quote:By these signs shall a hero be known: an eye to see the truth, a heart to feel the truth, an arm to defend the truth. To that I would add: wisdom that strives to teach the truth, courage that dares speak the truth, love by which the truth shall live forever.
-- Patricia Kenneally Morrison
I stumbled across this quote looking for something else, and thought it was a telling one. I think I have the seeing and courage part down. It's the other parts I need to work on . . .
And then when I read these sorts of statements, or idealogies, or what have you, I also wonder where in the sweeping pronouncement is room for the quiet, daily acts of heroism that occur between the common, everyday folk. You know -- the ones that happen in the kitchen, on the playground, in the grocery store. And then I think perhaps I just don't understand "heroism" at all -- doing the right thing, putting your own needs/wants second-third-or even last, is just a part of loving, everyday life.
posted
Heroism is accomplishing an extraordinary task with a positive outcome for the sake of others. I'd say more, but its time to go home. Posts: 530 | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I just spent a week writing and re-writing a paper on heroism. More specifically, on whether the same heroism in Beowulf applies today. I figured it does indeed, because heroism is made of bravery and honour in all cultures. Anything else is what a culture brings to heroism. Sort of like a colouring book image: bravery and honour, id est, heroism, are the lines and pride, humility, et cetera are the colours we colour that image with.
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
A hero slays the dragon, not for the slaying, but to end the dragon.
A hero kisses the scraped knee of the child.
A hero says no when others say yes.
A hero never says I don't care.
A hero endures a job he despises for a family he loves.
On a side note: Hero's fall when we expect them to live each moment of their lives with the bravery and honesty the exhibited at their best, and villians are made inhuman when we expect them to live each moment with the darkness and depravity they exhibited at their worst.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
A hero is, to me, someone who cares more for the welfare and protection of the weak and defenseless, and cares for it so regularly that acting on that concern becomes so much a part of their everyday life that they routinely brave great dangers and terrible odds solely for the sake of others.
The dangers can be of many types, and the odds can be merely bad or outright hopeless, but the caring and the acting on that caring is the most important part.
Someone can perform some act of heroism and be a hero, but to be one throughout life requires the long-term committment.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I suspect that at times we are all heroes and at times we are all villains. We are heroic when we value others with respect, consideration, and love. This applies to the man who saves the drowning stanger as much as it applies to the man who takes off of work to catch his child's soccer game.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm not exactly sure I'd use the word hero to describe a man who takes off work to watch his kid's soccer game. I understand what you're trying to say but I'm not sure that's the best example for it
I would consider something heroic when the hero that stands up for his/her ideals actually has something to lose by doing it. It's about putting yourself on the line in order to protect something or someone you love, whether it's a person or just an ideal.
How do you all feel about it? Does anyone think an action is heroic if you have nothing to lose by doing it, if there's no risk?
Posts: 459 | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I disagree with this idea of 'everyday hero' that involves a man or a woman just doing something good that requires a mild sacrifice.
Why have a special word like 'heroic' if you're only going to use it for a slight emphasis on doing something nice?
No, 'heroic' is for something 'above and beyond', to use the cliched phrase. The sacrifice or the risk must be above and beyond what an ordinary decent person would be expected to brave to be heroic.
For instance: if a lifeguard in the prime of life, fully trained and experienced, jumps in to save someone who is flailing in the water, is that lifeguard heroic?
Maybe just a little, because there's always some risk to jumping into the water to save someone...but if the asthmatic inner-city kid who only swims at the public pool every so often (if then), and can barely do it, that kid is certainly being heroic...because that kid is risking his life to save a stranger, and the risk is very real.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote: I'm not exactly sure I'd use the word hero to describe a man who takes off work to watch his kid's soccer game. I understand what you're trying to say but I'm not sure that's the best example for it
I know what you're saying. I struggled over that example. I think I agree that there needs to be a risk or a sacrifice for something to be heroic. Going to a soccer game is a sacrifice of time. The man could be working or whatever, but instead is giving the child what he/she needs. I agree this isn't a great example, but the action could be a litte bit heroic.
quote: Why have a special word like 'heroic' if you're only going to use it for a slight emphasis on doing something nice?
