Just wondering which moral attributes people use to define heroism.

This rather lengthy article got me pondering the question.http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/06/06/3519389.htm Susan Neiman makes use of two different concepts to explore heroism - one she bases on the Achilles - and one on Odysseus. I think it's worth reading the article in order to understand her orientation....are passion and valour the only pertinent definitives?

My answers Poirot are not from the Greek classics.
And while strongly felt, sadly not Representative of today.
The people who wrote the American constitution.
The miners of the Eureka Stockade.
Those who before the blood began flowing started the French revolution.
True followers of Christianity , who truly would harm no other.
Any one who asks why we let humans suffer so much for whole lifetimes and generations of them , without trying for better.

Poirot, thanks for the link. A very interesting read including most of the comments. Not sure who my heroes are, the closest I can come are those who seem to have had the courage to confront the contradictions of life. Writers who I've connected with and who have helped shape some of my own thinking.

I want to think about that some more.

R0bert

Most people when acting selflessly still have self-interest, to a greater or lesser extent, as motivation – lose that vestige and you have the basis for true heroism…

Mind you, if doing this kills you, you can't act heroically a second time.

Dear Poirot,

There are many people that I have admired.
People like - Fred Hollows, the volunteers
of St. Vinnies. and the extra-ordinary range
of work that they do. The Wiradjuri woman from
Cowra - Colleen Shirley Smith, known to everyone
as "Mum Shirl" - who worked with Father Ted Kennedy
in Redfern caring for dispossed urban Aborigines.
And the list goes on. There are many people -
who one reads about - and who we end up admiring -
be they teachers who've had
an impact on us, or authors, and so on.

To me real heroes are - people who go above and
beyond the call of duty - who give from their hearts -
because they want to make a difference.
And they are ones who have an effect on our lives.

However to me personally - I guess my real hero
I'd have to say (corny as it may sound)
is my mother. I am grateful for the peace I am starting to
find in my mother's presence. We can be open now I hope
about needing each other. She needs a daughter and I need a
mum. I can take pleasure in telling her of my affection,
I know this time she won't be counting.

My mother has become my biggest booster, I hers.
I marvel at her capability - with which she has organised
her life. Will you look at my mother, I think.
What a beautiful woman.
What a knockout!

Then of course there's my husband. I am grateful that we
managed to find each other. Every relationship
is a gift. There are some great gifts that I've been
given by each of the people I have encountered on my
journey through life. They've helped shape me into the
person I have become - and still hope to be. I've met some
amazing souls along life's journey thus far - and I've been
incredibly lucky. Everything has its story - and everything
is relative, and eveyone has obstacles to overcome. They
are our greatest teachers.

Well just quickly in the middle of a raging storm in south-west WA. Up at my daughters when the garage door decided to detach and flap around against the car in around 100 km winds.....and the man in my life rolled up just in time to wrangle it onto the back lawn while shouting at me to stay inside - "What a hero!". Us women would have been helpless to do anything if he hadn't have shown up when he did.

Will get a little more philosophical about heroism next post.

Dear Poirot,

For thousands of years, storytelling has been a
respected medium for sharing everything from the
commonplace happenings of daily life to the more
profound meanings of the universe.

Some stories, especially folk tales, which have long
been the staple diet of storytellers, abound in
universal truths and values. Evil is punished: good is
rewarded; hard work provides the basis for a meaningful
life. Our traditional tales reveal the deeds of heroes
and heroines - linking past and present, providing a
perspective on time, and highlighting our common
humanity. Above all in most traditional stories there is
hope - an optimism which cannot help but have a
positive impact.

I remember the Odyssey of Ulysses, the Arthurian legends,
the ballads of Robin Hood, even Ned Kelly struck a chord.
There were many that I loved.

