When did the last hero die?

[Stefu]

What about Nelson Mandela?

[rah]

Originally posted by MrFun
You have a twisted mind, rah.

I'll take that as a compliment.

[Az]

Originally posted by monolith94

Yes, what about him?

[Tripledoc]

A true hero will not only have to be couragous, brave, good, or even ethical. There would have to be something tragic to his mission. A foreboding sense of failure, yet a willingness to make that failure a magnifiscient one. Malcolm X and the Dalai Llama are perfectly good modern examples. A hero would have to move from one perception of reality to another, he must undergo a change, and a painful one. Therefore a hero must endure over time. That is the epic aspect. Time.

[SpencerH]

Its an interesting question, and one that I've pondered often, not from the point of view of when, but with regard to the effect that the absence of heros since the sixties has had on the decline in American moral values.

[Az]

I am sorry, Tripledoc, but that's a crock of ****. maybe some heroes do, but many others don't.

[David Floyd]

How about the guy who stood in front of the line of Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square? I think he qualifies.

[rah]

Agreed. Any parents that sacrifice for their children, or anybody that risks their lives to help others makes the grade in my book.

[Tripledoc]

I disagree totally. A hero is a literary invention. In the scandinavian language there is a differentiation between 'helt' (hero) and 'heltemodig' (hero-brave). So a person who made a spur of the moment sacrifice would not be considered a hero but rather 'hero-brave'. That is, brave like a hero, but not a hero as such. I think that the english language should do something to prevent this corruption and inflation of certain words.

[Japher]

The US told the whole world they didn't want any more heroes when the pulled the reins on Patton...

Heroes today are those who do their job, regardless of the consequinces, in order to sustain society.

[Tripledoc]

I agree. Patton was a hero in the original sense of the word. He might have been a terrible, arrogant person, dangerous even, and that is exactly the point. A hero is a danger to the progress of modern society. They bring tragedy to all concerned.

[Japher]

Patton could not survive in the real world, he needed war, and the US gave it to him. Rather the war gave itself to him.

Since, however, the US does not seem exhaunerate ppl like him rather they prosecute them, or the keep hush hush... The cold war created what I like to call a "plastic curtain" around the civilians, blurring what is war and what we perseive to be it. Thus, many of those great warriors who survive "crimes of war" or some other BS, generally are never seen, and therefore cannot become the classic hero in a sense. Instead we get fed ppl like that girl who was captured... no mention of those who rescued her; the true classic heroes.

[Tripledoc]

The soldiers who recued Jessica Lynch would perhaps fit that description. they were sent on a mission to rescue a captive. They believed in what they were doing. Then they find that they were merely used as tools in a publicity stunt. At least that is the perception. It would be interesting to find out what their feelings was about the whole affair. Then, again, the whole thing would get spun out of angle.

Another example is this senator from the U.S., I forget his name, who was a member of special forces during the Vietnam War. He was on a mission behind enemy lines which went terribly wrong and the unit he led unfortunately massacred a lot of innocents. He did what he did becasue he believed in his mission, but, as he has admitted himself, what he did was wrong. He has probably relived that incedent a million times since that. He went on a heroic mission, and it was heroic precisely because it would end in tragedy.

[GePap]

I agree with Tripledoc..there is a lot of counfounding words in the Engliosh language, of assuming the modern definition of heroes is the same as what it was when the word came into being. Ditto with honor, which was clsoely linked with Heroes.

[molly bloom]

Heroes die when their biographies are written.

Or when the tabloid press tells us more about them than we would ordinarily wish to know.

Nelson Mandela is to my mind an heroic individual- not simply for standing up to apartheid, but for championing the cause of a non-racist South Africa. And for not being consumed by hate when incarcerated. But I think more than a few Afrikaaners might not share that opinion.

One of the most moving things I saw was Albie Sachs after the fall of the apartheid regime- after a failed assassination attempt by the agents of South African secret services- demonstrating with his one remaining arm, what is the sound of one hand, clapping.

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/Sachs/sachs-con0.html