Essential Workers as Heroes and the Demoralization Campaign

1

As the pandemic has progressed companies externally and internally have thrown the word hero around quite a bit

2

Some companies go so far as to depict customers and employees as superheroes to drive the point home

What does this do to the human psyche

3

Firstly, the bar for heroism is low: if you show up to work as an essential worker you are a hero, a variety of other occupations instantly get this status as well such as nurse

4

Some nurses are heroic because they go beyond what their profession asks of them

Most being average, as most people are, are not heroes they just did their jobs and were compensated accordingly

5

By calling everyone a hero you diminish the term. If everyone is a hero , nobody is

Depicting them as a superhero further infantilizes and separates the employee from reality - why depict an overweight middle aged man as superhuman when he knows it is not the case?

6

By separating the individual from reality and providing them with a title of hero, they in turn lose agency

People undertake high cost actions for the greater good in order to be heroic. If someone is instantly rendered heroic why take the action?

7

The individual then becomes content and complacent. They have already exceeded the terms of the social contract, they are already a hero

8

Thus they lose agency
They see no need to act for the greater good and fall into an unobservant trance moving from day to day content in what they do

9

Yet now is the time to be the least content. Now is the time for individuals to take high cost actions to save this nation through civic engagement - Yet the majority don't see the need. They are heroes after all

10 - END

CC
@VassalOfChrist
@mythic_ethos