Is the main task of life to become heroic?

Art is not one to shy from the big questions, and over at New Wineskins he's been pondering something said by Sam Keen in the introduction to a famous book by Ernest Becker on the denial of death.

Transcribing from a podcast, Art caught this nugget (and there's more context for it over at his place):

"Since the main task of human life is to become heroic and transcend death, every culture must provide its members with an intricate symbolic system that is covertly religious. This means that ideological conflicts between cultures are essentially battles between ‘immortality projects’: holy wars.”

I do not yet know what to make of that assertion, but it occurs to me that thinking about it on All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day counts as an exercise in spectacularly good timing.

In the comments for that post, I chimed in with allusions to The Lord of The Rings and Casablanca, because both of those touchstones address heroism in different ways.

Anyone arguing with Keen would probably contest his major premise about the "main task of human life," although it also fits the outlook of Robert A. Heinlein's flawed but stirring Glory Road.

On the other hand, one could accept what Keen says about heroism as a main purpose while arguing about whether or how it helps transcend death.

One could also dial down the heavy thinking, reach for the guacamole, and just figure that Keen can't be right unless an astonishing number of people fail at what he says the main task in life is.

But if it's true that everyone you meet is fighting a great battle, per both Philo of Alexandra and C.S. Lewis's Weight of Glory, then perhaps they go about heroism vewy vewy qwietly, like Elmer Fudd in Wabbit Season, or The Incredibles when they're trying to blend in with other suburbanites. What looks like failure might not be.

Me, I thought immediately of a possible contrast between Keen's quote and Mother Teresa saying that we are called to be faithful rather than to be successful --hence the old and never-really-discredited charge that "Christianity is a religion for losers."

It is, of course, possible to square that Teresian summary with heroism; faith and success need not oppose each other. I think that's what I meant to get at above, with the Oxford don and the wise old Greek. Exhibit A: Francis of Assissi. Exhibit B: Therese of Lisieux and the spirituality of her "Little Way." Exhibit C: Martin de Porres. Exhibit D: Catherine of Sienna. You get the idea. Heroism can be defined in different ways. Enter Inigo telling Vizzini "you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

If you've pondered the paradoxical phrase, "triumph of the cross," you've come near the mark Mother Teresa was talking about, and near to the heart of Christianity itself in the person of Jesus. In fact the whole canon of Christian saints depends on the assumption that heroic faith, if not misplaced, is ultimately the most enduring kind of success. Saint Paul is startlingly bold in his letter to the Romans, proclaiming that "all things work together for good to those who love God." That he wrote those words about the order of grace after deicide had already been tried should tell us something about the mysterious strength of his conviction.

There is a secular analog to this same dynamic in the motto for the U.S. Marine Corps, which often finds success by being faithful. Any number of gurus will also tell you that happiness is a byproduct of other things you do, rather than a goal to be clutched at for its own sake.

So Art has given the rest of us much to ponder, and probably more even than he knew. He's thoughtful like that. He may even agree with me that in the realm of cinema, The English Patient is the inverse of Casablanca: The older film quietly exalts heroism while the younger, inferior film quietly debunks it.

I hope friend Cassandra meanders by with a few thoughts of her own on this subject. Her take on these questions would be fascinating.

UPDATE, Nov 1: Art returned to the post that triggered this essay after having fortified himself with a shot of espresso, and I like his new formulation: "Re. Mother Theresa: yes, God calls us to be faithful and (here’s the twist) successful in carrying out his work and fulfilling his plan… very different from being 'successful' in the world’s eyes." He's got it. He gets it. And that's also why "semper fidelis" as a motto almost always warrants a closer look. The Marine Corps is not explicitly religious, but it did well to adopt one of the theological virtues as its motto. That sort of thing has a ripple effect.

Turning again to a musical cue, as is my wont, I like to suppose that there's a reason that the saints go marching in. They do not shamble. They do not sneak. They do not sashay, crawl, clomp, duck walk, sidle, sprint, strut, shuffle, somersault, or slither. They've been through the boot camp of life on Earth, and they've fought the good fight. They answer to the King of Kings. It's going to show in how they present themselves.