[ExI] Heroism without self-sacrifice

[Stefano Vaj]

On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 7:58 PM, Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Saturday 08 March 2008, Stefano Vaj wrote:
> > - Essentially and originally a hero is simply an individual denoted
> > by a semi-divine status: in the Ancient Greece, an individual
> > typically endowed by his genetic (!) peculiarity, as the hybrid
> > offspring of a god and a human being, allowing and making him behave
> > in a "heroic", i.e., extraordinary, way (reversing the myth, heroics
> > of a given individual may make for a semi-divine status attributed
> > to, and recognised in, him by the relevant community). Self-sacrifice
>
> Then we are led to think that a hero is one who has achieved divinity?


No, heroes were definitely not gods. Rather, they were considered as
semi-divine, and of partial divine descent, out of what they did.

Yes, while this is far from acceptance-of-self-injury, it is still
> self-injury, no? You still injure yourself by continuing to live, yes?
> You continue to face the possibility of evolutionary failure, you have
> that taste of the infinite. But this 'injury' is only natural, and so
> we know that it is not, in fact, injury, but rather the way of life ...
> but we also know that we can change this so-called 'way', that we can
> recreate it to our liking.


Agreed.


> But do we
> not, to some extent, determine our own fate?


Absolutely. And, after a fashion, a hero (say, Achilles) determines his
fate. Of course, now we can think of and hope for a quantum  leap in our
fate-determining skills... :-)

>
> > - Even in the everyday concept of hero, heroics have more to do with
> > the idea of "putting oneself fully into play", "being the living
> > incarnation of a cause", or "consciously accepting the related
> > risks", than with personal self-sacrifice, which is at most a
> > possible, and certainly not deliberately and masochistically sought,
> > outcome of such a position.
>
> If we are to put ourselves into the realm of play, then why not do it to
> the best of our ability?
>

Absolutely.

Stefano Vaj
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