individual,

A question without an answer. Who knows? There will always be good guys and bad guys. To my way of thinking, Xi Jinping is the new Hitler. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a Churchill around; Trump might be the closest if the Americans do the sensible thing next month.

Present times are very like the 1930s, and we seem to have too many appeasers on our side.

Ttbn,

Apart from his empty bluster, what makes you think Piss-and-Wind Trumpf won't be an appeaser to Putin, Xi Jin Ping, Erdogan and Kim Jong Un ?

Joe

Dear Foxy,

Many words have more than one meaning in ordinary language. Mathematics is more precise. Words used in mathematics have one and only one meaning. I started this thread discussing one meaning of the word, hero.

I stated the definition I was using: "We can use the word to define one who risks one’s life in battle or to rescue people from forest fire or floods."

If you want to use other definitions of the word, hero, that is fine. However, we are no longer discussing the word, hero, as defined at the beginning of the thread.

loudmouth2,
What i'm getting at is, would there now be more or fewer people in the World if WW2 were to have been avoided ?
Some 60 million lost their life but, with the forced progress that this brought on, many more are alive now than would have been without that forced progress, particularly in medicine !
So, which scenario would be better for the future of mankind. More people or fewer ?
Progress has given us more pollution in every way ! Let's hope future progress provides us with a humane alternative to war !

david f,

Thanks a lot!

Just when I'm getting a feel for Logic 101 you go and switch the course to Structuralism 101.

Who has most influenced your thinking: Foucault, Levi-Strauss, etc?

Dear David F.,

Thank you for clarifying the definition of hero that
you would like us to stick to. "One who risks one's
life in battle, or to rescue people from forest fire
or floods".

If a modern society goes to war, it's not just because the
leaders have opted for war, but because the people have
implicitly or explicitly done so also - or at least they
have not opted for peace. Ultimately the prospects for
peace depend on the collective action of ordinary people.

The Vietnam war came to an end largely as a result of the
anti-war movement where through collective action ordinary
people with few resources other than their own determination
had changed a national consensus for war to a national
consensus for peace. Which goes to show that once people
no longer take their world for granted, but instead
understand the social authorship of their lives and futures
they can become an irresistible force in history.

The same applies to rescuing people from forest fires or
floods. Heroes here would also be less necessary if
through collective action by people governments were
forced to tackle issues such as climate change, better
land management and look at long term solutions and plans,
the need to rescue people from forest fire or floods
would become less necessary.