Every mistake (in every sense of the word)
is the result of a degeneration of instinct, a disintegration of the will:
one could almost equate what is bad with whatever is a mistake.

All that is good is instinctive — and hence easy, necessary, uninhibited.
Effort is a failing:

the god is typically different from the hero.
(In my language: light feet are the first attribute of divinity.)

Twilight of the Idols, by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale, The Four Great Errors, aphorism 2

I continue to view the late night newscast on ABC channel 7, no matter that evening by evening there is a familiar pattern. The weather forecast is a predictable feature. The graphic dynamically shows the wind direction, timing the arrival of rain, and especially of snow, etc.. The weather is mildly interesting, especially when explained by the attractive female meteorologist.

Then follow reports of daily havoc of gun-play in Chicago. Community members gather to the camera, pleading for an end to the violence, sometimes invoking God’s help, or to demand the police do more. One or more such stories is a stock segment of the evening news.

Finally a story to conclude the newscast is the “Chicago Proud” piece highlighting an individual with a commendable accomplishment. Maybe a student of color has been awarded a full-ride scholarship to an Ivy League university…

I watch this show night by night because the format of this network newscast reveals our condition as a republic. We are severely riven with social inequity, beset with violence, and many by no stretch of the imagination, receive their due. “Happy talk news” with state of the art graphics, smiling readers from teleprompters serves as mute disclosure of our collective state-of-being. The format speaks for itself.

One thing in particular has become an irritant. I feel agitation upon the too frequent mention of “heroes.” Any reference to police or fire department responders to emergencies obliges the use of the term “heroes.” A hero is one who exerts extraordinary effort in dire circumstances to make a life or death difference for someone else. A hero goes “all in” without calculating the odds for success. Heroes are rare, very rare.

The term is used so often I believe we are overrun with heroes.

For the last three Channel 7 newscasts in a succession, the retirement of Dax, a shepherd police dog has been a featured story. (Perhaps Dax will be covered again tonight!) Dax is always labeled a “hero.”

Nietzsche writes that effort, the lauding of effort is a sign of diminished capabilities. Effort is juxtaposed with reserve to simply act according to instinct, without effort, appropriately, elegantly, even as an artist works by inspiration, a dance of intuition melding body and external elements to an unanticipated result.

It’s just too many. I mean this stampede, this inflation of heroism, that’s characteristic of these times.

Nietzsche writes, the synchronicity of dance is divine-like.

Where are our dancers, those with light feet?

There’s always time for music.  This woman dances with her Gibson guitar. I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll by Joan Jett.