Professor David Peimer
Roger Federer: What Makes a Hero Today?

Professor David Peimer - Roger Federer: What Makes a Hero Today?

- Hi, everybody, and hope everybody is well in these really tough dark times. So hope everyone’s well everywhere around the world. So we’re going to look today at one of the great Swiss, well, not only Swiss, but global champions, obviously in tennis, but in many other aspects as well, in sports and beyond that. And ask a key question, what actually makes for a hero today? And coming at it through, obviously, we’re looking at Switzerland over these few weeks, but coming at it through the question of what actually makes a hero in our times today compared to previous times. What’s similar, what’s different? And in choosing a sports person, I think we can find some fascinating insights as opposed to the more obvious conventional approaches to, you know, what makes a hero, in a way. Obviously, he’s a hero in sports, but is there something that goes way beyond in terms of Roger Federer? And I think some may find it a bit of a surprise choice, and I surprised myself almost because, you know, I would’ve probably gone for McEnroe because of all that passion and craziness, maybe even a bit of Bjorn Borg or, you know, there’s so many other tennis players that really strike, that stick out in one’s memory from matches. But there’s something about Federer. There’s something that it sort of, it’s not just like a meteor that shines and then is gone, you know, gleams for a brief moment and then is gone from memory, but it’s something that actually endures and deepens in a way.

And I’m going to be at the risk of getting over romantic, even a bit sentimental, but certainly over romantic and over sensationalist, and I’m happy for anybody to accuse me of that at the end, because when one talks about sports people, obviously, we don’t really know their lives. We only really know from what we read, from what we project into them, what we imagine about their lives, what we’d like to imagine about their lives, which may be totally different, you know, when they’re having breakfast in the morning or the coffees, you know, during the day or whatever, playing with their kids, anything could obviously be totally different. So I thought of, obviously, there’s Lionel Messi as the Argentinian football player. There’s Ronaldo from Portugal, Muhammad Ali, Sonny Liston, there are a whole host of global over the last century or since the war, certainly, and, you know, sporting personalities, sporting heroes. And because Switzerland, obviously looking at Federer, and why, for me, he does still strike that chord, and somehow it seems to get richer and deeper as time goes on in a bizarre way. And trying to figure that out. Looking at the question of, you know, what makes a hero today? I think we live in quite a, not only a dark time, that’s obvious, but an ever-increasing cynical time perhaps, where so many things are up for grabs and up for question.

What makes this guy something that stands out more than his two great competitors and rivals, you know, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic, and to a lesser degree, maybe Agassi, but those three, Nadal, Djokovic, and Federer, you know, those clashes go on and on and echo, whether even one just watched one Wimbledon final in a whole year of tennis, there’s something about this guys. I remember as a kid, I used to really feel it for McEnroe, but that waxes and wanes, but this guy somehow gets deeper and goes on. I’m going to start in a surprising place in talking about Federer, ‘cause I really want to try and come at it with a little bit of a non-conventional angle than the sort of predictable cliches about heroism. The Colosseum in Rome. Obviously, this is lit up, you know, at night so it looks much more romantic and evocative than, you know, the fading building it actually is, but it does give us a sense. And also to try and get a, try and imagine going back 2,000 years, what it might’ve been like. Obviously, for the emperor, it was bread and circus for, you know, for the masses of the people. Give them bread, give them circus, keep them happy, keep them in the army, and get on with conquering and ruling and getting in a more and more powerful and rich and whatever in Rome and in the provinces. But the Colosseum, something about it, and that word gladiator and gladiatorial contests and battles, not only, you know, the “Gladiator” movie, but that idea of gladiator somehow resonates so powerfully in the Western psyche, I think. And I want to mention one battle between two gladiators specifically that happened in AD 80 in front of the then-emperor, Titus, and we all know of Emperor Titus and Vespasian history and linked to Jewish history, of course.

So Priscus and Verus were two of the, in our times, they would be like Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, or Foreman and, George Foreman and Ali, or Federer and Nadal, whatever. They were the top of the tree in gladiatorial battles. Priscus and Verus. They’re the only two gladiators that we can find, when you read back in Roman history, that actually were written about. They were written about their lives before they became gladiators, then when they became, obviously, they were slaves, then when they were freed afterwards and what happened, et cetera. The only two in all the Roman writings of history that really, that stand out more than just a name mentioned. Why? Priscus and Verus. Their fight was one of the rarest fights that happened in the Colosseum. They fought and fought and fought for ages. We don’t know exactly how long, but you can imagine, it’s a physical battle. You’re going to get exhausted and collapse and up and down, and, you know, 50,000 Romans screaming for your death or for your life or whatever, but on and on. Of course, only one could win and the other would be put to death or killed, and Titus, the emperor, would decide. What happened at the end of this long vicious hard battle between these two gladiators? They both collapsed, exhausted. They could barely get up. They were alive, but exhausted. They couldn’t carry on. So, and the Roman crowd had been treated to a spectacle they’ve never seen before, 'cause usually, you know, the one should die or be killed and the emperor decides, or they’ll, you know, decide and that’s it. By the way, this thumb motion is a Hollywood invention. No one knows if it ever really happened or not, if the emperor, thumb up or thumb down. So, what happened? They collapse.

