ANTI-HERO DOCTRINE

The anti-hero doctrine constitutes a denial of the value and purpose of human life, which sets us adrift in an existence without meaning or hope. Anti-hero philosophies have been a mixture of scientific error, prideful deceit, and rebellion against God. George Roche in his excellent book, “A World without Heroes” said:

“The anti-heroic dismisses all purpose as illusion. It sees us as helpless pawns, unable to act or even think on our own, fully shaped and determined by outside forces. It reaches this position with tortuous chains of inference, with misused ‘scientific assumptions’ and fanciful formulas that dare to tell us what we can and cannot know, what is and is not real. But all this is contrivance, serving not the search for knowledge and truth, but the rebel’s own dark purposes. And it is all belied in an instant by that one purposeful, death-defying act or a hero. That act, a reality known to us all, tells us more about the human condition than all of the empty and life-hating mutterings of modernist philosophers. It serves a Good we all may turn to for fulfillment in our lives.”

Author Marc Simmons, addressing the Western Writers of America, reached this conclusion about the group’s anti-hero critics:

“You see they must discredit the Western hero because if just one person can be shown to have achieved wholeness, then it becomes evident that the possibility is open to all.”

I believe that there are four areas where anti-hero doctrine has made major inroads:

1.       Education

2.       Business – The Free Enterprise System

3.       Our National Beliefs

4.       Our View of Individual Achievement