I don't think it's just doing something nice. I think it has to involve a sacrifice or a risk. However, I don't see why this risk has to be on the extreme of your own life. If a child stands up to other kids who are picking on somebody, isn't that heroism? Even if there's no bodily threat to the child, there's an emotional risk. I think that there really aren't that many opportunities to do something as grand as saving somebody from drowning, but there are plenty of opportunities to be heroic every day.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Why? Because 'heroism' is a word denoting something extreme, something unusual. The little things you're describing happen all the time, even though they're good things.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
The main charactor in Gene Wolfe's recent series The Wizard Knight is a hero, because he's willing to put his life on the line for others.
Here's a quote from a Neil Gaiman interview of Wolfe.
quote:NG: So. It's a hundred years from now, and you're dead and I'm dead, and we're all pretty much forgotten, and a teenager is exploring a musty old book dump, and she finds a copy of The Knight and takes it out into the sunlight and sits under a tree and starts to read. Probably she has an apple or two to eat. Where do you hope The Knight and The Wizard will take her?
GW: To a country where honor, courage, and fidelity actually mean something. The whole knightly ideal came into being because the fighting was so close. Ordinary people saw who defended the castle and who hid in the wine cellar, who went for the enemy while his followers, well, actually followed instead of doing all the fighting for him. Communities were small; everybody knew how everybody else behaved. I want her to see what those qualities can mean to the person who has them and to those around him.
NG: That's really cool. And, for want of a better word, noble.
quote:Originally posted by Amanecer: ...I don't think it's just doing something nice. I think it has to involve a sacrifice or a risk. However, I don't see why this risk has to be on the extreme of your own life. If a child stands up to other kids who are picking on somebody, isn't that heroism? Even if there's no bodily threat to the child, there's an emotional risk. I think that there really aren't that many opportunities to do something as grand as saving somebody from drowning, but there are plenty of opportunities to be heroic every day.
I agree with Rakeesh on this. Hero's are exceptional and rare, and standing up to a bully is brave, not heroic. If it's an armed gang, then sure.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
What are you talking about? Everybody is exceptional! All drivers are above average! All good deeds are heroic!
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I do think you guys have a valid point. However when I think of who my own personal heroes are, I don't think of people that do something extremely special and rare. I think more of people that regularly show excellence in their own lives.
I'm happy to agree to disagree on this one. Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think a hero is someone who has done something extremely admirable - and therefore who you see as a hero will be determined by that which you admire most of all. Being a hero is not just about what you do, but more about how you and others admire you for what you do, or how they should admire you for what you do.
I'm inclined to think pretty much everyone is a hero, if viewed correctly - and I don't see that watering down the meaning of hero, but rather as recognizing the amazing things that even the most average-seeming achieve in the course of their lives. I don't really know anybody who is exceptional and admirable in every way, but I also know few if any people who are not exceptional and to be greatly admired in some signficant way. They will be heroes in the eyes of all those who find value in the particular way that they are exceptional.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Heroes are all trite, then, if heroism is at all subjective. And we all colour heroism differently from one culture to another throughout time and space. Therefore what makes a hero a hero must either be trite or it must stand outside of humanity.
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Maybe we're having a little trouble with vocabulary here.
Trite: 1. Lacking power to evoke interest through overuse or repetition; hackneyed. 2. )Archaic). Frayed or worn out by use.
So, clod, the thing you're complaining of-one culture's hero is another's villain-is not 'trite' at all. I can't imagine why you used it, except because it sounded clever and insulting.