Half the crowd is baying for blood. One should be the winner and the other, they can’t carry on, they’re exhausted. One should be the winner, one shouldn’t. Titus has a staff and he is meant to hold up one staff to say, this is the winner and the other one is the loser. And he has to use that staff because there are 50,000 screaming Romans, you know, probably split 50/50. So what does Titus do? He takes his staff and he breaks it in half, and he holds both pieces of the staff up in his hands. And he looks at Priscus and Verus, and he says, “You are both free. You have done us both proud.” And the speech goes on, you can imagine. And he whips up the crowd and the 50,000 Romans go nuts and cheer and all the rest of it. Very, very happy. They got their money’s worth and they’re happy. Why should this story stand out from all the gladiatorial contest in ancient Rome? Why did Titus make such a decision in AD 90? And it’s in a poem by, it’s a very lesser-known Roman poet called Martial, the only detailed description of a gladiatorial fight that has survived to our present day. Why write a poem? Why were they so famous? These were like Olympic winners. These were like, like Oscars almost, you know, in sports because of that end decision.

Now, isn’t it extraordinary that that result should be the one that is so written about in poetry and literature in ancient Rome, and the story gets passed down for 2,000 years? I want to try and tease out some ideas that go way back to those times for our times. There’s something about the idea of justice, something about the idea of that makes the heroic, something of justice, and Titus is smart enough to realise, something about the idea of being pushed beyond the limit, physical limit of endurance of what is physically capable by two incredibly fit fighters. There’s something about they can’t go any further. They can’t even kill each other at the end. They have no desire, it’s all gone. There’s something about justice, there’s something about going way beyond any social or societal expectation. They’ve transcended something. The Roman crowd doesn’t already, they’re split what to do. Titus makes an inspired decision, I think, in the moment. And they equal justice and they become free men, no longer slaves. So there’s something in that that’s true, that captures our imagination. Something so heroic. They’ve tried the utmost, they’ve gone all the way. They cannot go, and justice is their reward. It speaks to our fantasy, our much maligned but hoped-for fantasies of the heroic character that in the end, there will be some justice, in the end, they will prevail, in the end, something better than what was before might actually happen. There might be something better in society. Maybe others can come and fight, and there can be a draw and they won’t be killed. Maybe they’ll look at how gladiator fights or sports are in it differently, but it shifts our perception of something we know so well, in this case, a battle between two athletes. It transcends, it goes further. And I’m waxing lyrical here, but intentionally, and it’s heroic without even necessarily intending it.

Priscus and Verus give us an example, going way back in history of something heroic with not having the slightest clue or intending at all. Ironic. It’s ironic step by step, because they don’t have a clue this will happen. So I think, and there’s something about Titus even that is heroic because he comes to that justice, that justice decision in a way and gives it, obviously, to the baying crowd. It’s a political manipulative move, obviously, but it’s also something in him. Okay, so I want to link that to what we’re going to talk about, Mr. Federer, and then I want to talk a bit about from Rome to ancient Greece, a couple of heroes, and then a couple of, you know, very modern examples and try and tease out for us some of the main ideas that may resonate in 2023 for us as to what might be heroic coming out of the world of sports and other worlds. I’m going to avoid the obvious example, which is, you know, some political leaders, Churchill, others, who are heroic to me. And because those are more obvious in a way, the political leaders, I’m going to even leave out, although I love military history, I’m going to leave out some of the military leaders. Can’t take on too much, and rather, focus on some others. Those are more obvious examples, I think. Okay, so Roger Federer.

This is the epic battle that he had in 2008, if I’m right, with Nadal, pardon me, at Wimbledon. One of the great epic battles between two gladiators of the tennis court in Wimbledon between these two. This picture here. Nadal, sorry, Federer, let’s have a look at him. 1981, he was ranked world number one for the first time for 310 weeks nonstop. Sorry, in total, that’s five and a half years. This guy was ranked number one, sorry, not at once, not consecutively, but he was ranked, in his sporting life, world number one for five and a half years at various times in his career. That’s extraordinary. Couple of other facts. Consecutively, day in and day out, he was number one for 4.2 years. That’s a remarkable achievement for a tennis player playing so much, injuries, everything. He won 103 singles titles, 20 majors, eight Wimbledon titles, five US Open. He was Wimbledon junior champion in 1998, and he started out as a ball boy in Switzerland. What is it? This guy’s, the achievement. It goes on and on, it becomes relentless. It goes endless. Was he just this cold, icy sort of Bjorn Borg-type character, emotions completely iced up or not? Was he emotion? What did he do? Can we glean something from his inner life? Something about his grace on the court. It made him so popular amongst tennis fans. When he started as a junior player, he’s honest about it. He talks about it in interviews. He lacked self-control. He’d be exploding all over the place.

He’d try and out McEnroe McEnroe as a kid. Then he’d try and shout and rant at himself and get furious, you know. He talks about it as a kid. He had to learn how to harness the emotions, how to shape them and guide them, not ice them up, as he said, not to become like Bjorn Borg, but what to do, how to harness, how to be the jockey riding the horse of emotion, and his mind being the jockey, if you like. It’s a phrase that some actors use, you know, in terms of their work. So his early life, obviously, he’s from Switzerland with a Swiss-German father, and some, I’m sure a lot of people know, but his mother was an Afrikaans lady from Kempton Park in South Africa. It’s his mother. And he has both Swiss and South African citizenship, speaks German, English, and French. Called up for compulsory military service in the Swiss Army, 2003, but discharged due to a, in inverted commas, chronic back problem. We’ll leave that how he got out of the Swiss army for another time. In 2011, in a poll done in South Africa, and people were asked who was the most trusted and respected person in the world? And South Africans said Mandela first and Federer second. I find that quite extraordinary. Now, of course, we don’t know how many exactly were in the poll, but it wasn’t just, you know, 10 or 20. It was a pretty big poll that was taken. Why? In South Africa? I mentioned these great classic battles between him and Nadal, Djokovic. He played Nadal 40 times. Two gladiators, 40 times. He played Djokovic 50 times. What extraordinary, go on and on, those three, you know?

