With this record in mind, it is to be hoped for all our sakes that Dr. Gibbon is being a bit alarmist. For the end of the heroic tradition would mean the end of a lot of other good things, too. If there is no admiration of greatness, no representative figures that ordinary people would want to emulate, we could be taking a U-turn on the road to civilization. A loss of interest in heroes and heroines would be something new under the sun, for history shows that human beings have always felt a need for paragons to look up to. Because they show the rest of us that members of our species can be better than we ever thought they could be.
Heroism symbolizes the soaring potential of humankind.
Dr. Gibbon suggests that the scepticism that has led to the decline of admiration in the United States is connected to religious scepticism. With the spread of secularism, people have come to feel that they are sufficient unto themselves and have no need of a higher power. A loss of religious faith implies a loss of faith in anyone greater than oneself, including heroes and heroines. Along with secularism has come modernism, a cultural movement that thumbs its nose at structure, form, and convention. To modernists, one work of art or artist is as good as the next.