Can someone be classified as a hero who saves the lifes of others, but the act also including saving his own life? Also, can you be a hero if it is your jobdescription? Firefighters/soldiers are expected to endanger their lifes while saving others. Airplane pilot Sullivan was doing both, he was saving his own life when he put the plane down the hudson river and as a pilot, it was his duty to take care of the passengers according to his best abilities. Now an average guy walking by a house on fire voluntarily running in and saving people, that is a bona fide hero.
Doing your duty can certainly be heroic. Being a soldier, or a fireman, or a pilot doesn't mean you're not human. You're still subject to the same fears and weaknesses as anyone else. So, when you rise to the occasion and risk your life or even simply keep your cool and perform your job in a way that saves lives; you're a hero. Afterall, it's just a label we attach to people who've acted in a way that saved lives. We want to encourage such actions. So we laud those who perform them, even if they're simply "doing their duty".
Anyone that helps others while risking their own lives are heros and that includes firemen, police and others.
Would it include a circus acrobat? The catcher is certainly risking his own life while cathing the flyer dude. The dictionary doesn't exactly agree with you: Hero: 1. a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities. 2. a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal 3. the principal male character in a story, play, film, etc. Now I agree with Mad, I think certain jobs bring an accepted and understood level of danger with it. As long as the worker acts below that certain accepted level, he is just doing his job. Once he does something extra and specially when voluntarily, then we can call him a hero.
Well the dictionary certainly isn't much help, is it. A hero is someone who has heroic qualities or performs heroic acts... and if you look up "heroic," guess what word is the essence of the definition?Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Still, the essence of the aggregate definitions of "hero" and "heroic" seem to be : Bold Extraordinary Risk taking Notice that heroes are not required to be amateurs. People whose professions require being bold, performing extraordinary feats and taking risks on a regular basis can be heroes just as easily as someone who only comes upon the opportunity to behave that way once in his life. Geeze, the Secret Service agent who steps in front of the President when people are shooting at him has got to be just as much a hero as the depressed out-of-work steelworker who dives into a freezing river to rescue a fallen baby, after making the perfectly rational decision that a happy baby is worth more than a miserable adult, and furthermore that some reward money might come to his family and help them through the hard times. As a former professional risk analyst and risk manager, I insist that one of the key criteria here must be probability. Sure the acrobat is risking his life, but we all risk our lives every time we get into an automobile. If I spend a few hours digging for the statistics, I'm certain I'll be telling you that an hour of performing on a trapeze has a lower probability of dying than an hour of driving a car. Road accidents are one of the top five causes of death everywhere in the world, even in Iraq, Cambodia and Darfur. So are we heroes for driving to work every day? Some people think we are. It's a difficult decision. Cops and soldiers risk their lives every day, but when one steps in front of a bullet instead of letting a civilian take it, wrestles a suicide bomber to the ground instead of hiding behind a barricade, or volunteers for an almost certainly fatal mission to protect the people who rely on him, that is heroism. There is no job on earth more dangerous than being President of the United States. One out of every ten is killed while in office. They make cops, soldiers and acrobats look like sissies. No other occupation is so risky, unless perhaps you count "suicide bomber" as an occupation. So is the President a hero? I know that a disgustingly large percentage of the earth's population think the suicide bomber is!
I was reading the diary of a pornjoint operator (peepshow and such), who has to clean up after the clients. His job is certainly bold, extraordinary and risk taking. So is it heroic to clean up sperm and urine??? President of Afghanistan comes to my mind. Also astronautes. You don't call the POTUS a hero just for winning the office. But I agree, probability and voluntarism should be part of the definition. The Secret Service agent is not a hero, that is part of his job, dangerous as it is...
I assumed everyone knew I meant "risk" of death or dismemberment.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Risk is an actuarial calculation. I don't think there have been enough presidents in Afghanistan to comprise a satisfactory statistical sample. Hmm. I don't believe that ten percent of the world's astronauts have been killed in the line of duty. Has anybody got the figures? As I said earlier, I think the concept of a "professional hero" is fair. I don't think risking your life every day to protect your community is less heroic than risking your life once to pull a child out of a burning car. On the contrary, if a person who does it once in his life is a hero, why is the person who does it every single day not also a hero? The fact that he's being paid doesn't change anything. One-time heroes are often given reward or gratitude money; the professional hero gets paid every day because he risks his life every day.