But somehow, for me, Federer is the one who really, really stands out, here and in other aspects. This is the Australian Open. It’s a classic picture of him. I like it, the eyes, the focus, the intensity. I’m going to wax away, wax you a little bit lyrical, but you know, that focus, that intensity, that precision. As Brando, when he spoke about his acting, he said, “I always try to bring in a controlled fury.” Never just fury on its own, but a controlled fury. And I see that inside this guy’s eyes, this guy. This is not Bjorn Borg, that absolute iced-over feeling, which is brilliant and powerful, but something else there. Serena Williams called Federer the greatest, in her opinion. 2021, BBC, which I’m not going to go into in terms of how it’s covering, you know, things going on at the moment, that’s a whole separate debate, but they had a poll of, amongst thousands of sports fans, and Federer was picked as the greatest male tennis player of all time in a global BBC sports poll. Federer said, “I see tennis differently for me. It’s not just the number of Grand Slam titles that matters. I don’t just see the Grand Slam winner. I look at the aesthetics, what I give off the court, what I give on the court, what I give off on the court, the aesthetics, the grace.” And he goes on. It’s fascinating, he’s talking almost like a painter, like an artist or a musician, a writer. The aesthetics, the grace, the way of doing it, the way of making body movements, the shots and all that, is as important as winning.

For some, it’s just the, to win would be the end, but this is what I’m trying to say about something that’s a bit transcendent, go back to Priscus and Verus, the gladiators of Rome, to try and make something aesthetic, graceful. Something really captures our imagination, I think touches on the heroic for us in a contemporary way. I go back to Hemingway’s phrase, “Courage is grace under pressure.” I’m not saying Hemingway lived by that, at all, but there’s something in that phrase. For Schoenberg, courage was the act that exceeds confidence. Fascinating to think about these things. And courage is the word that Churchill chose as the most important quality in a leader, in life in a way. So it’s important, and in terms of looking at the heroic, that word obviously comes up. You know, what does it take to get on a tennis court, or any field of play, to really take the sport, live it completely and almost transcend it, consciously or not. And I think Federer was even semi-conscious, talks about aesthetics and grace and all that. He also, he set up the, sorry, he’s been voted by his peers. So these are, you know, the top five, 600 tennis players in the world as for the sportsmanship award for 13 times. 13 times by his peers, top tennis players globally. That says something as well. Voted by tennis players, by tennis fans, sorry, the ATP fans’ favourite. It’s fans’ favourite, globally.

And he wins that award for 19 years. 19 times. Why? I mean, Djokovic has won more titles by now. In philanthropy, there’s the Roger Federer Foundation, 2003. He set it up to help disadvantaged children and help him gain access to education and sport, in particular, through Southern Africa. He supported the South African Swiss charity, charities. He helped support or gave money after the Haiti earthquake in 2010, and a whole lot of other things in terms of philanthropy, which not many people know about. I’ve never heard him really brag or, you know, speak much about it. 2011, there’s a place called the Reputation Institute. Oh, the times we live in, you can think of anything. Reputation Institute. They did a study of the world’s most respected, admired, and trusted personalities. Mandela came out number one, 2011, and Federer, number two. Federer, a tennis player, the world’s most trusted, respected, and admired personality globally? And this is 12 years ago. He’s obviously Switzerland’s most recognisable personality. Pardon me. In 2016, the Swiss did a huge poll and of their most recognised personalities going back in history, Federer is voted number one. Number two, William Tell. Number three, Albert Einstein. They claimed, the Swiss claimed him for this poll, of course, you know, but I’m trying to show this is the collective contemporary imagination that this guy swims in for us. He exists in the contemporary imagination there with Einstein, with William Tell, with Mandela, with whoever. What everyone thinks of these people is a separate issue, but it’s in the imagination, the imaginary, that these characters exist as almost Greek mythical heroic figures, and there’s a reason in our times that these things happen, I think.

He, of course, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, was, then after came after was number four, the novel, the character from the novel Heidi came later. You know, these are all Swiss heroic characters, fiction or nonfiction. He was named the most marketable sports person in the world in 2016, up against serious competition, basketball, baseball, football, everything. The most marketable. In 2019, he was voted the most stylish man of the decade in “GQ,” ahead of LeBron James, ahead of David Beckham and many others. The most stylish guy by “GQ?” The world’s highest paid athlete, 2020, he topped Forbes list for the world’s highest paid athletes. This is 2020, career’s moving to an end, getting older. Such a range of athletes, such a range of personalities and global perceptions from the marketing angle to the stylish man. I mean, you know, all these different, coming from all different angles. Why Federer? Jimmy Connor said of him, “In an era of specialists, you’re either a clay court or a grass court specialist, or even a hard court specialist, or you’re just Roger Federer.” That’s Connors. McEnroe, “Federer’s forehand is the greatest shot I’ve ever seen or ever known in our sport. It’s deceptively effortless. His movement is deceptively effortless. His footwork is deceptively effortless.” That’s McEnroe talking. All these are the greats of the past talking about him. He’s averaged 90% of service games that he won. 90% time when he’s serving, he won. First service averaged about 200 kilometres an hour. Okay, those are some of the facts and figures. Let’s get down to the guy. He’s known for, obviously he’s got a cool demeanour, some kind of emotional control, et cetera, in contrast, as I mentioned, of his early career, he was much younger teenager. He also said about this about himself, “I don’t get anxiety during a match anymore.

