The problem with hero worship is the mimetic drive. Appreciating individuals is one thing. The love bestowed on a model person, serves to spread the model through desire of that love.
Everyone wants the love that the model receives. But this must take place within a cultural belief framework that prizes some objective ideal. The worship of a hero causes all to desire to be that hero, without bothering to become that hero. The trope in which the awkward office worker suddenly becomes a world-saving badass is a nice idea for office workers, but the truth of the matter is that it would take a long and hard series of efforts to become that badass, something the office worker is not likely to undertake. Hero movies have caught onto this a little bit, with their learning montages in which the awkward hero slowly becomes the elegant hero and etc.
But with everyone desiring the status of a hero, suddenly there are nothing but egotists everywhere, angling for advantage and undercutting each other. The path to hero, the process itself which generates the actual fruit is eclipsed.
