The Ideal Soldier
When I was younger (actually, it hasn’t stopped), I was obsessed with the heroes of the old like Hercules, Achilles, and Alexander the Great. Of course this was the inevitable result of my love for ancient Greece and Rome, but on another level, reading about their heroic deeds was highly satisfying for someone like myself who is so far removed from being faced with life-threatening choices and deeds, or indeed of being thought of as anything resembling a hero.
When I was younger, I used to fall asleep dreaming about saving my mother from a burning building or doing the Heimlich maneuver and saving my brother from choking. Though there were many gruesome and horrifying deaths awaiting my family, the one constant was that at the last minute, I would rush in and save the day; I was always the hero in each scenario. Till I was in the 11th grade, I was always the smallest person wherever I went. I think that having people always tell me how cute and tiny I was gave me a subconscious need to prove that I was more than just my unprepossessing outer appearance.
So often, we equate heroism with war and fighting (I totally honor all the soldiers (and their families) who make the ultimate sacrifice for their country and fellow countrymen). However, as I have grown older, I no longer have such a one-sided or narrow view of heroism. Outside of the fact that Hercules and Achilles were not real people, they were also considered semi-divine, and imbued with superhuman gifts and powers that set them apart from ordinary humans. While it made a jolly good story, it also set an impossibly high standard that no mortal would physically be able to reach. Take Alexander the Great for instance. He greatly revered Achilles, and strove throughout his whole (and tragically short) life to emulate him in thought and deed. And while he reached military and political heights unmatched by any other single person in the ancient world, he was never satisfied with his accomplishments because he always believed himself to fall short of Achilles.
Professor Centeno addresses the idea of heroism in his latest lecture. He briefly talks about how ordinary young men are changed into ideal soldiers. He also talks about Achilles and how he exemplifies the ancient Greek ideal that ‘glory that never dies’; thus while you may physically die, your name and fame live forever. This concept pushed ancients like Alexander the Great who deliberately faced and even courted death because he believed true fame and lasting glory would only be possible in a heroic death on the battlefield. While most people would consider dying peacefully in one’s sleep the ideal way to go, warriors in ancient Greece were taught socially to seek death in battle as the only truly honorable end. In earlier posts, we talked about how this propaganda or social mindset is still used in modern times to glorify war and encourage young men (and now women too of course) to join the military and see value in their service and/or ultimate sacrifice. Therefore, though we no longer tell stories of heroes like Hercules and Achilles to propagate ideals of heroism and glory in death, most modern societies still glorify war and the military out of necessity.
