To embrace life, & fully live it, has been a daunting or often even failed task in the individual lives that make up this tapestry of humanity. My heroes that I've collected over time & exposure to media can't do the work for me, but have laid down a framework on which I've built every success I've had in life. From parents to other extended family, to friends I've seen struggle, to teachers who saw what was valuable in me & watered it like a seed, I've had many.
Society is much larger than our immediate circles though, & we're given many figures throughout history we're induced through social pressure or tradition to revere or condemn. These are my own heroes. People who managed against crisis and stagnation to give society an example to live up to, who have exemplified piece by piece, the values that constitute the pillars of my soul. Of course it is not a full list, but as good as I will muster here.
George Carlin
“Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music.”
“We have multiplied our possessions but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living but not a life. We’ve added years to life, not life to years.”
“Don’t just teach your children to read… Teach your children to question what they read, teach them to question everything”
George Carlin by trade was a comedian; but much more than that, to me and many others, he was a philosopher. His love for his species was cloaked by realism, & disdain for the ugliness he was confronted with either at the hands of it or as a bystander. His father, a motivational speaker by trade, was a brutal alcoholic who beat his mother & his brother Patrick. Eventually courts intervened, and he was given a conservative upbringing by his single mom in tough streets lining New York city. His curiosity for language, the lifeblood of his fathers work, caused him to question how people around him handled it. He compiled a list of words he wasn't allowed to use as a child, & when that list was found his mother gave him hell. Speaking of hell, Carlin was raised Catholic in a private religious school, where being the class clown & questioning authority laid the groundwork for his skepticism in American attitudes towards religion & spirituality.
Kicked out of the military for calling a superior 'cocksucker', he seemed to be a social pariah to whatever authority presided over him. This lack of acceptance ultimately lead him to embrace counter culture, and his refusal to back down from societies expectations that preceded him lead to butting heads with the American legal system in more ways than one. From being arrested for driving the same car as black friends of his while in the military in Louisina, to DC deciding on the legality of his comedy work being played on the radio in the famed cause of FCC vs. Pacifica foundation (a case I unsurprisingly did Not learn about from public school growing up) where the FCC ended up with stronger means to censor the airwaves. His thoughts, his act, was subversive enough to change America's relationship with media.
Always the free speech advocate, he was a dogged social critic of groups who took to control language & the flawed logic on which they would operate. His attacks on political correctness & counter-intuitive euphemisms demonstrated an ideology of linguistic tolerance & freedom. Though he was plagued by addiction, relationship problems, and consistent disappointment in his country, he paved the way for future comedians in speaking truth to power & ill logic. I've watched & enjoyed every special he's ever put out & even the goofier ones. He just might be the most important American in history, his philosophy will continue to resonate in the minds of skeptics and freethinkers alike, with countless comics after him benefit from the inspiration his legacy seeded.
Oskar Schindler
“I hated the brutality, the sadism, and the insanity of Nazism. I just couldn't stand by and see people destroyed. I did what I could, what I had to do, what my conscience told me I must do. That's all there is to it. Really, nothing more.”
“If you saw a dog going to be crushed under a car, wouldn't you help him?”
“We must differentiate between guilt and duty. The soldier on the front, like the common man, who does his duty everywhere, should not be held responsible for the actions of a few who also called themselves Germans.”
Being a largely German kid by ethnicity in America is a unique position to learn about the holocaust. The nation that ultimately produced me, producing the most spoken of horrors to come to pre-nuclear humanity. The anger of thinking that a country set up to be a Democracy allowing a party with 30% of votes to take the reigns of government by force & propaganda to commit conquest & genocide gave rise to many questions. How could people not rise up? Would I have been weak to struggle against the behemoth of Nazism in the 30's?
Oskar Schindler is a case study in the evolution of conscience. He actually was a Nazi, & voluntarily participated in the formation of the third reich. Deeply invested in the government of Germany, even spying for the Nazi's in Poland, he was at one time contented to become one of the most cynical examples of industrialists taking advantage of war and the suffering of others. Owning factories for producing cookware, hinges, & sundry other manufacturing goods among war munitions, he purchased Jews for the cheap labor as the cost to employ them was considerably less than was the rate at which he would have paid for Polish labor. The Nazi's saw him as a keen investment & ally.
The Nazi's invested wrong.
By 1944 he had amassed a munitions facility employing over 1,000 jews, intentionally taking over 7 months to produce just one load of munitions and sabotaging the standards of production to undermine the reich. He had been arrested three times, the first charge being his kissing a Jewish woman, the rest facilitating a sense of contempt and suspicion from the Nazi's of lending illegal aid to the Jews employed by him. Through bribery and ingenuity he pulled over a thousand people from the dire straights of conventional life as a death camp victim. Protecting his workers even to the point of losing his once heavily coveted profits, he abandoned the factory housing his jewish laborers to be liberated by the Soviets towards the end of the war. His sheer disgust with what he witnessed in the society around him moved him to abandon his lust for the finer things in life, to take great risk to his personal safety in the pursuit of rescuing victims of what was the epitome of tyranny. When asked why he made this change, Schindler said:
The persecution of Jews in the General Government in Polish territory gradually worsened in its cruelty. In 1939 and 1940 they were forced to wear the Star of David and were herded together and confined in ghettos. In 1941 and 1942 this unadulterated sadism was fully revealed. And then a thinking man, who had overcome his inner cowardice, simply had to help. There was no other choice.
