Heroes 2020: from my food blog

We finally have a sign acknowledging the heroism of essential workers in our society.

Sign installed on our lawn.

Heroism is a concept that's very appropriate, in my mind, for many of the workers who are risking their own well-being for the sake of others in this terrible pandemic. The medical professionals who risk their own health in order to help sick people come to mind most readily, but many others are also working in dangerous conditions. Whether their prime motive is altruism or just making a living and providing for their families, I see an element of heroism in what they are doing.

Sadly, some of their sacrifice is needed as the result of poor leadership and greedy business practices that started long before the emergency. Our federal government could have decreased the high number of infected people by taking action earlier, making the work of governors like ours (Michigan) more effective. For years, American industrial practices, notably in meat packing plants, could have been regulated to be more humane to workers, but it's too late now. That doesn't diminish the heroic actions by workers!

Another of the many signs in our neighborhood

Heroism has fascinated writers throughout the ages, elevating self-sacrificing behavior through literary admiration. While wartime heroics are more often cited, many writers have seen a broader picture. Take for example this quote from Henry David Thoreau, upon seeing a "panorama" which would be a large painting shown in some sort of temporary exposition:

"I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I worked my way up the river in the light of to-day, and saw the steamboats wooding up, counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of Nauvoo, beheld the Indians moving west across the stream, and, as before I had looked up the Moselle, now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri, and heard the legends of Dubuque and of Wenona's Cliff, - still thinking more of the future than of the past or present, - I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a different kind; that the foundations of castles were yet to be laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be thrown over the river; and I felt that this was the heroic age itself, though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men." -- Henry David Thoreau, "Walking," THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS. VOL. IX.-JUNE, 1862.-NO. LVI., p. 664-665. (https://www.walden.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Walking-1.pdf)

Or consider these often-quoted lines from Bertolt Brecht's play The Life of Galileo:

Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes!…
Galileo: No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes.

Finally, a quote that applies to the self-designated heroes (with or without guns) pressuring for reckless reopening of inessential businesses and recreations:

"The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is simply blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other people's lives." -- Salman Rushdie, quoted in Der Spiegel, Aug. 28, 2006

Or as Joe Biden says:

"President Trump's ... goal is as obvious as it is craven: He hopes to split the country into dueling camps, casting Democrats as doomsayers hoping to keep America grounded and Republicans as freedom fighters trying to liberate the economy." (Washington Post, May 11, 2020)

Blog post copyright  © 2020 mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com.

Heroic Resistance in China

In a New York Times op-ed yesterday titled "Dangerous Arts," Salman Rushdie summarized the situation of outspoken artists and writers in China today, especially Ai Weiwei, who disappeared and appeared to have been arrested by Chinese authorities April 4. Rushdie (himself the target of a terrible campaign from Iran that lasted decades) says "The disappearance is made worse by reports that Mr. Ai has started to 'confess.' His release is a matter of extreme urgency and the governments of the free world have a clear duty in this matter."

Rushdie reminds us of historic persecutions of brave and outspoken artists, not mentioning his own experience:

"The lives of artists are more fragile than their creations. The poet Ovid was exiled by Augustus to a little hell-hole on the Black Sea called Tomis, but his poetry has outlasted the Roman Empire. Osip Mandelstam died in a Stalinist work camp, but his poetry has outlived the Soviet Union. Federico García Lorca was killed by the thugs of Spain’s Generalissimo Francisco Franco, but his poetry has survived that tyrannical regime."

"We can perhaps bet on art to win over tyrants. It is the world’s artists, particularly those courageous enough to stand up against authoritarianism, for whom we need to be concerned, and for whose safety we must fight...."

"When artists venture into politics the risks to reputation and integrity are ever-present. But outside the free world, where criticism of power is at best difficult and at worst all but impossible, creative figures like Mr. Ai and his colleagues are often the only ones with the courage to speak truth against the lies of tyrants. We needed the samizdat truth-tellers to reveal the ugliness of the Soviet Union. Today the government of China has become the world’s greatest threat to freedom of speech, and so we need Ai Weiwei, Liao Yiwu and Liu Xiaobo."