{"id":64,"date":"2014-06-15T15:12:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-15T15:12:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2017-01-18T17:05:52","modified_gmt":"2017-01-18T17:05:52","slug":"uses-and-abuses-of-heroes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/15\/uses-and-abuses-of-heroes.html","title":{"rendered":"Uses and abuses of “heroes”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the last thirteen years or so, since September 11, 2001 to be precise, the frequency of use of the word \u201chero\u201d has increased exponentially. (Ouch, listen to me, \u201cthe frequency of use has increased exponentially\u201d\u2026 I thought I\u2019d left my engineering self in the past\u2026) <\/o:p><\/div>\n
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Yes, those firefighters were heroes but after that, whenever someone does a good deed, he\u2019s called a hero. A guy climbs up a tree to bring down a cat that has been stuck there for two hours, and he\u2019s a hero. I\u2019m not making this up, the cat story was on the news a couple of years ago. A calf fell into a pit in Flagstaff, Arizona and the policeman that pulled it out was called a hero on the Flagstaff local news. The people that survived the Boston marathon bombing last year were also called heroes; the ones that got injured were greater heroes than the others \u2013the plain heroes. It seems to me that the word \u201chero\u201d has replaced less extravagant characterizations such as \u201cbrave\u201d or \u201ccourageous\u201d or \u201cadmirable\u201d. For some reason, the first person that comes to my mind when I hear this word is Manolis Glezos, who climbed up the Acropolis and tore down the swastika back in 1941, when the Nazis had entered Athens. That is a hero. To equate bringing down the Nazi flag from the Acropolis with bringing down a cat from a tree is just absurd. <\/o:p><\/div>\n

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Of course we don\u2019t have go to back to a war to look for heroes. There are many among us. I am a member of the Facebook group \u201cLiving Donors Online\u201d. Yesterday a member wrote:
\u201cHi all, just donated a kidney to my cousin 2 hours ago! I feel hopeful my gift can make the recipient better<\/i>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Another member replied:
\u201cYou are a true hero. I can\u2019t wait until I donate on July 15.. <\/sup>Hang in there, get well and keep us posted.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n

And then another member said:
\u201cWelcome to the real life super heroes club, bro. Speedy recovery.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n

Now these are heroes. Super heroes indeed.  Giving life, looking forward to taking out part of themselves to offer it to someone else. These are heroes. Let\u2019s use the word where it is appropriate and deserved. <\/o:p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last thirteen years or so, since September 11, 2001 to be precise, the frequency of use of the word \u201chero\u201d has increased exponentially. (Ouch, listen to me, \u201cthe frequency of use has increased exponentially\u201d\u2026 I thought I\u2019d left my engineering self in the past\u2026)    Yes, those firefighters were heroes but after that, … Continue reading “Uses and abuses of “heroes””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8iFRL-12","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126,"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}