—Oskar Schindler
As much a case of brass balls as a case in the development of ones sense of morality, his contribution to history casts a light on the otherwise dim & cynical attitude we as people have of one another. After the war, he tried and failed other business ventures in Germany, by the end living on the financial assistance of the state and the people whose lives his actions ended up saving. I often wonder how many Oskar's live among us, how many hold influence in countries from North Korea to my own native United States. When it comes to self sacrifice & perseverance, I think his is a life that could & likely has benefited the world, many generations after his own.
Bob Marley
“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.”
“The biggest coward of a man is to awaken the love of a woman without the intention of loving her.”
“You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.”
Bob Marley is the foremost artist of Jamaica, forever associated with stoner & certainly Reggae culture, whose contributed more than just talent to the world around him before his passing in 1981 at the age of 36. Marley was essentially a Jamaican hippie, while he was raised catholic, he took interest in the Rastafarian religion which placed a high medicinal premium on marijuana as more than a recreational drug & viewed music as central to it's ritualism. Growing up alongside poor Jamaicans in a country politically characterized by much pluralistic strife, he wanted to unify his country & bring a more coherent & peaceful reality to his people.
His music was poetry, about everything vague as love to political issues like police brutality. The active present and woeful past of black people was a strong element in his music, songs like Redemption Song described the emancipation of the black soul from it's past lineage of the slave trade, Buffalo Soldier described the experience of black infantrymen fighting for the United States. He was not a segregatory figure in his politics however, his mission was to see the significance of a mans skin be no more than in the color of their eyes. He attempted to use his music to tend to the wounds of the world, which I do not see replicated in many, if any, artists vaunted today. He wasn't just about sponsoring the next beverage choice you might be making as a consumer, to him, the most important thing a person could consume was love & elation, even spelling out as his last words to his son Ziggy “money can't buy life”.
Jamaica was a warzone in many areas during his time, with party fighting often being settled by the iron in the streets. Because of this climate he was challenged a lot in his benign mission, as it was not benign to just everybody operating there. In December of 1976, two days before a concert 'Smile Jamaica', he, his wife, & manager were shot in his home by unknown gunmen. Though his wife & manager sustained serious injuries, Marley was not intimidated, & resolved to stage the concert anyway. It proceeded, with some of his band in hiding & needing to be supplanted by extra talent. Asked as to why he went along with the concert, Marley said "The people who are trying to make this world worse aren't taking a day off. How can I?".
After the shooting, Marley moved to his fathers' native England, but by 1978 he returned to perform a second 'One Love Peace' concert. Near the end of the concert, he had the leaders of the two parties, Jamica's Labor Party & the Peoples National Party, summoned to the stage to shake hands. His music culminated into so much more than just standard stoner jam, & this was by meticulous design. As artists go, I don't think half of the artists in my playlist can be spoken of as being half as inspirational in aims, efforts, & results. I have friends who have gotten all too used to my capacity to quote Marley at them, as to me, any wisdom that transcends nation & generation is worthy of preservation. A musician can only offer a society so many things, but Marley encapsulated the best of those things, & will not be forgotten especially in Jamaican history for a deservedly long time.
Bernie Sanders
“A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much and so many have so little.”
“The doom of a nation can be averted only by a storm of flowing passion, but only those who are passionate themselves can arouse passion in others.”
“It's better to show up than give up.”
Integrity is as rare in matters of personal, work, financial, and social life let alone in the realm of politics. Bernie Sanders was consistently an advocate against the oligarchy & he demonstrated that consistently with his record time & time again. An avid advocate of campaign finance reform, I've never been under the impression that Sanders, like most politicans, is just out to make someone else money. Though mine is a country controlled by two parties which act both in favor of common lobbyists, senator Sanders is the longest served Independent in the United States. He thinks for himself, & votes for his own convictions' sake.
Loved by his constituency & the most popular politician currently in the United States, Bernie Sanders inspired many millennials to take seriously the institutions that shape the destiny of their world. He was of the scant few questioning the governments claims prior to the Iraq war, thereafter found to be the result of faulty intelligence, of Saddam Hussein & his intentions to endanger the United States with nuclear weapons. Even as far back as the civil rights movement, he was arrested for partaking in protests aimed at combating the problem of discriminatory housing practices. By 2016 I had become so resigned to the corrupt state of party politics I was willing to accept that the lesser of two evils who had been for years alligned to run in Hillary Clinton was inevitable & I was prepared to co-sign the death warrant of my own countries' honor & credibility by voting with the Democrats as I had come to begrudgingly do always in efforts to undermine the party of Bush.
