ Answers will differ but I don’t think many would say ‘a poor and weak one’ because without a prosperous country nothing else is possible. Top down solutions, like Mad Libs, are poorly written fill in the blank answers that can’t address individual issues.

 Obamacare and food stamps are top down, better building materials and retirement accounts are bottom up.

Presidents and office holders at every level are important we shouldn’t assume they are useless. An honest statesman can bring attention to an issue and push for change quicker than a roomful of industry executives. It is essential for national security that leaders in Washington cooperate with other governments on cyber security and terrorism. The work of getting our house in order financially and being responsible citizens falls to us.

    

I don’t believe most Americans think secret powers reside in the oval office or that simple fixes and tweaks are enough to get jobs back. Too many of us wait for top down solutions, federal allotments for unemployment, food and housing before we fix ourselves. Start small. Pay off the debts. Work. Create. Get involved in the community because America needs it. Be your own hero.