Heroes — Superheroes, Everyday Heroes, Anti-heroes, Fake Heroes and Villains

Grey Swan Guild

7 min readJan 18, 2022

The Great, The Good, The Grey Zone, The Bad and The Ugly of Heroism & Villainry

News Wrap Edition #2c of Volume 2 - Making Sense of the Week That Was

Author: Sean Moffitt

There goes my hero
Watch him as he goes
There goes my hero
He’s ordinary.” Foo Fighters

Part of our six part series on Heroes: here is Part 1 — The Deep Dive and Part II - Top 20 Hero Song Anthems.

Here are some of the role models and examples from early 2022 of superheroes, everyday heroes, anti-heroes, fake heroes and villains.

The Great — Superheroes Fascinate Us and Are Among Us

1.Disney+ Leveraging Superheroes to $$$ and Fame — Marvel’s never endless stream of superheroes

In the last year, we have seen Marvel streaming series explode on Disney+ — much anticipated upcoming debuts of She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel and Secret Invasion and last year’s launches of WandaVision, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, Loki and Hawkeye. superhero sagas make for great TV — here are the top ranked fifteen ranging from 88–98% critical acclaim.
Next up — Moon Knight — starring Oscar Isaac, Ethan Hawke and May Calamawy — a hero with plenty of alter egos that deals with a sleeping disorder and struggles to tell the difference between real life and nightmares with the mantra “embraces the chaos” (Source: NME)

2. New Parents Develop Super Powers Within Two Months of After Having a Baby

According to a survey by One Poll, new parents develop powers well beyond their pre-parent abilities:
Empathy — 86% believe their child’s milestones felt more rewarding than their own
Protective Reflexes — almost three in five parents learn what “dad/mom reflexes” are within the first two months of parenthood.
Super Strength — 53% of all parents formed “super strength,” such as opening their kid’s powerful little hands full of something they shouldn’t have.
Role Modelling — 43% found that becoming a role model was the biggest way they had to adapt to becoming a parent

(Source: Talker)

3. Real-life “Lassie” New Hampshire Dog Saves Owners from Hypothermia and Traffic Crash with Amazing level of Commitment

Can animals be heroes? We say yes. Listen to the tale of Tinsley, a Shiloh shepherd leading police to the site of an off-road car accident. Double down, on a talking crow that likes schoolchildren. Dolphins, horses, pigeons, cats? Yep, all heroes. (Source: Good News Network)

The Good — Everyday Heroes Creating Impact

1.Helicopter Near Miss — The Fortuity of Downing a Failed Helicopter in an Urban Setting

2. Ever Wonder, Who Drives Those Packages Up to Your Front Door, and What Heroic and Charitable Feats They Might they be Capable Of? Wonder no more.

UPS — #ThankaUPS Hero.
An Uber hero.
A FedEx Hero Saves Home from Fire.
Taskrabbit’s Taskers.
Purolator Tackling Hunger.
US Postal Worker Marcus Merrell saves family and home.
Royal Mail stamp competition celebrating pandemic heroes.
Delivery workers used to be our recognized heroes, can they be again? (Source: Slate)

3. Robin Baucom, 59, A Grandmother and Another Fallen Everyday Hero, Springs to Action Preventing a Robbery

She may never get her spotlight in the news, of a massive Texas state funeral but this Cracker Barrel employee exhibits the best of us. She had a choice — leave a fellow employee to a robbery and assault, shut the door and be safe, or pull the employee inside and try to shut the door. She made the correct choice but unfortunately sacrificed her own life in a callous shooting. She leaves behind a husband, three children, and three grandchildren. (Source: Fox News)

Caleb Allen — Louisville UPS Everyday Hero https://about.ups.com/us/en/our-stories/people-led/super-upser-caleb-allen.html

The Grey Zone of Uncertainty — The Mixed Verdict of Anti-Heroes

1.We all have alternative identities — good, bad and indifferent — even our superheroes

Eight examples when, much like real life, comic book characters assumed different identities for various motives (Cinema Blend)

