Is Symington a Hero?

In Stanislaw Lem's Futurological Congress, Symington can be seen as both a hero and a villain. Symington is the head of the pharmaceutical company that manufactures and secretly distributes a class of psychogenic drugs – called mascons – to the entire world. These drugs cause the user to hallucinate, blinding him or her to the barren wasteland that is the world in 2098. Instead, people believe they live in a utopia where money does not exist, everyone can take a pill to shape how they view the world around them, etc. We soon find out that the apocalypse is near and the mascons were used to conceal the end of the world to Earth’s population. Does this make Symington a hero? On the one hand, he is allowing mankind to enjoy the few years it has left by leaving them ignorant to the horror that awaits them. He and a few others are the only ones that know the truth, and therefore, the only ones who are burdened by it. He is a hero because he decides to shield the world from knowledge that will only cause chaos and pain. On the other hand, he does not give mankind the right to choose whether they want to know the truth or not. In this way, he strips every man woman and child’s free will from him or her. Free will is an essential characteristic of humanity, one that makes every life special. Symington is not a hero because he strips this inherent human right from each person living in the world.