Heroes
Do you have any heroes?
I don't mean relatives, your dad or mom, some amazing uncle or sister that showed you the way...I mean someone you do not know. An artist, politician, historical figure, sports figure, movie star, anthropologist...whoever.
Someone who taught you something profound or moves you so greatly it brings tears to your eyes. Someone who, if they didn't exist, your life would be somehow lesser for it.
For me, someone like that is:
Theoretical Physicist Richard Feynman, May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988
He is best known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, and in particle physics, for which he proposed the parton model. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga.
He was a major contributor to the Manhattan Project and was recruited by Robert Openheimer himself. They even waged prank wars on one another, and Feynman continually exasperated military security by breaking into top secret offices and file cabinets just to show that it could be done.
He's also know as the man who figured out what exactly happened that caused the Space Shuttle Challenger to explode after launch, and he was on the commission.
But why is he a personal hero of mine?
When I was a young man and moving away from religion, but without a solid understanding of why or what else was out there, it was his popular books, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think that spoke to me about science and critical thinking and gave me a direction to follow in my life as a grown man.
He had other books and a series of extremely interesting and funny lectures that stand out, as well. And there are some documentaries about him, as well. He was a complete character and loved to play the bongos. He went to Tuva just because he wanted to visit the geographical center of Asia and to learn Tuvan throat singing. Not an easy thing to do for an American, as it was part of the Soviet Union back then. But he did it.
One story from a book that always stood out to me was when he'd go on walks through the with his father as a child, and his Dad would point to a bird and ask Richard what it was....when Richard would name it - "it's a blue bird" - his father would then ask, "But what do you actually know about the bird? All you're telling me is what humans have decided to name it. You've told me nothing about the bird itself." (I'm paraphrasing)
And that led Feynman on a lifelong journey of scientific experimentation and learning about the physical world that was incredibly beneficial to the world at large and, to me personally, a much needed lesson.
He was also one of the first experimenters of "negging" - he figured out that he could pick up women a lot easier if he wasn't very nice to them lol. He tells all about this in one of his books, and it's hilarious.
Mathew Broderick starred and directed in a movie about his early marriage called, Infinity, which I definitely recommend. William Hurt played him in a movie about the Challenger disaster. Jack Quaid played him in Oppenheimer. There were plays, a graphic novel, and even an freakin' opera written about him.
As a scientist, he was a rock star, and one of the few scientist in history to become (almost) a household name. At least in some households lol.
I definitely recommend those books I mentioned. They were eye-opening for me, and I base a lot of my life on his casual philosophy.
I have other heroes I could talk about, but I'm interested in who some of yours might be...
So who's your hero?
Jason Becker
He was a prodigy guitarist in the 80s who had a great future ahead of him. Starting a band at 16 with Marty Friedman (MegaDeath), and then later on replacing Steve Vai as David Lee Roth's guitarist.
Sadly, around the age of 19, he was diagnosed with ALS. He was told he'd eventually lose the ability to speak and really move anything other than his eyes. He was also told he would probably be dead in just a few short years.
Fast forward 36 years, and he is still alive today. With the help of a program that lets him compose music with his eyes and other guitarists and musicians playing what he composed, he's been able to release 2 instrumental albums (Perspective and Triumphant Hearts)
There was a documentary released in 2012 about him, called Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet, that I would highly recommend. Even if you aren't a guitar player, it's still a pretty fascinating and inspiring story.
Trailer
Spoiler
it would be interesting to break it down by genre... musician, political, philosophy, business... etc
Two come to mind. The first one below is one I know little of, but the idea of what he did is why I consider him a hero. The second one, is someone I know a lot of, have read many of his papers, and have read biographies of him:
1) In terms of Mexican history, a hero of mine is Francisco Javier Mina. He was a Spanish citizen that went to Mexico to fight on the Mexican side in the war of independence. I always liked the idea of someone choosing ideals over their own country.
2) In terms of mathematics, my hero is Leonhard Euler. Euler was the most prolific mathematician, publishing over 1500 papers. His unpublished work was published for decades after his death. He went blind in one eye in his thirties, blind on his other eye in his 60s, but kept pushing mathematics further. He wrote textbooks that helped people understand cutting edge mathematics, he tutored the Princess of Germany, creating a series of letters which are still read, he created so many new ways to attack problems in mathematics. His mathematics is incredibly creative. In my first year in undergrad, I read a book titled "Euler: master of us all" by William Dunham. The book goes over the state of math in a certain subfield, how it was before Euler, what Euler contributed, and how it is after Euler. The book is very well written. The title is inspired by a quote of Laplace "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all". Many years ago (2004), I was able to see his gravestone in St. Petersburg. He is my mathematical hero.