2. Cannes Film Festival Winner “A Hero” — Personifies The Messiness of People in Traditional, Theocratic Iran

When is a criminal not really a criminal, when is a hero not really a hero — and which side of this evokes more empathy. (Source: The Berkshire Edge)

3. The Complicated Tale of the Wold’s Leading Tennis Player — Novak Djokovic

Serbian hero, Australian outcast. Anti-vax poster-boy, anti-science scourge. World’s legendary tennis player, the player fans love to hate. He’s no classy Roger Federer or passionate, altruistic Rafael Nadal, but does that make him bad. Hmm, it’s complicated. (Source: The Conversation)

Novak Djokovic — A Complicated Virtuoso & Anti-Hero

The Bad — Fake Heroes Operating Under our Wire

1.How to Kill a God — The Myth of Captain Cook and the Toppling of Colonial Heroes and Statues

Captain Cook & Hawaii — From adventurer to leader to deity to curse to myth to defaced (The Guardian)

2. When a Superhero Movie Goes Off the Rails — Justice League: Poor Story, Poor Filming, Bad Behavior

Actors and their recollection of the defining DC group film experience — Justice League. Conversely, the better experiences of Guardians of the Galaxy, and the bromances of The Avengers. and the dating maze of Marvel characters.(Source: Yahoo)

3. It Takes a Particular Lack of Shame to Fake a Disability — The Problem & Faking Involved at the Paralympics

Most of Olympic cheating has been written about steroids and blood doping, here is another one that gets overlooked — manipulating disability classifications, the process that determines their level of disability and subsequent competitive eligibility. Its victims — the people that are actually disabled that cannot compete against unbeatable able-bodied rivals. (Source: National Post)

Faking Disability at the Five Rings — https://knowitinfo.com/paralympic-classification-controversy/

The Ugly — Villains, Monsters and Demons

1.Silicon Valley Fake it ’til you Make It, Hyper Confidence on the Stand — Self Aggrandisement at its peak, We Give You Elizabeth Holmes

She won’t be the first and he/she won’t be the last, but there is very little to like about Silicon Valley’s faux chutzpah. She finally had to admit five things at her trial, duplicity doesn’t even begin to describe her actions. A very clear choice of choosing fraud over failure. Valley culture innfected New York as well — evidence: WeWork. Silicon Valley Tech Visionaries celebrate crime, fatalism and bad behavior. (Source: Stuff New Zealand).

2. Uganda’s Machete Murders — Sociopaths, Greed, Macabre, Power and Threats All Meshed into One.

There is something very sickly about a spate of indiscriminate machete murders in Uganda against people aged 6 to 90. Her is some video of these panga cowards. The plot thickens as these episodes are now being used as political false flags. Usually evil at least has some quasi-sensible motive, this level of villainry apparently has little. (Source: Independent Uganda)

3. The Face of Pure Evil — Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, murderer of 77 people, up for Parole Hearing Again

Remorseless and unfortunately influential in other mass white supremist activity around the world. The killer’s 10th anniversary of his bombing in Oslo and opening fire on a left leaning youth camp, murdering predominantly teenagers has now received another parole hearing. Unfortunately not deserved of any of the press he has still been given and one could argue his three room cell flush with video games, a DVD player, a typewriter, books, newspapers and exercise equipment is way too good of a fate for a monster like this. If you think he’s sorry for any of his acts, he is neither smart or sympathetic by his Nazi salutes and sign wielding in court “Stop your genocide against our white nations” and “Nazi-Civil-War.” A true scourge on the world. (Source: The Washington Post)

Elizabeth Holmes — Not the Next Steve Jobs, But Close https://abcnews.go.com/Business/nightline-documentary-podcast-dropout-story-elizabeth-holmes-theranos/story?id=60365362

Grey Swan Guild — Join 50 Shades of Grey Leaders, Thinkers and Doers

Hopefully some of you will think about joining our collective that tries to make sense of thee world and the future. There may even be heroes among us.

We are a post-modern version of the Guild — this is what we like to do: