[ExI] Heroism without self-sacrifice

[PJ Manney]

On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 7:37 PM, Anne Corwin <sparkle_robot at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Max More <max at maxmore.com> wrote:
> Your mission--should you choose to accept it--is to reconceptualize
> the hero myth, removing the core element of self-sacrifice.
>
> I'm guessing the PhD thing is a joke, but I wrote the following in a blog
> entry a while back:
>
> "...in the real world, there is not so clear of a relationship between
> sacrifice and heroism as there is in story; in real life, you might very
> well be able to save both the preschooler and the old lady lying on the
> railroad tracks.
<snip>
> In books, there often seems to be a kind of prescience on the part of the
> heroes; they seem to "know" that their death, if it happens, will end up
> saving innocents. In reality, on the other hand, there is just as much
> chance that the would-be hero's "sacrifice" will lead to nothing more than
> one extra body for the cleanup crew."

I wish the PhD offer was real.  Then I could wave one 'round wit' da
rest a youse guys.

Anne -- Heroes are prescient of their sacrifice because it triggers an
emotional reaction in the reader -- empathy -- in advance of their
heroic act.  Gets you all warmed up, neurons firing in anticipation
for the more satisfying finale when he actually does the deed.  Also,
life imitates art.  The real world event might not have been occurred
in a story-worthy fashion, but the doer will remember it as such and
retell it so.

Lee -- the more you send of John C. Wright's thoughts outside his
novels, the more I think I didn't understand what I thought he wrote.
I think he's wrong in this case, but I'm not going to write a thesis
to prove he's got a chip on his shoulder.  It's a waste of time and
his own words are enough.  He's got to get out more.

What I think Max is really asking (and even if it's a joke, tell me if
you're not) is how do we reprogram the human brain to fight a million
years of evolutionary psychology, where sacrifice (altruism) was a
successful strategy which was then reflected in our storytelling.
Let's not forget it can still be a successful strategy in our world
today, as any story about a soldier in Iraq saving his mates from an
IED will demonstrate.  (In my mind, my father is retaliating on your
behalf by beating me about the head and neck with a rolled up copy of
his Objectivist newsletter in one hand and the doorstop of 'Atlas
Shrugged' in the other.  Lord knows Ayn had issues about sacrifice,
too...  That's why the book's so damn heavy!  This is a joke, BTW --
Dad never laid a hand on me.)

Most importantly, the hero should be reconceptualized through a
redefinition of 'self' and of 'sacrifice', not by the removal of
either, or you will suffer from a story about which the audience
couldn't give a tinker's damn, having neither an empathetic
protagonist, nor stakes to worry about.  We don't need to rewrite the
myths from whole cloth.  If we did, they wouldn't work as well.  We
merely need to rejig them to our purposes.

PJ