So you think I'm a loser? Just because I have a stinking job that I hate, a family that doesn't respect me, a whole city that curses the day I was born? Well, that may mean loser to you, but let me tell you something! Every morning when I wake up, I know it's not going to get any better until I go back to sleep again. So, I get up, have my watered-down Tang and still-frozen Pop Tart and get in my car with no upholstery, no gas and six more payments to fight traffic just for the privilege of putting cheap shoes on the cloven hooves of people like you. I'll never play football like I thought I would. I'll never know the touch of a beautiful woman. And I'll never again know the joy of driving without a bag on my head. But I'm not a loser. 'Cause, despite it all, me and every other guy who'll never be what he wanted to be are still out there being what we don't want to be, forty hours a week, for life. And the fact that I haven't put a gun in my mouth, you pudding of a woman, makes me a winner!
Two come to mind. The first one below is one I know little of, but the idea of what he did is why I consider him a hero. The second one, is someone I know a lot of, have read many of his papers, and have read biographies of him:1) In terms of Mexican history, a hero of mine is Francisco Javier Mina. He was a Spanish citizen that went to Mexico to fight on the Mexican side in th
very cool, Enrique
For me, someone like that is:Theoretical Physicist Richard Feynman, May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988When I was a young man and moving away from religion, but without a solid understanding of why or what else was out there, it was his popular books, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think that spoke to me about science and critical thi
I read both books in the very late 80s - when I was studying for my first degree. They were the only books I read outside of studying.
These are great books to read, especially for young adults. Why? Because they show the joy of remaining curious and not being ground down. And the joy of being in the world, and not in your room or own head.
I would also say Feynman is a personal hero. If only there were more people in the world like him.
I read both books in the very late 80s - when I was studying for my first degree. They were the only books I read outside of studying.
These are great books to read, especially for young adults.
I would also say Feynman is a personal hero. If only there were more people in the world like him.
♥
Jane Goodall, zoologist, primatologist and anthropologist.
She is considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, after 60 years' studying the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees. Goodall first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe its chimpanzees in 1960.
She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots program and has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. As of 2022, she is on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project. In April 2002, she was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Goodall is an honorary member of the World Future Council.
Her story is incredible...goes off into the bush, with no experience, to study chimps. And has never really left. I saw her speak at an even about 20 years ago in L.A., and then got her to sign one of her books for me. I was so overwhelmed with emotion at meeting her and being that close that I couldn't speak. She saw that, and grasped my hands in hers and said, "I understand."
I am in awe of her and all she's accomplished.
Broken YouTube LinkJane Goodall with binoculars.
Chris Hedges is a hero of mine, even though - while he often cites various historians on fascism - he refuses to acknowledge islamofascism. He's a scholar, an author, a man of God(like his dad), and a 20-year war correspondent. He has many wonderful talks at youtube. This one is topical, with the terrible assassination of the people in Minnesota. He speaks early about the plots a few years back to kidnap the governors of Michigan and Virginia.
What these crisis cults stand for today, they condemn tomorrow. There is no ideological consistency. There is only emotional consistency. At the height of the reign of terror on May 6, 1794 during the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre announced that the Committee for Public Safety now recognized the existence of God. The French revolutionaries, fanatical atheists who had desecrated churches and confiscated church property, murdered hundreds of priests and forced another 30,000 into exile, instantly reversed themselves to send to the guillotine those who disparaged religion. In the end, exhausted by the moral confusion and internal contradictions, these crisis cults yearn for self-annihilation.
The transcript of the talk is here. dat writing.
No decay into writing
My Mom...
She's raise two boys by herself, one of whom is a strong alpha male, all the while holding down several jobs and providing for nearly every need and protections for her son's all the while bettering herself and financial sovereignty.
She makes most modern women look like princess wannabes that suffer from constant narcissistic delusions of grandeur... which most of them are.
Old-school and rock solid... that's my mother.
Corn power!
I really, really look up to Ed Thorp, I agree with his views on pretty much everything and he is one of those older guys that has such an obvious zest for life I really find inspiring
Great pod with him, he gets into a lot of lifestyle stuff and he’s just so spot on about all these little things. Also absolutely unbelievable he’s 89 here:
Movie Stars: Paul Newman and Jeff Bridges
I just really admire both of them. Truly nice men in an industry full of the opposite who could have turned into a million different types of ******* yet managed to stay true to themselves, not take themselves too seriously, get along with everyone, and somehow stay married to their wives for decades.