I don’t need to throw my racket or scream anymore. The way I deal with it is I almost laugh to myself in the inside. When an opponent does it, screams or throws his racket, it’s not really a problem for me anymore. I laugh at myself and I laugh at the opponent, but inside don’t show it.” He’s aware of the demeanour before the shot, after the shot, in between the actual moments of the game itself. He’s aware of this total lived experience almost, everything of where he carries himself, how he carries himself all the time. Of course, it’s irresistible entertainment. It’s a relentlessness. It’s, you know, like those gladiators. I looked also to, in preparing for today, I looked at some sports writers from newspapers from all over, obviously English language, from Australia to America to England, elsewhere, and these are some of the phrases. “Federer is like a Bach cantata.” What? “A 2008 Wimbledon final against Nadal was possibly the finest tennis match ever.” “Federer is that rare thing, not just the best player in the world, but the most beautiful, the most pleasing to watch. His grace results in a triumphant ending.” I mean, it’s ridiculously over-the-top language, but there’s so many writers who use this sort of language about him. They go on. I’ve put together a whole compilation of different sports writers. “He has a balletic grace and accuracy of power. His shot selection is better than anyone I’ve ever seen. His competitive will. Federer is not just about winning, but he challenges the will to live at the sustained pitch all the time.” Look how they’re writing about this guy. You know, you can read about Muhammad Ali or Lionel Messi and some others or you know, you know, to try and get what the hero is as much what the audience wants to see as what the person themself actually is. In the end, he is human, you know, but it’s that projection, that ability to give off something, and then for audiences or the masses, to project huge things onto the gladiator. That’s where the charisma lies.

That’s where sporting and other charisma is such a powerful connection. It relies on the audience, whether the audience is 500, 100, or five, or 50, or 500,000. You know, it’s what we project as much as what we imagine we’re getting from the guy, and that says something very powerful about us. What do we need? What do we long to project onto individuals, you know, we don’t see in ourselves? Let’s never forget, there’s also, I think, an extraordinary ruthlessness in Federer. The way he sometimes would get through a match. Between 2004 and 2007, he won 11 Grand Slams. There’s a ruthlessness inside this guy that I don’t think is often seen, and I think you have to have that if you’re going to be the heroic, if you’re going to be a gladiator for our times, in a way. Going on with some of the other sports writers. “He suffocates opponents, especially when he moves like the wind.” “He suffocates opponents when he moves like the wind.” I mean, this is like, these are sports writers, you know, writing. And of course, he carried on until, you know, he was virtually 40, 41. When he first met Tiger Woods in 2006, and both were at the height of their powers, Federer said, and I’m quoting Federer, “I’ve never spoken with anybody else who was so familiar with the feeling I can be invincible.” What? This is like Achilles in Homer’s ancient epic of 2,500 years ago speaking. Invincible, are you nuts? I mean, you can have a heart attack, you can trip, you could fall, you can be, I mean, you know, he and Tiger Woods, they had this feeling about them each other. He shares this much later from the interview. So I think that underneath this is one of the toughest guys ever in sports, obviously in his sport, tennis, but in other sports as well.

The same with Joe Frazier, Sonny Lister, Muhammad Ali. You know, we can go on and on with the list of other sports players. Lionel Messi, Ronaldo. But they may not have so obviously apparent, but it’s subtly there. These are some more of the writers, and I really looked at a lot of the newspaper writers, sports writers, to glean some of these phrases. “Federer is greatness. It’s not only the numbers, but something more mystical. The balletic grace of his movement. Now he makes the outrageous appear effortless. He has a symphonic variety in his play. In an era of baseline grunters, he is a wizard at the net. He uses his racket like a wand and a weapon.” I think, are these writers, are they drunk when they write this? Are they on some kind of drugs? I mean, a bit crazy. So he goes on about how he would talk to himself, he’d play out as a kid as if he was McEnroe, getting angry and then getting disappointed. He’d play out all different of his heroes, you know, until he found his way of talking to himself to try and transcend not only, you know, live out the sport but transcend. He said, “I tried to create this aura of invincibility, of being so tough to beat.” That says something. “I’m so aware of the opponent. It’s as psychological as it is physical, that I’m invincible. Take me on, come on.” You know, to give that image off, to that projection off, it’s quite an achievement. It’s psychological. It’s not just, you know, how brilliant I am and I’m going to win the match. The coaches, his coaches would often tell him, he talks about it, you know, when he was younger, to quieten the emotion, ‘cause he was very emotional to start with. Bit like McEnroe. And I’m quoting him again, “I said to my coaches, I have to get my emotion out. I can’t just be ice. I can’t be Borg. I need the fire, the excitement, the passion. I need the rollercoaster ride.”

