The best way to understand the character of a society is to examine the character of the men and women that the society chooses as its heroes or its role models.

A society is generally a combination of different cultures and distinct attitudes and a hero, by the way, is someone whom people respect, adore and try to copy. Even if the statement is here emphasizes the importance of a hero’s character to understand the society’s character, from my point of view, it is not certainly true.

First of all, a hero or a role model is the one that should have some qualities like being respectful, having high moral attitudes, behaving in a good manner towards all kind of people in a society, caring for all people in the society. A person should consider these features if one wants to understand the whole idiosyncrasies of a society only by studying the society’s heros or role models. However, nowadays it is difficult to find such a hero in societies since people become more selfish and only care about themselves.

Different cultures amalgamate and create a society which impedes to understand the whole society with only some little examples. For example, in Turkey, Ataturk who is the founder of the country seem as a hero by majority of the society. However, there are still ones that do not respect or embrace him and his ideologies like secularism or democracy. Thus, it becomes unmeaningful to try to understand Turkish people only by looking their national hero.

Another aspect why I abjure the mentioned idea is that choosing a role model for a society changes by the time. Generations have different moral attitudes, lifestyles and desires. For instance, in the past people gave more importance to moral issues, however, today people see to be a hero as equal to be popular. Young generations choose and follow their role models according to the wealth or popularity of the person. This situation is totally opposite of the older generations mostly and that makes impossible to consider a hero as a representative of aggregate society.

In conclusion, being able to understand the character of a society is more accurate and appropriate by examining diverse parts of a society, reading different sociological analyses and observing minorities from all parts of a society. Hence, it becomes more lucid to cover the idiosyncrasies of a mass of people.