I guess evry culture produces its heroes: Attila from
Hungary; Cuchulain and Finn from Ireland: Ogier the Dane;
Roland and St Joan from France; Sigurd from the Norse and
Icelandic sagas who becomes Siegfried in German stories.
Antar of Arabia; Rustem of Iran; Rama the Indian hero, and
Scarface of the Blackfoot Indians - to select only a few.

In ancient days tales of heroes were often sung by minstrels
and gathered by poets in the form of an epic. The Iliad and
Odyssey of Homer are merely two good examples. The first
recorded epic appears to be the legend of Gilgamesh
sung to the harp by Sumerians and recorded in clay some
three thousand years before Christ. It probes the mysteries
of life and whatever is beyond it.

Much like Star Trek tried to do in its series.
And the many other sci-fiction tales that followed.

Life is indeed interesting.
Thanks for this thread.

To me, the most impressive hero is an ordinary person who, finding themselves in an extraordinary situation, is able to perform outstandingly courageous acts for a cause or ideal that they believe in.

Nancy Wake springs immediately to mind.

Dear Pericles,

Another is - Sir Ernest Edward "Weary" Dunlop.

I had the privilege of meeting him a few years
ago. He showed coloured slides of drawings done
by an artist who recorded what life was like
in the prisoner camps. I was unable to sit
through the entire showing. It was too emotional.

Well for me its people such as David Attenborough and Jane Goodall.
They have an understanding of the natural world and our role in
it, which a whole lot of people don't have.

I admire both of them.

Dear Yabby,

Did you see 60 Minutes last Sunday on
Damian Aspinall's reunion with an
adult male gorilla named Kwibi?

Awesome.

There is another name that should be mentioned
in our lists of heroes:

Dr Catherine Hamlin.

Dr Hamlin has dedicated over 50 years to treating
obstetric fistula patients thereby restoring
health, hope, and dignity of thousands of
Africa's poorest women.

If you can define a hero as someone who “ inspire(s) you to be more, do more, be and do better” then my nominations are:

1) Steve Jobs : http://itpromate.com/2011/10/the-most-inspiring-speech-by-steve-jobs-at-stanford-in-2005-rip-steve-jobs/

“Born out of wedlock, put up for adoption at birth, dropped out of college, then changed the world. What’s your excuse?"

2) Mike Lazaridis :http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/mike-lazaridis----the-power-of-ideas/4053180#comments

Take a listen to his speech, & be inspired.

I really enjoyed this article, Poirot, and one can't help but admire John Brown and his stand against the monumental evil of transcontinental slavery. There's something to be said for Puritanism and taking an uncompromising stand on a moral issue remains a problem for us State-bred moderns. On what moral bedrock do we stand against anything?

Unsurprisingly, one of my heroes is Karl Marx, who sacrificed everything for his efforts to fight against the tyranny of capitalists over their miserable drudges, and for emancipation from ideology in general. He failed on both counts but the same dynamics and the crisis continue to mount.
A failing of Marx's thought though is it seems implicitly to deny the efficacy of the hero in favour of social movements and class uprisings. As history and Neiman show, there are very few real heroes among any cohort and the momentum within any struggle or human outrage tends to docile compliance and indifference--think of the holocaust, or global warming. And yet Brown is credited with nearly single handedly putting the kibosh on American slavery. So lone heroes can, with luck, have huge impacts, getting a lazy society to roll-over.

The true hero is rare; s/he's not an olympian or a soldier or any other minion of the State; s/he's an idealist and a dissenter.
"whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist".
Heroes thus need something to cleave to that's outside or beyond the social verities/evils we're generally blind or indifferent to.
Marx took no "moral" stand against capitalism, since conventional morality is ideological. He was fighting for a potential world based on species-being and equity. Marx's fight was for a materialist utopia, beyond ideology. Brown's fight was for an ideological/spiritual utopia, beyond materialism.
The trend of modern-capitalist-secularism is anti-heroic: individual-existential-hedonism. Modern heroes are merely eccentrics.

be your own hero

quote..""

