Heroes and monsters

A great time-traveller once told me something I will never forget. I asked him "what was the most striking discovery you have ever made?"

He paused for a few seconds, dropped his usual smile, and with a clear shadow of disappointment in his eyes, he told me:

"That to save mankind and make it better, the obvious doesn't work. You must never eliminate threats, nor should you support heroes. You must do exactly the contrary. A sad thing to discover about our own nature".

I couldn't quite understand it. So I asked him what he meant exactly.

"Exactly as I said. It is by far the most disappointing feature of what we are. It is true that we praise heroes and that we think we would be so much better off without villains. But the truth is, without villains we can never better ourselves. In practice - and believe me, I've seen a lot of things - we need villains. We need horrible people to do the most horrendous things, so that we can unite, react, and define ourselves as not villains and not monsters. It's sad and depressing that we actually need pure violence and destruction in order to nurture our constructive, creative and peaceful side as a world-wide society. But I have seen this happening, again and again."

"But what about heroes and great leaders? Can't they do the job without all the bad consequences, deaths and destruction?"

"No, and that is what makes things even sadder. We believe heroes and great leaders are what we need to be saved and make progress. But that's exactly why they don't really help us at all in the long term. We trust them with so many of our hopes and dreams that we start to believe that they are the ones with hopes and dreams and that without them we can't do anything. As surprising as it may seem, if a great hero and/or leader is never born, society benefits much more at almost any timescale, and people generally live happier, fulfilling lives, than if he or she is allowed to live."

"But how exactly did you find that out?"

"By the hardest means possible".

"How so?"

"Well, my first mission was to make sure Hitler was never born. It was globally agreed as the first best simple experiment to do if we were to 'better'/'improve' humankind and eliminate some of the worst ever moments of our global history".

"How did that turn out?"

"I can tell you most of us were tremendously motivated. It was the first relatively long time-travelling mission, and it was something we felt would only result in amazing things. Can you imagine how much better off humankind would be without the millions of deaths, destruction and the waste of hundreds of thousands of great ideas and projects?"

"So what happened?"

"It was a complete disaster."