From "Stop stealing dreams":
«Settling for the not-particularly uplifting dream of a boring, steady job isn’t helpful. Dreaming of being picked — picked to be on TV or picked to play on a team or picked to be lucky — isn’t helpful either. We waste our time and the time of our students when we set them up with pipe dreams that don’t empower them to adapt (or better yet, lead) when the world doesn’t work out as they hope.
The dreams we need are self-reliant dreams. We need dreams based not on what is but on what might be. We need students who can learn how to learn, who can discover how to push themselves and are generous enough and honest enough to engage with the outside world to make those dreams happen.»
This made me think that I know many hero stories based on "the chosen", like Matrix, like most superheros getting powers either from some entity chosing them for it, or from chance.
I have a hard time thinking of a superhero who becomes one just by working hard at acquiring and honing their skills: I can only think of Batman and Ironman, and they start off as super rich.
If I think of people who start from scratch as commoners and work hard to become exceptional, in the standard superhero narrative, I can only think of supervillains.
Scary.
It makes me feel culturally biased into thinking that a common person cannot be trusted to act responsibly, and that only the rich, the chosen and the aristocrats can.
As a bias it may serve the rich and the aristocrats, but I don't think it serves society as a whole.