What is a Hero?

keithbradley.hubpages.com

A hero by definition is an everyday person!*
who acts beyond their duty to help or ...

The hero can be defined by current events,
fictional heroes, and historical ...

Hero - definition of Hero

www.thefreedictionary.com/Hero

He·ro 2 (h r , hîr )
or He·ron (h r n ) First century a.d..

Alexandrian scientist who invented many water-driven
and steam-driven machines and devised a formula ...

What defines a Hero?

answers.yahoo.com › ... Humanities

A hero embodies the best (or what we like to think are)
the best qualities in ourselves. They're the self-sacrificers,

they're the friends at any cost, ...''

anyhow your my hero
but so too mr bell and percules..heck many of my hero's
are right here[olo]..not the topic..grayman too
for allowing us all..to express
our own heroic replies/opinions

anyhow finding it hard to get excited about anything
hero's...lol[we dont need another hero][we dont need to be shown the way home...[lalala..thunderdome][tina turner..mini nippleton karen carpenter..[mum]..

my hero's are not *he-rows
thus he sorrows[where is the love[?]..

no true hero survives a war
[hero's dont need to kill]..

i have no heros only sorrows[of things left undone]
or rights that should have been one..[by anyone],..not just any he/ro..

Squeers,

"....s/he's an idealist and a dissenter."

Agree....

We've had a very bad storm over here, so I've not been able to ponder this subject as I had intended....
Lots of people acting selflessly out there though.

Some good comments so far on a subject that I think is worth discussing. Internet access is dodgy so will hopefully get back to this thread in a while.

Hello there LEXI...

It's very interesting to note that amongst some of the people that you admire, even cite as heroes, is 'Mum Shirl' of Redfern.

I was stationed at Redfern in another life and well, Mum S. was certainly an 'interesting', larger than life lady for sure, and to many of those who resided there, she was most certainly a leader/heroine/liberator amongst other similar epithets.

But to a few others (unfortunately), she was aggressive/challenging and very much a provocateur, and at times, with a very interesting turn of phrase. I could add two or three other labels, but they may be inappropriate to use herein.

In hindsight, I suppose to the group she sought to identify with, she was indeed a heroine. I know of one young lady that I was dealing with over a period of time, without 'Shirl', she'd no doubt, be dead. Even now, she may well've passed away. I hope not.

There were several very serious incidents that occurred, on and at the railway station. Intel. at the time suggested certain things. Thus, my opinion very much hardened, irrevocably - still it was all a long time ago.

Who are my 'heroes' ? My deceased Mum and Dad, unquestionably. Others, well, certainly NONE who are engaged in any of the sports, and that's for sure.

Dear o sung wu,

You've certainly led an interesting life
by the sound of it.

As for Mum Shirl - from what I've read about
her - she didn't suffer fools gladly, and
quickly brought the mighty and righteous
down from their thrones, often with some
well-placed four-letter words. Before
joining Redfern Parish, Mum Shirl had been a
prison visitor for years and she had raised as
her own more that 60 children who came into
her care. She worked with the Redfern Parish to
establish the Aboriginal medical and legal services
that now operates next door to the church.

The Encylopedia of Aboriginal Australia says this about
her:

"work at Saint Vincent's evolved into an informal
welfare agency for a mixed clientele of ex-prisoners,
children in need, single parents, alcoholics, and
young probationers. With no money of her own, she
often ran her services on her own sickness benefits ...
By the 1990s Mum Shirl had assisted some 6,000 people."

Mum Shirl died in 1998. Father Ted Kennedy described
Mum Shirl at her funeral in 1998 in Saint Mary's
Basilica as - "The greates theologian I have ever
known." She had taught Kennedy how to fight for
justice.

Heroism may be a definitive act as a will to meaning and self-transcendence.