So inside this guy is an emotional fire and rollercoaster that’s burning. “If I’m all fire, I go nuts, so I have to have a way to shape my fire. Took me two years to figure that out, how to do it.” He’s very honest about it. He talks about, and when he meets his wife, Mirka, and she says, she talks about going to watch him play in a club tennis match in Switzerland. And she said, “Everybody says to me,” this is her, this is her speaking, “said to me, go and see this guy. He’s super talented. So I went to see Roger for the first time, and what I saw was this young guy throwing a racket around and shouting and screaming. And I looked at, and I thought, what’s wrong with this guy? Who is he, who did he is?” That’s how he first met his wife-to-be. And her parents had fled communism in the old Czechoslovakia. Federer says, “Mirka taught me how to work. I would see her do,” 'cause she was a tennis player as well, “I would see her do six-hour sessions and I think, I can’t do that, it’s boring. So I’d get kicked out of practise again and again for bad behaviour, but she taught me to stay the course.” So it goes on and on and on, this adoration, this praise, Sugar Ray Leonard, others, et cetera, you know, and there’s so much about him here. He was called Darth Federer at one point. That’s interesting. That’s a dark character, you know, not just this, there’s the seemingly cool stereotype of the Swiss demeanour. Okay, here’s some other pictures which we can see of the guy playing.

Here’s another one of him, you know, in Wimbledon playing as well. Okay, I want to go on to what makes a hero today. What for us could make a hero? And just going back briefly, first of all, to the ancient Greeks, 2,500 years ago, to Homer. That’s what we think might have been an image of Homer in the top there. And then on the right-hand side is the picture, a statue of the imagination of Achilles. Obviously, it’s not real, not really him. This is a very good translation of “The Iliad” by Emily Wilson. You know, so Homer wrote “The Iliad” and then he wrote “The Odyssey,” as I’m sure many people know. Now, these are the first two heroes that come down in Western culture, rarely. Achilles and Odysseus. And in those days, the word hero comes from the ancient Greek, and it literally means protector or defender. For the Greeks, it was a protector or a defender. And Achilles was admired for his bravery, his courage, and his physical achievement on the battle, you know. He was the greatest warrior in Greek mythology of, you know, battles and fights. Something about the ancient Greeks that Homer wrote about sets them apart from their peers in the way they’re today, Harry Potter, something about sets them apart. Spider-Man, Luke Skywalker, that gets set apart from their peers 'cause of something extraordinary they do, and yet, they’re probably very ordinary people to begin with. Something about justice, something extraordinary, something about pushing the envelope, achieving something beyond what should be normally capable. And this, for me, has nothing to do with the cult of celebrity and the cult of fame only. That’s a totally different discussion, I think, you know, the contemporary obsession with cult of celebrity. In the “Iliad of Achilles,” what’s fascinating is that Homer gives him rage. The most powerful emotion in Achilles is rage, you know, and he has so much rage inside him and anger that he has to let out, and that drives him on the battlefield. It’s fascinating. One wouldn’t imagine that, necessarily.

To become the most successful soldier in the Greek army, in the Trojan War. Odysseus, on the other hand, in “The Odyssey” which, you know, there’s “The Iliad” first, and then “The Odyssey,” and “The Odyssey,” of course, we all know, is about Odysseus fighting the Trojan battle. And he’s the one who comes up with a cunning idea of the wooden horse. And there’ll be, you know, like 30, 40 Greeks inside the wooden horse, give it as a present to the Trojans, they wheel it inside their fortress city, and at night, those 30, 40 commandos, you know, clamber out of the wooden horse and open the gates, and the whole Greek army comes in and Troy is destroyed. Classic art of deception in war and hoodwink. Whether it’s ever actually happened or not, we have no clue really, you know, but it’s a wonderful metaphor for the art of deception in war. And it’s Odysseus’ idea, after years of battling, it’s his idea to do this. So Odysseus is known as cunning, intelligent, wit in the broadest sense of the word. Achilles is physical prowess and heroism on the battlefield. He can win the battle for you, but Odysseus will lead you. He will outwit, he will outthink through cunning, you know, a very word which has been misunderstood in today’s times, but maybe trickery would be another word, but in ancient Greece, it was a very high virtue because that’s how you could outthink an opponent, even if you had a smaller group, a smaller army or platoon. Interestingly, that in Roman times, they didn’t look at this as those qualities so much as being heroic. For ancient Greeks, these are the two greatest heroes. But the Romans, it was much more about honour and courage, not necessarily just about cunning, trickery, you know, but honour, that was the great Roman virtue for Roman heroism.

So we get a whole different range of heroes in a way. An interesting hero from the ancient Greeks, the last one I’m going to mention today is Daedalus, or Daedalus, you know, how one might pronounce it. I don’t want to go into the detail of this Greek myth, but in essence, he’s in prison and he’s got to escape, and he uses his creative and scientific inventiveness to create wings made of feathers and wax. And of course, he’s the one who sends his son, Icarus, to fly high, but then he flies too close to the sun, the wax melts and he falls. But Daedalus himself escapes prison by making wings of feathers and wax to fly out. And he was the Greek God for invention, creativity, and a hero in that sense, what we might see as a scientist today, the inventor today, heroic in another way. And he’s become known, Daedalus, as a symbol of human ingenuity and creative invention. So we have warriors, we have prophets, we have poets, we have fighters in all of this. Another quality stands out from the ancient Greeks is how to stand up for one’s belief. I think that comes in for us today. People who really will actually stand up for their belief, not just as a political scheme or manipulative effort, but because they actually believe something.

