Hero Inflation Response

Sometimes, when we think about heroes in our life, we do not think carefully about the meaning of what a hero is. A hero is a person who sacrifices their life for yours. However, the level of qualification for hero is very broad, where people can rank them easily or harshly. This is caused by inflation. People put the level of being a hero way too low these days, by inflating or decreasing the qualification of a hero.

The word “hero” is a huge issue. What Chris Hayes has stated seems quite reasonable. He stated, “… it seems to me that we marshal this world in a way that is problematic.” We do use the world “hero”, but how many times are we using it wrong? Rather, how many people actually know the real definition of a hero? The way we are using it now is pretty problematic, and even perhaps overused. “I feel… uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war.” Like Hayes, I don’t feel comfortable using the word. I just feel that the more I use it, the more overused it will be.

Now classify this. A child walked down the street. Then, a car, at the speed of around seventy kilometers per hour, started rushing towards the child. As the car was about to hit the child, a man jumped out and picked up the child, dodged the car before the car hit both of them. Is the man a hero? What makes him a hero? If you were the child, would you change your stance, and say that the man is your hero?

Because all of us have different standards, we tend to create different answers. Imagine yourself as the child. Your life has just been saved by a stranger. You should feel gratified, and therefore classify that stranger as a hero, because he just saved your life. He risked his life to dodge the car, and had the possibility of getting injured in the process.

How if you were the so called “hero”? Do you call yourself a hero? Was the process risky enough to identify yourself as a hero? Although “life savers” do not call themselves heroes, they did try their best to save lives by putting their lives on the line.

Another perspective that we should consider is bystanders. If you were a parent, would it make it different from a random person who walked by? Different people would argue it differently, but perhaps it is the amount of compassion that makes a difference. If you had a job as a police or firefighter, you could argue that the man was a hero. If you were a kid who just walked by, not knowing a lot about the world, you could have a different point of view. And it is the point of view of a person that makes the qualifications of a hero, which ends up inflating the term “Heroism”.