If you’ve never read Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of Common Good, I’d recommend it to everyone. Hilarious, inspiring, amazing read
I try not to look at public figures as personal heroes, but if there's someone whose work I admire that fits the definition of "hero," it's Simone Weil. I may get a few things wrong — and leaving her writings and beliefs aside — according to what I've read, from a young age she showed an incredible amount of empathy for others. At five or six, she refused sugar because the French soldiers fighting in WWI weren't given any. Later in life, during WWII, while living abroad, she limited her food rations to those that were being given to those living in France at the time. She went on a hunger strike that likely contributed to her early death. She came from an affluent family and began teaching philosophy in her early 20s but believed that to truly understand others, one has to share their experiences, so a few years later she took a leave of absence to work in car factories alongside laborers. She was involved with radical political movements from a young age, and while that kind of thing is probably often an act of rebellion just because or a desire to be accepted by others, with her, that didn't seem to be the case. Her political leanings or understandings or whatever changed over the years, but it seems like she really put herself out there, joining a militia to fight in the Spanish Civil War and even fighting within to be allowed to participate because she had such poor training and eyesight. They probably had a point, but either way, she had heart.
It's easy to romanticize the lives of those in our history books, and to some extent, that's probably what I've done with her, but given the stories and her writings, I can't help but have a deep affinity for her. Part of me thinks she was fighting the wrong fight, and that may be true, but it kind of doesn't matter because the stories — exaggerated or not — combined with her writings are what influence those down the road.
I'm not that familiar with Camus — so this may not being saying much — and don't know where he said it, but he was quoted as calling her "the only great spirit of our time" and dedicated the later years of his life to bringing her work to light.
And I love this story from Simone de Beauvoir — who was mostly right here, as far as I'm concerned (cut-and-pasted from Reddit):
"My meeting with Simone Weil.
While preparing to enter the Normale — the training-college in Paris for professoriates - she was taking the same examinations as myself at the Sorbonne.
She intrigued me because of her great reputation for intelligence and her bizarre get-up; she would stroll round the courtyard of the Sorbonne attended by a group of Alain’s old pupils; she always carried in the one pocket of her dark-grey overall a copy of Libres Propos and in the other a copy of Humanite.
A great famine had broken out in China, and I was told that when she heard the news she had wept: these tears compelled my respect much more than her gifts as a philosopher. I envied her for having a heart that could beat right across the world.
I managed to get near her one day. I don’t know how the conversation got started; she declared in no uncertain tones that only one thing mattered in the world today: the Revolution which would feed all the starving people of the earth. I retorted, no less peremptorily, that the problem was not to make men happy, but to find the reason for their existence.
She looked me up and down: ‘It’s easy to see you’ve never gone hungry,’ she snapped. Our relationship did not go any further. I realized that she had classified me as ‘a high-minded little bourgeois’, and this annoyed me, just as I used to be annoyed whenever Mademoiselle Litt attributed certain tastes I had to the fact that I was only a child; I believed that I had freed myself from the bonds of my class: I didn’t want to be anyone else but myself. "
A thread for anti-heroes would be fun.
How about a billionaire businessman & entrepreneur, who selflessly walked away from a luxurious, widely celebrated, richly deserved semi-retirement, in order to lead his countrymen—if not in fact the entire world!—to greater freedom, peace and prosperity, at great personal cost; indeed, fearlessly risking his own life—to say nothing of his wealth & reputation!!—on multiple occasions?
Also, George Eastman & Milton Hershey.
And from my X pinned tweet: “ Imagine if @MickJagger had been barred from music from 9/27/68 - 5/3/72. That's what Muhammad Ali lost.”
A couple things about Feynman. Firstly, I saw a play about him called QED about 20-30 years ago. The production I saw starred Alan Alda. I don't remember it that well, but I enjoyed it. I remember some of it as about a culture clash with his WASPY wife. It was pretty successful so maybe you'll have the chance to see a production.
The second is that I've seen a few anti-Feynman videos pop up on youtube. I only kind of perused one, but the 2 main things were that his status as a physicist is overblown in the public imagination and he was really more of a meme and a bit overrated as physicist. Also I guess he might have been a bit of a grabby Gus and an all around jerk.
How about a billionaire businessman & entrepreneur, who selflessly walked away from a luxurious, widely celebrated, richly deserved semi-retirement, in order to lead his countrymen-if not in fact the entire world!-to greater freedom, peace and prosperity, at great personal cost; indeed, fearlessly risking his own life-to say nothing of his wealth & reputation!!-on multiple occa
George Soros?
I try not to look at public figures as personal heroes, but if there's someone whose work I admire that fits the definition of "hero," it's Simone Weil. I may get a few things wrong — and leaving her writings and beliefs aside — according to what I've read, from a young age she showed an incredible amount of empathy for others. At five or six, she refused sugar because the Fren
Cool. I don't really know anything about her except her name and what you wrote. But I trust the recommendations of Screeching Weasel fans and will check her out more.
