Heroification and the Hegemony of Fallible Men

In that sense, it is a typical form of mind control implementation.

As it is the case in all forms of mind control, a process of indoctrination through education is vital to create biased followers.

It is almost impossible for such indoctrinated masses to want to criticize anything the so-called supernaturalistic hero stands for. He is no more an ordinary individual, and in most cases, there is no turning back to think straight about him.

In such an environment, alternative thinking is in fact just playing around the different shades of the same color.

Even the premise that the mythic figure 'claims otherwise' on a certain issue can alone be enough reason to refute an argument.

In fact, due to the self-evident nature of the doctrines stuffed with a strong dose of aggressive nationalism, there is not much one can do to show indoctrinated people that things actually operate on a different level than rulers would like to have them believe.

In their opinion, everything said and done in defense of the mythic figure is always for the good of the country, when, on the contrary, every criticism equals to treason.

Such strong influence is one-of-a-kind for rulers of the masses, since wielding it, they can easily manipulate the public opinion.

In his bestseller book 'Lies My Teacher Told Me', James W. Loewen, a professor of sociology at the University of Vermont calls this hegemony 'the power of social archetype'.

Heroification even fuels lack of mutual understanding between cultures. Because, different cultures uphold different values and thus heroify different figures – leading to different self-evident doctrines.

And with intoxicated minds, nationalism can easily turn into chauvinism when it comes to judge other cultures. To the extent, which such chauvinism appears as a social phenomenon in different nations, mutual understanding becomes difficult between them.

One important thing to remember here is that wherever there is heroification, most of the time, there is vilification too.

Without recognizing the fact that human beings are imperfect by nature, people will be fooled with the image of so-called infallible men who in fact never exist(ed).

One other important loss of the manipulated is usually ignored:

Refusing to listen to others' viewpoints, one deprives oneself of learning from others.