Okay, we get contemporary references that moving right off through. You know, Mr. Shakespeare, looking at what is heroic in Shakespeare, and I think the hero in Shakespeare is the individual who has the tragic flaw, and yet, who earns the sympathy of the audience and yet is able to rise to the occasion or change despite the terrible mistakes they make. King Lear cannot see that Cordelia is the daughter that really loves him, and he falls for the flattery of Goneril and Regan, and he gives them his kingdom, and you know, he leaves the world and, you know, the property and the kingdom so much to them, but they’re manipulative, scheming narcissists. Cordelia is the one that loves him. And it takes, you know, five acts and an enormous amount of and a couple of hours on stage for King Lear to finally realise, God, what a mistake. It’s actually, Cordelia was the kid who really loved me as a father. But where he rises in our imagination as the audience, and for Shakespeare, I think, in Lear, and becomes a hero, is through the tragedy of making a terrible mistake full of flaws. Lear, he goes nuts, on the heath screaming with a fool and so on. But he’s able to recognise his tragic flaw. He’s able to be honest about it, recognise, and change, and that’s a fascinating change of the hero for us in our contemporary times, I think, that Shakespeare chooses this kind of archetype, you know, and we can get from him, we can get to Caesar, to, you know, to a whole lot of others, but I think King Lear stands out as one of the main examples from Mr. Shakespeare of the hero.

I’m going to go on here to Mr. Einstein. This is a very interesting book by Robyn Arianrhod. Forgive my pronunciation. “Einstein’s Heroes, Imagining the World through the Language of Mathematics.” Interesting. Did Einstein, he never really spoke about heroes himself, but again, we have to project imagine. Of course, he’s a hero for us, you know, which is kind of obvious in a way. But Einstein spoke about, Einstein spoke, sorry, I just have to get this out here. Something has just jumped on my files here. And Einstein spoke for himself about these three characters. You know, Isaac Newton on gravity, of course, Maxwell, and, sorry, I’m just jumping around here. Be one moment. And these are people he had in his study in Berlin. Image of Isaac Newton. Faraday, discovery of electromagnetism, electromagnetic induction in 1831. And of course, Maxwell. Faraday, Maxwell, electricity, electromagnetic induction, Maxwell and Newton. So Einstein, in some way, is recognising the scientific giants that he is building on, you know, that he always spoke about, you know, standing on the shoulders of giants in a way. So I think there’s something there that recognising the free, independent mind that is not scared to go out on its own path, which Einstein certainly, I think, recognised completely. It’s heroic in another way to be able to imagine, you know, whole other worlds. I share that with you. This here is a picture, you know, and don’t we love, and we can project whatever we want. There’s Churchill, you know, there’s Thatcher, there’s Alan Turing, you know, so many of the others. Einstein, Gandhi, Muhammad Ali, a whole mixture.

And what do we take from this? Do we just fall into the thing of, okay, these are heroic, these are great individuals, remarkable, or is there something about what I’ve been saying, the justice, something about going beyond what is physically or mentally possible? Something about standing up for what they believe, which may be beyond received conventional wisdom, of course. Something which involves the audience, us as much as them. Going way back to those two gladiators in ancient Rome, you know, that Titus is the one and the 50,000 Romans, they are projecting as much as they were being, you know, as much as they’re watching these gladiators. It’s a two-way dynamic. What do we project when we look at these characters? We look at these faces here and what do we want to imagine heroic for our times? And then of course, most importantly, and very importantly, the unsung heroes, the nurses, the doctors, the ordinary people of everyday life, people who will help us on the street push a wheelchair, help go shopping, help come and cook, ordinary in the jargon of today, unsung heroes, ordinary people of everyday life. Are they examples of the most heroic? And of course, the ultimate example, the unknown soldier in the statue on the left, the unknown soldier there. Neil Armstrong played into a cartoon for kids.

He’s an obvious, another one, but he almost goes back to, you know, an Odysseus, Achilles, and some of the others, you know, on that heroic level. But the ordinariness of the everyday person and the unknown soldier. For the first time, something like this, very ordinariness of Florence Nightingale started in such, you know, apparent seeming ordinary circumstances and then transcends to contribute. So much comes after that, but I believe it is some of those key ideas that I mentioned earlier, you know, and this becomes, for me, so so powerful and important. Of course, we get the hero, healthcare heroes. They’ve become cartoon characters, you know, since COVID especially. So the doctor, the nurse, et cetera. Of course they are absolutely heroes, working hours, helping, et cetera. This idea of helping, of going beyond the call of duty, you know, to really help somebody and not just to, in order to get payback in some way, emotional payback, you know, or to be famous, but because they believe it, you know, heroes of medicine. And then of course, one of my absolute personal favourites, Stephen Hawking. Up against the most extraordinary odds, he’s still determined and finds some way to use the only thing that is left to him, which is his intelligence and his mind. His body has been wrecked and destroyed, virtually, by the terrible disease. All he’s left with is one thing, but he’s still trying. And there’s something profoundly heroic for me in that kind of image for us today. Isn’t it so ironic? Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, so many of the contemporary comic heroes, which hark back more to the ancient Greek and ancient Rome for me, were created by Jewish people, Jewish people in America.