Then like a flare fired into the darkest night: Bernie Sanders, a normally typecasted symbol of optimism trotted out only rarely by the mainstream media & silenced by his political colleagues, came to bat for the nomination of the party. We were offered a choice at change significantly more weighted with evidence than Obama had succeeded upon the American people in 2008. I made speeches at my state caucus, I went door to door, I was induced to try something because something at last was on the line. I even was in attendance to the Seattle rally he was invited to speak at that was the second event of his to be interrupted by self appointed Blacklivesmatter activists, & when they denied him the stage to speak using his platform I was so... pissed at the time I actually got the crowd to chant “Shame On You” in defense of Sanders against the political stunt being pulled before my eyes, & that ended up being mentioned on the Huffington Post article written about that day thereafter.
Bernie Sanders made headway against the biggest political machine in the United States in taking on Clinton & though he may not have succeeded, I'll leave how legitimately he came about his defeat to you, he's lived the unusual political life of someone who stuck to their guns & actually managed to effect change through public office. The wave of fervor people had for him transcended party lines, & his legitimacy as a human being in a sea of dirty plutocrats has been rivaled by few others while in office.
Ron Paul
“Speak up, speak often and don’t worry about those that at this point cannot understand as they can never un-hear what we tell them.”
“Peaceful civil disobedience to unjust laws, which I support with every fiber of my being, can sometimes be necessary at any level of government. It falls upon the people, in the last resort, to stand against injustice no matter where it occurs.”
“History has shown that the masses have been quite receptive to the promises of authoritarians which are rarely if ever fulfilled.”
Speaking, of political integrity, Ron Paul has been as ardent a critic of established political orders & monetarily induced allegiances as Sanders. A sort of Sanders of the right in one respect. Where our current president lied in order to avoid the draft, Paul served in Vietnam as a flight surgeon & later domestically as an obstetrician & gynochologist. Though I may have some political differences stemming from economic policy, abortion, amongst sundry other issues, he is of few Republicans I am comfortable to see as my president because he, despite all pressures, was a man of integrity. His voting record is clear & consistent to his libertarian values, in an all too authoritarian sea of political opportunists. Against the shaming, mockery, & disdain of the media, he ran twice for president to offer Republican voters a chance to have someone they could vote for with pride. Though he didn't make half the headway of Sanders, his contribution to his country is no less admirable or desirable. He was the underdog & was content to be the underdog because it was better than maintaining the party line. In a time when politicians who aren't bloodthirsty for war, his role as a non-interventionist is of indispensable importance. Taking on everyone from the Federal Reserve to the military industrial complex, the fight he put up as a citizen with convictions worth fighting for in a level headed & non-violent way, he's a political hero of mine that I will always compare future wannabe leaders to. If more people throughout the world followed in his footsteps we could only stand to gain more than we lose.
Martin Luther King Jr.
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
Those disengaged from tolerance are often the ones most preoccupied with their own innate inexperience of the compassion & intimacy that love offers. Martin Luther King was of few leaders in human history to reach out to the disaffected with as broad a brush as he did. What he ended up accomplishing was greater than legislation, he accomplished an attitude, a defense for justice, & was on track to unify so many that he was murdered before he could bring workers rights into the fray. His speeches, while powerful, are infinitely more articulate than anything our current president could ever hope to muster. Not many martyrs set out to be martyrs, but fewer people of passion & acclaim are willing to risk being one. His rhetoric was the kind that many could find themselves getting behind, & his nation mourns his untimely death to this day. He was a student of history & men like Ghandi or Henry David Thoreau, who understood perhaps better than anybody the extent to which non-violent civil disobedience could effect a movement. The CIA blackmailed him, & told him to kill himself. His house was bombed. In response, he still demonstrated a fervor that is all too rare. Rare enough to replicate no doubt, but not common enough. The machinations he fought against continue to arouse the fear & doubts of the public. Most of us in the United States however have been educated about his legacy, & he's one of the most vaunted figures of history by no accident.
Jonas Salk
“There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality.”
“I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams.”
“Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.”
Jonas Salk is one of the foremost humanitarian figures in the species history, not just because of what he did but how he did it. Salk is the progenitor of the polio vaccine. Polio was a scarily contagious disease at one point considered a worldwide ailment, taking victims' legs left & right, killing & rendering crippled people by the thousands at least. Today, men like Martin Shkreli make bank on the medicine that keeps people with A.I.D.S. well-managed in their diseased state. What set Salk apart was that he wouldn't patent his medical accomplishment, because to him the end goal was never money in any large part, & certainly not enough to hinder progression against this hellish disease he was at odds with. I consider him a hero because of this, this was a scientist worth his weight in Salk.
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