Viktor E. Frankl in "Man's Search For Meaning" elaborates:

"By declaring that man is responsible and must actualise the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic "the self-transcendence of human existence." It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself--be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualises himself. What is called self-actualisation is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more one would miss it. In other words, self-actualisation is possible only as a side effect of self-transcendence....."

'the man in my life rolled up just in time to wrangle it onto the back lawn while shouting at me to stay inside '

Sounds like a sexist abusive patriarch to me! Typical misogynist patronising and controlling behaviour. I bet he expected some kind of sexual or culinary reward for this unnecessary testosterone fuelled exhibition of physical strength. Some kind of neanderthal this unreconstructed male appears to be.

I bet you'd have much rather he put the kettle on and rang someone to help, or allowed you the dignity of doing it yourself, rather than parading around like some kind of macho baboon on heat.

Are there no limit to what the sexist abusive gender will do for gratification.

And what of the weak-willed enabler Poirot, partner in her own oppression. This kind of support for the patriarchal order has held women back throughout the ages!

As to heroes. I am totally against the idea on OH&S principals.

PS: I'm with Trev, there's a self-serving martyr behind every so called hero. They want fame, fortune, they want to be god, they want to be 'better' than me.

They're smug and they're rubbin my face in it!

You have to wonder what they're compensating for with these acts.

My hero is actually the people who trudge to work in the system every day, and go through hell in fluorescent lighting and audit the OH&S of our office chairs and those that pen all that incomprehensible government regulation that nobody else has the guts to even read let alone pen.

They're warriors, the select few who have not only adapted, but embraced the grand Bureaucracy, who sublimely navigate 250 pages of weasel words to come up with some kind of nonsensical conclusion and adapt it to real life!

My hero is Juliar Gillard for her single handed trashing of labor's credibility.

I wish her well in retaining the Labor leadership and ensuring Abbott's ascension with a whopping majority.

I put it to the court, that it is impossible to be a hero in these times. As instantly as a so called hero emerges, the pay off of establishing a marketable brand kicks into gear.

So much so that I intend to lose myself in the mountains, contract and book deal at the ready as soon as I can be bothered leaving the comfort of the recliner..

Let me take you on a Journey. A roller-coaster journey.

My Story.

My mountaineering hell.

My secret battle with depression.

From Brand-management to Grief porn, there are no heroes any more.

A hero to me would be someone who did something amazing, and fled the media and never accepted any bribe, and put up with their name being slandered in retaliation, and resisted any temptation to correct the record at all.

Anyone got an example?

My hero is Shadow Minister for managing to maintain the puerile epithet "Juliar" despite it being a immature indulgence.

Houellie,

If that's oppression, then please oppress me : )

The exact moment my daughter and I noticed what was causing the noise and saw the garage door whipping around in what turned out to well over 100 km winds - and before we had time to wail and lament - he appeared. I half expected a shaft of ethereal light and a halo to accompany him.

Brilliant!

(We're expecting the same again tonight, wind wise)

Dear Poirot,

Houllebecq must be added to the list
simply for being unique.

Dear Houllebecq,

You asked for a name -

After listening to her on "Q and A," last night -

Julia Gillard. And apart from her
- Jesus Christ.

"A hero to me would be someone who did something amazing, and fled the media and never accepted any bribe, and put up with their name being slandered in retaliation, and resisted any temptation to correct the record at all.

Anyone got an example?"

Yes...

But my apologies because I don't know her name, Houellebecq. You've usualy only referred to her as "my partner", although once as "my girlfriend" back on 11 April 2011.

I've just thought of another name:

Nelson Mandela.

Halo, halo...?

Did I understand correctly Poirot - you're expecting another ethereal light shafting tonight or only excessive wind?

with Poirot, excessive wind is always an issue. Juliar is a fitting and well recognised ephithet, as it accurately describes her political style and trustworthiness. Poirot has displayed more than enough childishness in her posts to lecture anyone.