The outsider’s fantasy of what could be possible, what might be heroic. The classic outsider, the Jewish immigrant, or the son or daughter of immigrants, creating these iconic heroes, not only in American culture but in the whole of Western, and part of the, you know, Eastern Asian cultures as well. Where do these superheroes come from? They are outsiders. Batman, trying to help, trying to save the world. Superman, Spider-Man, you know. The evil and trying to do good, justice, help. Contemporary Achilles, contemporary Odysseus to a degree, contemporary gladiators but with a sense of social justice, or trying to help, going beyond themselves. Here, they’re risking a great deal to challenge the status quo, but they risk something beyond themselves, you know, to achieve. This is a picture taken, which I’ve always loved, and it’s coming to the top of Mount Everest, but you can’t see the person. Whoever the climber is, have no idea. Whoever the other two climbers, no idea. It’s just a picture of the individual trying to get to the top. No fame or glory necessarily attached, but just trying to get there. The endurance, the trying is enough is something profoundly heroic for me and not knowing them and not wanting to know them, and no celebrity fame being attached is something heroic there in it for me, because, you know, I don’t know who they are, and I’m not interested really in finding out to get to the top of Mount Everest. This is Stephen Hawking. “Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. However difficult life is, there’s always something you can succeed at. Just don’t give up.” It’s fascinating that he gives a twist at the end. However hard life is, there’s always something you can succeed at. He doesn’t say there’s always something you can do or there’s always something you can try or fight the good fight or anything, but you can succeed.

He can actually achieve a dream, whatever it is. That choice of that word succeed is what twists the whole thing for me from Stephen Hawking and the don’t give up, of course, is classic, and that goes back, not only Churchill, but many, many others. And I find there’s something profound in this, for me, of a contemporary hero who’s been devastated by disease or, it could be Hawking, it could be many, many others, devastated by whatever has been going on in their lives and in us, in people, whoever we are, not just the Federers, you know, who are born with such a gift, but to find something that we can really succeed at. For him, there was one thing. All that was left to him was his mind. Nothing else, literally. And I think, I find that not just a naive, romantic aphorism, but I find it something quite important that one can imbibe in terms of trying to get a sense of what is actually heroic as we come to the end of this very hard, dark year, 2023, something we can succeed at. Just don’t give up. Of course there’s no guarantee, but, you know, and Hawking, I think the way he puts it is, you know, becomes evocative and ultimately, inspiring. And yes, heroes do make people feel good. They make us feel better. They do inspire, they do give us hope, they make us feel a bit better ourselves and about humanity in these dark times. And I think it’s worth, Priscus and Verus, those two gladiators who battled each other almost to death, couldn’t go on any anymore, he gave the Romans, 50,000 screaming Romans just something to imagine for themselves for a brief moment, a few minutes in their lives, to the point that poems were written, they’re the only gladiators poems were written about, only gladiators that stories were written about, and that have come down 2,000 years later to us. Mr. Federer, I’m not saying that he’s part of all of these. Of course, he’s not Hawking or any of the others, but I think there are some elements that we can take from Federer that can feed something of these things. You know, I don’t want to repeat them now. Okay, so let me hold this here now, and Saturday, I’m going to go on with Mr. Carl Jung, part one, and then you’ll, for the week after, go into that quite a bit. Okay, so we can go onto questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Monica, “My husband’s idol.” Lots of player’s idol. That’s great, that’s really interesting. It’d be fascinating to know why he’s your husband’s idol. Hannah had a cousin who actually played against him at Queens. That’s fantastic.

Arlene, “I’m now retired, but I was a teacher trainer in the 90s. When I was young, heroes were political or scientific. Eleanor Roosevelt, Jonas Salk.” Salk is huge.

“When I question teachers, no students in the 90s, they mentioned sports figures. That surprised me.” Yes. It’s fascinating. You know, at university I often ask, you know, and often I get sports figures is the response from 19, 20-year-old students. I think we can underestimate the power, the impact that a sporting endeavour can have.

Ah, Shelly. “Colosseum was built with money the Romans took from the Jewish temple in Judea.” Absolutely. Absolutely, Shelly, and I would absolutely talk about that. Maybe at some point we’ll do ancient Rome, but the spot on. And of course, Titus is, you know, involved with, I mean his son, you know, Vespasian, or the two of them.

Sonya, “His skills are almost beyond human ability, his grace on the court poetic, but it’s his decency and quiet philanthropy we admire. He’s, in short, a mensch.” Beautifully put, Sonya. A mensch, thank you.

Michael, “The first hero comes from the Jews before the Greeks, Samson.” Exactly. I was also going to talk a little bit about Ben Zakkai and Bar Kokhba but that may be for another time. You know, the scholar and the warrior as heroic in the Jewish history.

Richard, “I had the great pleasure of being introduced to Federer at a corporate event after he’d finished a match and the last thing he wanted to do was speak to strangers. He was charming and friendly, made you feel really pleased to speak to you. I asked him what he could do when his tennis career ended. He told me he was already supporting charity in South Africa.” Yeah. That he gave that response. He could have given many others. And let’s be honest, there are many, many people who have made a fortune, whether through tennis or through basketball, football, whatever sport, but how many of them are philanthropists as well? How many of them want to give something to people anywhere? Not so many necessarily when you really think about it.

Dennis, “As an avid tennis fan, even more avid Federer fan, I totally agree. Your evaluation that he is the greatest, even though both his great rivals have won more Grand Slams. Nadal, 24.” Yeah. “And Novak 27.” Yeah. “Sometimes numbers do lie. Yeah, Roger’s the greatest.” Yeah, I don’t think it’s also, I agree with you. It’s not only the numbers accumulated, there’s something else if we’re looking at the notion of the heroic, absolutely, Dennis.

