Heroes and role models

Heroes and role models reveal a society’s highest standards . The first thing that comes into my mind is when was the last time I read about a hero in the newspapers or any other media ? What defines a hero or role model in today’s society ? The author claims that the heroes and role models represent the society we live in. This statement leads to a moral dilemma inside me. Whether this claim just aims that society is represented by handful of role models or it also has a secondary meaning of being judgmental about the true nature of society by observing a handful of famous figures in the society.

Everyday I look into the paper and I find news of natural calamities, political wars, unfortunate accidents and the editorial section covering the sane political drama. There also is a section of sports and entertainment which cut in as big sections of the paper. For a country like India, the role models and heroes have been reduced from war heroes to bollywood actors and sports star. The majority of the crowd consists of teenagers and young persons. Whether poor or rich, every young person likes to imitate their favorite heroes and sadly the part of their life they want to imitate is not a real one.

The films the mass watches on screens, the type of characters played, they create a bigger impression than some war stories and award ceremony of the army cadets. Even the newspapers are hardly interested to post photos of such functions or any actual heroic acts. The young mass practically worships the sports stars and film stars. Does that mean that the entire society can be judged on that basis that we live in a dream world ? This image will also seem to wipe out the problems in a society like poverty, poor lifestyles and corruption etc.

Even medias like you tube, facebook etc the most searched videos are that of popstars and other glamorous personalities and compared to that how many of us really have searched about the Nobel laureates and other such people ? The number is very less. The questions still remains that what should represent a society. People who have really changed the society are hardly known and they have continued to work selflessly. The role models and heroes hardly come somewhere near actually influencing the society towards betterment.

Words like heroes are role models are meant to last forever. The people who are actually heroes are not supposed to change overnight with gaining or decreasing popularity. The real heroes never vanish. They continue to have a positive influence on the society and help in developing the society. Sadly, these words hardly are applicable in current society where the brighter the star is the more people tend to influenced by that glamorous image. Rather than defining a society by these people, we should do more reckoning on who actually contribute to society in beneficial way, channeled its ways towards progress and then understand how the society became existent and what makes it different from others.