Personality of the year 2015

In the Spanish fiction novel, Soldiers of Salamis, during his search for the details of an old incident from the times of the Spanish Civil War, the narrator tries to define what a hero is. He reached different definitions, according to all of them, and pretty much any other definition I ever heard or thought of, Khaled Al-Asaad, the 83-year-old Syrian archaeologist who first refused to flee the ancient city of Palmyra after it was lost to ISIS, then refused to reveal to ISIS militants the whereabouts of ancient artefacts that had been moved for safekeeping, and was tortured then beheaded publicly for that, is a true hero, and is the personality of the year 2015 for me.

In a world where people everywhere increasingly tend to sell their arses for a meager payrise or promotion, this man didn't find that even his life was big enough a prize for selling himself and what he believed in. He's dead anyway now; no award or accolade would do him any good, but it might make our world a little bit better by showing us all, particularly the younger ones among us who might still be able to change, that there might be something in life worth living and fighting for, and worth dying for.

You'd normally expect more media coverage; something to set an example to look up to, but it seems that there's a much bigger interest in headlines that sell and get web traffic than anything else, even from the highbrow media outlets, and the news about an 83 years old history professor hardly sells. Where a story takes place probably plays a part as well; an exact story happening somewhere like in France could've made a much bigger impact.

Personally, I find two particularly sad thoughts about this. The first is that even if his heroics got the recognition they deserve, it will make absolutely no difference whatsoever to him now that he ceases to exist and has no idea what happened later on. The second is whether his sacrifice was even worth it at all in today's increasingly idiotic world where a picture of a celebrity's bare ass breaks the Internet. It seems to me that his sacrifice in the grand scheme of things only helps Asian tourists take better selfies with authentic artefacts in the background. I honestly don't suppose Palmyra's history and culture play that big role in as many peoples' lives as we'd like to think, and in any case if somebody else knows where the artefacts are hidden, they will probably, under enough pressure and torture, give them away to be destroyed like the rest of the city or sell them at a high price, otherwise no one will be able to find them anytime soon. They'll most probably end up eventually in a museum somewhere shown to bored schoolboys and selfie-takers, glancing for a second at the plaques, completely unaware of the price paid for what's before their eyes.