Q: Monica, “Maybe we should define hero, don’t you think? Federer is more of an idol.”

A: That’s interesting. “I dunno if I see him as a hero, as much as I admire him, but hero’s a little steep.” Okay, I told you I was going to wax and I’m happy to be guilty of waxing too much, Monica.

Rita, “Factory workers and all the invisible persons who make our life possible. The unsung heroes.” Absolutely. I mean, the person, you know, it was a German, I forget the name now, who first came up with the notion of the pension, the pension fund. You know, who came up with the idea of the pension fund? Who came up with the idea, you know, of working hours, you know, of holidays and you know, we can go on and on and on on the factory workers. Yes, and I think that notion, that idea of the unsung hero is a very contemporary post-First World War idea of the heroic.

Helen, “I agree with Dennis and others. I don’t think the greatest player is necessarily the one who’s won the most. How he played, what he brought to the game. The grace on the court. Gracious conduct. No histrionics.” I think there is something about grace that we require from heroes today. Something about a graciousness, a grace in adversity. Something about, you know, Hemingway’s phrase, you know, is grace under pressure.

Rita, “We’re able to attend lockdown because of workers who have built the computers.” Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, there’s a wonderful poem by Bertolt Brecht who was the great German poet who escaped the Nazis, got to America, and then after the war, went back to Germany, East Germany at the time. Brecht worked with Galileo and he worked with Kurt Weill. I’m sure many people know Kurt Weill wrote the music often and the lyrics for Threepenny Opera and others. And there’s a fantastic poem by Brecht. You know, everyone, I’m paraphrasing here, I don’t remember exact lines. You know, Alexander was great and this one and that one. But who cooked for Alexander, who washed the dishes for Alexander? Who washed his clothes, who made sure, you know, go on and on and on. You know, it’s a wonderful poem about the unsung hero that Brecht focuses on in contrast to the obvious heroic figures of history, or of fictional history.

Robyn, “Not all celebrities are heroes, not all heroes are celebrities.” Absolutely. The distinction. I don’t think the celebrity, I think the celebrity for me is entirely doing it for themselves. Whether it’s for money, for fame, for reputation, whatever. I don’t think they have a real interest in justice, in helping something about society, or pushing the boundary of something so beyond what has been achieved before, mentally or physically. I don’t think there’s anything in celebrities about achieving anything. To be a celebrity, that is the achievement, and that to me is not heroic. That’s achieving being a celebrity, but where’s the heroic in that? So it’s a great question, and it’d be fantastic to do some discussions on the idea of celebrity versus hero, but I think the fundamental idea is that they will not, they don’t, they’re in it entirely for themselves. For me, it’s, and I’m not trying to be, you know, an armchair psychoanalyst here, but there’s something profoundly narcissistic. It’s self-serving. There’s no element of helping anybody or doing it for any group or anyone else or anything. Achilles is very self-serving when you read “The Iliad.” But in the end, he knows he’s got to do it for the greater good of the Greek army. You know, and Homer makes that distinction when you read, you know, in “The Iliad.”

Q: Margaret, “Most examples acted with, through themselves in opportunity. How about the heroes who succeed in adversity? So many wonderful people.”

A: Yeah. “Heroes during the war, risking their lives, rescuers, pilots, ordinary people hid the Jews.” Absolutely. You know, those qualities which are way above and beyond. I agree. And that’s why I’m trying to mention the unsung hero at the end, coming to that in contemporary terms. And the unknown soldier, it’s the unknown hero. You know, the unsung, you know, that couple who hid two or three Jewish people during the war in the attic, as you’re saying. “This one who rescued somebody from the sea. A pilot who plucked somebody from the ocean.” Absolutely.

“Who managed to take out a wounded soldier off the battlefield.” Absolutely, and those are all what I would call maybe the unsung heroes, which speaks so powerfully to me. You know, and I would include Stephen Hawking, obviously, is so well known, but there’s something about that that links for me with the unsung hero.

Marilyn, thank you, very kind. “Oh, I’m a big tennis fan and missing him. I found him charming, respectful. I’ve seen him play many times in Montreal.” That’s great.

Q: Barbara, “I miss the grace and kindness in polite society. How do we get it back?”

A: Ah, if we only knew that. But I think there’s a, you know, when you take grace out, I think you lose some courage, and it becomes very, there’s something very self-serving when grace is lacking together with passion. I think it’s that self, again, going back to the idea of celebrity, it’s self-serving. It’s not to do with anything else beyond. Federer, at least, is interested in the aesthetics, the great, how he moves, the this, the that. Not just win, win, win, win, win. Obviously, that’s crucial, but there’s something beyond it. Maybe justice. It may be the aesthetics. It may be helping people, maybe the unsung hero, the nurse, the doctor, the person taking a wounded soldier off the battlefield. Those are the heroes, absolutely, you know. Those are the contemporary heroes for me. Not only Stephen Hawking.

Susan, “Thank you, stressed about the war.” Yeah, it’s something to think about maybe, you know, to take us, we have to take our minds off it for a while and remember some other aspects of being human.

Sarah, “As you were talking, we had a siren.” I’m so, so sorry to hear that, Sarah. And just want to say to everybody in Israel, where my sister and her children and grandchildren live and cousins live, just all thoughts, deepest thoughts, deepest prayers, deepest hopes, and to everybody else, deepest thoughts and hopes. Stay safe.

Thanks very much, everybody, and take care.