But real heroes shouldn’t need the promise of a high status title to get the ball rolling.
Real heroes are the sorts of things we expect to find in escapist fantasy, but we live in the real world where promises of status really do get certain people off their duff and acting on important problems.
Real heroes are the sorts of things we expect to find in escapist fantasy, but we live in the real world where promises of status really do get certain people off their duff and acting on important problems.
Okay, but if you strip away all these noble qualities away from a hero, what meaning is there left for the term?
It seems to me that there is some semantic sleight of hand going on here.
On the one hand, you are deflating the term hero of its original meaning. On the other hand, you are still counting on people using it in its original sense, otherwise it wouldn’t be a high-status title.
As a result, you are deceiving both this so-called hero, as well as any of his potential followers.
Don’t you think using an alternate, more descriptive term would avoid this deception and, at the same time, do away with the implied helplessness of the rest of the participants?
Like, say, I don’t know… organizer? :-)
And once again, organizer is not a low status title. Except perhaps when put side by side with the hyperbolic term of hero. But you’ve just dismissed the latter into the realm of escapist fantasy. So why continue using it in the real world?
Real heroes are the sorts of things we expect to find in escapist fantasy, but we live in the real world where promises of status really do get certain people off their duff and acting on important problems.
Okay, but if you strip away all these noble qualities away from a hero, what meaning is there left for the term?
It seems to me that there is some semantic sleight of hand going on here.
On the one hand, you are deflating the term hero of its original meaning. On the other hand, you are still counting on people using it in its original sense, otherwise it wouldn’t be a high-status title.
As a result, you are deceiving both this so-called hero, as well as any of his potential followers.
Don’t you think using an alternate, more descriptive term would avoid this deception and, at the same time, do away with the implied helplessness of the rest of the participants?
Like, say, I don’t know… organizer? :-)
And once again, organizer is not a low status title. Except perhaps when put side by side with the hyperbolic term of hero. But you’ve just dismissed the latter into the realm of escapist fantasy. So why continue using it in the real world?