If you examine the values that one culture says their hero evolves, you'll see that those values are much the same ones that another culture uses to define its values. And obviously someone like, say, Audie Murphy, is going to be a hero to Americans and probably not a hero to others.
quote:Originally posted by Amanecer: I do think you guys have a valid point. However when I think of who my own personal heroes are, I don't think of people that do something extremely special and rare. I think more of people that regularly show excellence in their own lives.
I'm happy to agree to disagree on this one.
Some would argue that regularly showing excellence is special and rare. Some, obviously, would not.
My definition of hero is so strongly coloured by the ancient definition that I find it hard to identify "heroes" in the modern world. I've always had a problem doing this, as well. Those silly grade-school papers asking who your hero was? Yeah, I figured those out - the teachers wanted to hear about grandparents, not the most recent football player to have a big game. Easy. Once I got to middle school, they stopped asking and I stopped considering it. By the most recent wave of firefighter-heroism, I was stuck firmly in the world of Achilles and Hector and rarely stuck my head out to see what was going on. I've always thought that while firefighters and the like are certainly brave, they also do their job. While their job puts them in extraordinary circumstances, so do many jobs. I don't quite see the difference.
So really, finally, and in conclusion, I believe in the Homeric heroes, and I believe the last heroes died in the generation after the Trojan War (namely Odysseus, Neoptolemus and Telemachus, certainly Nestor, and to some extent Menelaus).
I can't give a modern definition of heroism because I don't know if the ancient definition any longer applies. War trophies are certainly frowned upon these days...
Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:I can't give a modern definition of heroism because I don't know if the ancient definition any longer applies.
I maintain that heroism is bravery and honour, and so far every example given seems to be rooted in that. They're same things that made both Beowulf and Ghandi heroic.
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Yes, yes clod. you can string some five-dollar words together online. A truly epid accomplishment with a thesauraus and a dictionary seconds away.
Indeed, and I know my audience. Surely, I'm not the first five-dollar-word-stringer-togetherer you've ever read?
Posts: 351 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:I can't give a modern definition of heroism because I don't know if the ancient definition any longer applies.
I maintain that heroism is bravery and honour, and so far every example given seems to be rooted in that. They're same things that made both Beowulf and Ghandi heroic.
I would counter this with what I see modern people applying to their definition of "hero," namely the idea of being a good person - selfless, doing things for others and going above and beyond the ordinary.
Ancient heroes were most certainly not good people as we define "good" today. They fought to possess women, not to save them from the big, bad raper. They were the big, bad rapers. There was little concept of what we now call "basic human rights." The ancient heroes didn't fight because they thought they were right, they fought because they had been wronged. The extraordinary events that were done were almost always done for glory, not to help others.
Most modern definitions of "hero" include some requirement about being a good person, including a couple in this thread. I contend that this addition is just that - an addition onto the heroic ideals presented by the ancients (no, not those Ancients, you silly SG-1 fans). I also believe that with the shift, two and a half-ish thousand years ago, into a highly moralistic society (or group thereof), the definition of "hero" had to change - and I'm stuck on the old one.
I like Diomedes best, followed closely by Big Ajax and then Achilles (and no, this is NOT based on the movie. ).
Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:I would counter this with what I see modern people applying to their definition of "hero," namely the idea of being a good person - selfless, doing things for others and going above and beyond the ordinary.
Ancient heroes were most certainly not good people as we define "good" today.
I figure that that confirms my point. Sure, we define "good" differently from then. We define "bravery" and "honour" differently. However, for us, as for them, we see our heroes as brave and honourable, and consequently good. Being selfless takes an element of bravery and definitely honour in our society. Hence how Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. can be called heroes. They did brave and honourable things according to our culture, just like Beowulf and Welund did for their culture.
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I see a bigger difference in the definitions of "good." Good-moral does not in any way equate to good-capable, which I believe are the two essential notions of each definition. The former, thus, would have much more influence on a modern definition of "hero," and would apply significantly more to Gandhi than it would, say, Aeneas.
Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Angst]](graemlins/angst.gif)
).
