The Garden of the Blind

A comment was made to a recent post of mine about heroes. The commenter's point was that behavior that could be reasonably expected of a person isn’t really heroic. Heroism requires some greater action, beyond what any decent person would do in the same situation.

I think that the distinction between our views is somewhat semantic. I had assumed that heroism was more inclusive, while my reader chose a more exclusive definition. Both views have validity. I would think that actions that put one’s self at significant personal risk in order to help another person are heroic. This would include the woman who puts herself in front of a bullet to save a stranger, and it would also include firemen and soldiers who (through whatever motivation and after whatever training) choose a line of work where they will be exposed to possibly life-threatening danger.

The passengers who thwarted the hijackers on United flight 93 would be heroic by these standards. While, unlike the passengers on the other three planes hijacked that day, they knew that inaction would lead to their deaths, their actions still went beyond what many might have done in their shoes, and at personal physical cost. I think that their actions were heroic, even if they don’t fit so clearly under my new definition, or at all under the commented definition of heroism.

The comment about superheroes was especially interesting. Superheroes do represent a new Pantheon of demigods. I’m not sure that any of them can replace the omnipotent/omniscient/omnipresent Christian God, but they certainly are on par with Hercules, Perseus, and their ilk, as well as many of the lesser gods of mythology. I’m not sure if the declining character of superheroes reflects the decline in divine belief among people and the rise in a more humanistic individual spirituality. I do know that I enjoy the more tragic heroes that we have today.