My heroes are amongst those that changed the understanding of the world including Newton, Einstein, Gauss, Keynes and Friedman, amongst others. Inspirational persons include Mandela, Jobs, and Armstrong.

http://weather.unisys.com/upper_air/ua_shem_500p.gif

There you go Poirot, that is what nearly blew you away.
That's Antartica with Australia on the bottom left.

ok i found a hero last night
it was an ammish dude..[as seen on abc last night]
called 'trouble in ammish paradise'

http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2606271.htm

its blurb

Summary

The Amish arrived in America 300 years ago and settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, today home to around 30 000 hardworking Amish whose lives revolve around their church, families and land.

As well as a strictly plain dress code, they don’t use cars, electricity and eschew modern technology. This program follows two men who let us into their private world because although their Christian faith is strong they begin questioning the all-powerful bishops’ authority and rules.

They are ultimately excommunicated
for not following strict Amish law,

but that’s not the end of the story.
end quote...[after this a daughter gets lucemia]
he does his due duty looking up words meanings..hold true..to what his law is[not the creed that has despoiled..religions globally]

he was outcast for bible studdy
ie going to the source direct
instead of doing as his masters[betters/peers tell him
but he dont forsake them...nor at the end..they him

i shows how one can rssist
but not revile..accept with grace
and give without regret..[a true hero is in us all]

..

If you're making an analogy, SM, she is certainly no zephyr.

I prefer to think of Poirot as more of a kamikaze… as Henry Hitchings explains in The Secret Life of Words, "…meaning 'divine wind' - something beautiful, ethereal, enormous - and was originally used in Japanese of the wind that destroyed a fleet of invading Mongols in 1281."

I've settled on nominating a cohort of heroic people:

Children - about 300,000 of them in Australia - between about eight and 16 years of age who,, almost invisibly to the rest of society, have to be the carer of an addicted or mentally ill parent(s) and frequently of brothers and sisters as well.

I've only met several in my life - but each of them had a quiet maturity, competence and humility in what they were doing that I found extraordinarily humbling.

WmTrevor,

"...'divine wind' - something beautiful, ethereal, enormous...." Aren't words exquisite. Thanks for the metaphorical compliment. I like the Asian penchant to bestow basic qualities from the natural world - "Arousing/Thunder, Keeping Still/Mountain, etc.....

Child carers are worthy of our admiration. Their heroism is more of the stoic kind, it speaks also of humility and altruism. Lexi's examples of Fred Hollows and Catharine Hamlin are notable simply because these people possess skills that can make so much difference and they chose to take them to places (out of a comfort zone). I think it ties in with Houellie's reference to those 'plodders' who trudge through their live apathetically. I think it's more truly heroic to step outside the square to try and find a greater meaning, rather than stay in it and experience limited meaning. Fred and Catharine would have found that, in their efforts to help people who would ordinarily have been without such medical procedures.

Thank you, Yabby. It was a nasty blow, although it was over fairly rapidly. When I was nine I had the experience of spending a night in a small caravan in a cyclone up north (after my dad got stuck in the pub and couldn't get home) so it's not my worst experience : )

Us women would have been helpless to do anything
Poirot,
Are you trying to wind up the G.Greer brigade ? :-)

individual,

I'm quite a resilient and capable person, but in that situation I really don't know what I could have done except watch it unfold. I don't have a problem with accepting that men are stronger and more capable of manipulating the physical world. I also think he acted as any man worth his salt would have under the circumstances - a sort of automatic pilot. Women have their strengths and in many situations offer qualities that are indispensable - emotional endurance being one of them. I've always maintained that men and women are "complementary" to each other, and I have no problem with allowing men to "do their thing" and to attend to cuts and bruises with a bit of tenderness after the fact.

One of my heroes is U Thant. There are not too many people of whom we can say he helped save the world as we know it yet he is name is hardly ever recognised.

“U Thant has put the world deeply in his debt.”

I think of him every time I hear disparaging remarks about the organisation he headed.