I'd also shy away from calling public figures my heroes. The ones I would pick would be too corny. However, I'm impressed by and a bit reverential towards boxers as well as elite musicians. I took some boxing classes, and the footwork routines alone made me want to kill myself. I can't imagine doing that while someone is punching you, right after you lost 15 pounds in 2 days. I've met some pro boxers. The former female number one, Layla McCarter, used to play a lot in Vegas (might still). I also played with heaveyweight gatekeeper Eric Molina. Both extremely nice and more exciting for me to meet than an actor or something. Eric's day job was working with special needs kids. He showed me a video of him wobbling Wilder. He was managed by Don King and said he was really happy with him. I asked Layla if she wanted to become a trainer and she said, "no, I'm a fighter. I want to keep fighting. I don't care if I wind up ******ed. (What mongoloid banned the R word?)" From what I understand, it's kind of common for boxers to be gentle people outside the ring, though there are obvious exceptions. Where does that fire and tenacity come from?
Musicians are kind of similar. While I never so much as sparred, I was/am a halfway decent guitar player. You see these people like Stevie Wonder, Yuja Wang or Pat Metheny and their God given talent is so far of the charts. Pat Metheny went to music school at Miami, which is a good program. He decided he didn't want to take classes anymore so they were like, "OK, if we just make you a teacher will you agree to stay?" and that's what happened. That story is funny to me because it sounds like something a terrible liar would improvise. "Oh yeah. I went to college but then they said I was so smart they just made me a professor." But it's true.
I kind of like how much of a hater he can be.
For Stevie's 5th album he negotiated total creative freedom, which he used to create complex, musical songs featuring a parade of fantastic musicians who were brought in over many sessions to methodically assemble the ingenious Songs In The Key of Life. He also negotiated an unusually performer-friendly financial deal for anybody, let alone a black musician. At the time he was 21.
However, I've seen both Pat and Yuja interviewed about their practice regimens and they are just insane. You think a guy like that could just walk onto a stage and go nuts, but he warms up for 3 hours before every show. Even without the natural gifts of these performers, I wonder how far I could have gone if I'd had their dedication.
However, for all I know Pat has the corpses of 40 hitch hikers buried in his back yard and Yuja beats her servants so I don't know that they are my heroes. Most of the time I think there are some underlying moral failings that drive people to these levels of... being driven. I don't admire people who spend 100 hours a week on business or coaching football. But for some reason I view music differently.
The second is that I've seen a few anti-Feynman videos pop up on youtube. I only kind of perused one, but the 2 main things were that his status as a physicist is overblown in the public imagination and he was really more of a meme and a bit overrated as physicist. Also I guess he might have been a bit of a grabby Gus and an all around jerk.
If Gilda Radner did a satire of a youtube video on SNL, she could never have topped this thing.
Colin Jost, because he married Scarlett Johansson.
If Gilda Radner did a satire of a youtube video on SNL, she could never have topped this thing.
9 years later.... I wound up watching most of the video. She did a good job of amateur history. RF never wrote a book. His autobios were written by a guy who was 20 years old and listening entranced as Feynman was spinning all of these stories in which he was invariably the hero. But nobody else ever witnessed them, which is suspicious because he was a little famous and tremendously famous in his own circles. But whenever he, for example, intimidated a bunch of big tough guys in a bar, nobody who knew him was around.
It's an interesting case in modern mythmaking. Some of the stories were so ridiculous it is strange that they were printed. For example, there is a video in the video of his daughter claiming he could speak gibberish to foreigners and convince them he spoke their language fluently, but in another dialect. It seems like millions of people, probably smarter than average, have believed this, without ever stopping for 8 seconds to think, "wait, could a Japanese person who spoke no English speak gibberish to me and convince me he spoke English, but learned it in the UK?"
Murray Gell-Mann, another Nobel winner who worked with Feynman said, "He surrounded himself with a cloud of myth, and he spent a great deal of time and energy generating anecdotes about himself.”
She points out a lot of good things about him too. Including that it's probably good that some of these stories never happened, like leaving a waitress a dime tip in an upside down glass of water. He was a devoted father, did a lot of great work. She liked his challenger stuff.
Anyway, I've watched more and it's a very good channel about science, history of science, science and pop culture, etc.
I liked this video on crackpots, and the follow up on real physicists who are also crackpots (maybe).
Another person who came to mind is Minor Threat/Fugazi singer Ian Mackaye. Someone who really stood by his principles, even when he was offered millions of dollars and huge fame. Some of the things I thought he was too stuck up about as a kid, I now agree with. It is kind of silly to make yourself a walking billboard for a band or some other business, for example. Of course, he also helped to define punk/hc and then redefine it. Like if someone had been a founding member of both Black Sabbath and Slayer.
Great story. I'm friends with a woman who dated a guy named Ian Mackaye (Maybe spelled differently) for several years. She'd never heard of the Fugazi guy and said it never came up.
