Cesar Chavez and the Twilight of the Idols
Why No Human Being Should be Put on a Pedestal
The news about Cesar Chavez is appalling. He was accused of molesting girls and women in a blockbuster New York Times article. This is yet another story of men abusing power and harming women. Unlike Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, however, Cesar Chavez was an advocate of civil rights and nonviolence. He was supposed to be better than this.
There is a lot of food for thought in this story about male privilege and hypocrisy. But what I want to consider here is the very process through which Chavez was lionized—and then abruptly defenestrated. This points toward a common cultural problem that we might call the paradox of the paragon.
We want heroes to worship. But no human being is worthy of veneration. When we transform human beings into idols, their flaws are magnified. And no human being is flawless. When we put heroes up on pedestals, they inevitably get knocked down.
Taking a Hammer to Our Heroes
The process of apotheosis and iconoclasm is ancient and familiar. Moses destroyed false idols. The Bible warns against “graven images.” And the Greek philosopher Heraclitus mocked those who pray to stone statues. Heraclitus is famous for teaching that all things change. This includes human beings, none of whom are perfect or complete.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s book The Twilight of the Idols took a hammer to hero worship. He used his philosopher’s hammer as a “tuning fork” to sound out the hollowness of idols. Since all idols are hollow, the philosopher’s hammer smashes them all.
People seem to need icons and idols. Children can learn from heroic tales that simplify and magnify virtue. But adults should outgrow hero worship. The challenge of adulthood is to live in a world of broken idols. At some point you discover the wisdom of tragedy, which is that no one is perfect and that it is folly to treat any human being as if they were a saint.
This tragic insight can be used to argue against cults and cliques that develop around gurus and demagogues. Authoritarian regimes often magnify charismatic charmers. But these authoritarian idols are among the most hollow. They explode upon contact with the hammer of critical thought.
In a column from a few years ago, I argued against the “great man” view of the world. The idea that any human being is indispensable or worthy of worship is authoritarian. As I argued there, “Hero worship turns mere mortals into idols. And often we are stuck with our champions, unable to free ourselves from their grip on power.” I concluded there: “Every human hero has feet of clay and an expiration date.”
The Trumpian Pedestal and The Chavez Cancellation
The cancellation of Chavez occurred almost immediately. It was surprising how quickly public opinion turned against him. Soon after the Times article was published, people worked diligently to purge his name and image from public places.
Here at Fresno State University, there was a Chavez monument outside the library in our “Peace Garden.” The day after the Times published its piece, the statue was covered with a large wooden box. The next day it was removed. Something similar happened across the country, with immediate calls to cancel celebrations organized in Chavez’s name, to rename streets that had been named after him, and so on. In Sacramento, the state legislature plans to change “Cesar Chavez Day” to “Farmworker’s Day.”
The speed of this purge was astounding. But in general, this is how news that shames the powerful should be treated. When the misdeeds of our heroes are exposed, we should all be ashamed. And broken icons should be removed.
Unfortunately, there is a counter-narrative at large in the world of Trumpian hero worship. Despite the flaws in Trump’s character—and despite the fact that history is not yet done with the man—he and his followers are working diligently to turn him into an icon. As I argued elsewhere, the movement to slap Trump’s name and image on things must be understood as hubris, which is a “vice of the heights.” The higher the pedestal, the more likely the fall.
Our eagerness to remove Chavez may be fueled in part by this rival Trumpian apotheosis. The more Trumpian our world becomes, the more we react with dismay when we learn of the shameful misdeeds of powerful men not named Trump. With Chavez, at least, we seem to understand the wisdom of Nietzsche’s hammer.
There Are No Heroes
In seeking heroes to lionize, we set ourselves up for failure. There are no heroes. No human being is beyond reproach. No one is so perfect that they deserve to be immortalized or turned into a statue. And certainly, once the statues exist, we should refrain from venerating them.
And here in the twilight, we should consider the other broken idols of the American sculpture garden. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison owned slaves. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not perfect. Nor was John F. Kennedy. And so it goes.
The paradox of the paragon ought to prevent us from erecting statues and naming things in honor of human beings. Let’s stop idolizing mortal men.
The Bible’s warnings against idolatry have often been misunderstood. The problem was not only that the Israelites were worshiping false gods. They were also worshiping statues made by men. But there are no human creations worthy of our worship. All human creations are flawed.
The crooked timber of humanity cannot be made straight (as Kant once put it). It is a fool’s errand to attempt to transform human beings into icons. This may sound like a depressing conclusion. But after we take up the hammer of critique, the next step is to live as well and as wisely as we can without heroes, gurus, and false idols.