Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [110]
Evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. does not hesitate to make a prediction about the average hero: “I would bet most heroes will be male, single, childless, and young.”(Coincidence or not, Olian, while married, was male, childless, and young.) Gallup tosses off this prediction because he knows that evolutionary imperatives rule our lives. If we are going to do something, it is probably going to promote our genetic survival. Men are more likely to be heroes because they accrue reproductive benefits from doing so, Gallup says. If they don’t already have children, heroism is a good way to ensure that they will one day have many. Heroes, put a different way, get all the girls. “Scratch an altruist, and you’ll find a hedonist underneath,” Gallup says. That might be a bit strong, but the point is taken. And if would-be heroes die trying? Well, then their sisters and brothers and parents—the other keepers of their genes—will benefit from being the grieving relative of a hero. Women, on the other hand, can most efficiently promote their genes by finding high-quality (not quantity) mates, evolutionary theory suggests, and by parenting—which, if done well, can be heroic, Carnegie Medal or no.
Reducing heroism to its evolutionary roots can at first be a bit deflating, like seeing the inside of a magic hat. But these are just the buried roots, remember. A giant, gnarled tree has grown up over millions of years of evolution, laden with cultural and psychological motivations. If evolutionary theory tells us that heroism can, at least genetically speaking, be selfish, then that need not be bad news. What it means is that we all have the potential to be heroes at some point in our lives. Grace, in other words, is good for you. If we all have the potential, then we can encourage that potential in our culture, and we’ll see it more.
The Problem with Fantasy
It would be remiss to leave the subject of hero worship without visiting its dark side. The history of disasters is riddled with stories of heroism gone wrong. We admire heroism because we might need it ourselves one day. But sometimes the urge to find a hero or to be a hero can be powerful to the point of pathological.
The more atrocious the wrong, the more urgent the demand for a hero. After teenagers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed twelve students and one teacher in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, a story circulated about one of their victims. In the library, one of the shooters, the story went, had asked Cassie Bernall, seventeen, if she believed in God. She was reported to have answered yes. Then she was shot to death. This story appeared just days after the shootings. Already, Bernall had a label: the teenage martyr. She inspired several songs, including Michael W. Smith’s “This Is Your Time” and Flyleaf’s “Cassie.” Bernall’s mother, Misty Bernall, wrote a book titled She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall. The book became a New York Times nonfiction bestseller.
But this conversation probably never happened, according to the local sheriff’s official investigation into the shootings. What Harris most likely said when he saw Bernall hiding under a table was, “Peek-a-boo!” Then he shot and killed her. According to the report, Klebold had taunted someone else about believing in God. But that girl survived. The confusion quickly developed into lore, and it became more powerful than truth. Long after the official investigation came out, news articles continue to perpetuate the mistake.
“That idols have feet of clay is a banality; what is interesting is the question why, knowing it, we are still enthralled by them,” writes Lucy Hallett-Hughes in the book Heroes: A History of Hero Worship.