It is no longer possible for a society to regard any living man or woman as a hero.

The statement argues that under the rigorous scrutiny of media, the society can’t view any living man or woman as a hero any longer. To some extent, I agree with this statement in that it reveals the voyeuristic nature of human and the profit-seeking nature of media. However, in a number of cases heroes are still celebrated by the public and thus I can’t completely agree with this statement.

People’s perception of heroes is contradictory. On one hand, they admire the heroic behaviors and laudable characters that heroes present. On the other hand, most people can’t help but become jealous of the attention and applauds heroes receive and wonder whether they have done something ignoble. Although the inappropriate urge to pry into other people’s lives is somewhat understandable and restrained in everyday life, the ill nature of common people inevitably drives the media to do the same to attract attention and increase their sales or hits since the unfortunate truth is that the chief objective of media is to maximize their profits for the shareholders instead of pursuing truth and enlightening the public. To confirm this argument, one need only take a glance at all the magazines and news websites that are rife with eye-catching titles and lurid scandals. What’s worse, the majority of the public who merely depend on media as their sources of information won’t have the judgement and objectivity to evaluate the reliability of what the media feeds them. As a result, the reputation of heroes or any celebrity can be easily destroyed.

However, the statement seems to imply that all heroes are celebrities that always draw the attention and inspection of the public and the media when in fact, ordinary people can be heroes as well, for example, the refugee who climbed up a building to save a kid from a conflagration in France. This kind of heroes, for better or worse, won’t stay in the spotlight for a long time since before long the media will be busy chasing after other celebrities’ scandals, yet the spark of humanity will leave a deep impression on the public and retain its power for a long time.

More importantly, even if heroes have done something indecent that is exposed by the media, as long as the indecency is venial or repairable and does not preponderate their feats, most people can still view them as heroes, though it may take them some time to come around. For example, George Washington, the founding father of the United States, practiced slavery for most of his life when slavery was considered normal and accepted without question. Therefore, to some degree, his failure to commit to full equality is understandable and moreover, he decided to free all the slaves in his will. Likewise, if we peruse the personal history of any acknowledged hero, we can always find some mistakes but they are not sufficient to invalidate the heroes’ achievements and discredit the heroes. After all, no one is perfect and people can relate more to an imperfect hero.

In conclusion, the sharp decline in admiration for heroes in today’s society arises from the voyeuristic nature of people and is exacerbated by the profit-seeking nature of media. Yet looking at the bright side of humanity, I hold the opinion that the majority of people can still be inspired by the heroic behaviors of nameless heroes and the achievements of imperfect heroes.