The Modern Hero

a reply to: intrepid

But she's not really an anti-heroinne

a reply to: pfishy

Oh I don't know about that. I've never seen her make sammiches, yet I have seen her serve butt. Plus I like that outfit she wears while she should be serving sammiches to everyone. All the baddies get in the way of the food! I bet she makes a killer pastrami.

a reply to: LightSpeedDriver

If you care to order Wonder Woman to your kitchen to make you a sammich, be my guest. Let me know how that works out for you.

a reply to: zosimov

The owner of my work is one of the few people i've met i would call a hero. He rescued his entire family from death in Cambodia during the Khmer rouge and pol pot's genocides. Escaped into China and brought them into north america and started a successful business with nothing that hems been running for over 20 years.

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: network dude

From my experience this doesn't exist outside of the media setting, I've yet to see it in real life.

Never have I ever feared keeping a door open for someone for instance, be it male or female or other. In fact it's usually well received. A thank you makes my day though but I've never ever gone fishing for thank you's.

I see the alternative and I've never liked it, my conscious plays a bigger role in such things... When I was 12 I watched an old lady slip on ice and I froze... Longest 30 seconds of my life, she was helped but it wasn't by me.

I could've been better, been more kind. I guess we all can at times.

As long as you didn't break out in uncontrollable laughter, you did good. If nobody helped her, I bet you would have out of instinct if nothing else. But yes, I think we can all endeavor to do a tiny bit better.

a reply to: zosimov

Does The Hero even exist anymore?

Oh, they are everywhere.
Cop saves choking baby? Hero.
Rescue a dog? Hero.
Help a neighbor? Hero.
Stop and actually help at a traffic accident instead of standing there like a ghoul doing nothing but taking video so you can show it on Youtube? Hero.

The word is so overused as to be almost meaningless.

originally posted by: pfishy
a reply to: intrepid

But she's not really an anti-heroinne

Yeah. I was using her as a contrast.

a reply to: intrepid

Ah. I do like Diana as a character, but her Amazonian origin story serves to perpetuate stereotypes by explaining that she can only be such an heroic woman because of her supernatural-ish biology and her magically imbued weapons and armor.

a reply to: network dude

More of a panicky freeze...

It's why I fully understand when others do it within circumstance, I think it's down to those fight or flight instincts we all have, there's the 3rd option too and it's to freeze.

It's an interesting segment of human psychology, soldiers and first responders are often viewed as heroes and quite rightly so at the same time though they put a heck of a lot of training in to get over those natural responses, the things that could make you or I freeze to the spot they tend to do all too often...

It's why I love threads like this, gets the old noggin running. What is heroism in the modern day?

I guess a big defining part of a hero is to keep their faculties all in order whilst keeping a cool head. We understand a lot more these days, most heroes do claim they were just doing their job. There's a lot to consider really, isn't their?

Most of my Heroes/Heroine's are fictional, or long long dead. I guess that says a lot about today, or me maybe?

Certainly something to think about though!

I really do enjoy your threads zosimov, when it's so hard to come on ATS sometimes nowadays, Definitely my favourite thread maker, makes it worthwhile, so thank you!

originally posted by: valiant
Most of my Heroes/Heroine's are fictional, or long long dead. I guess that says a lot about today, or me maybe?

Certainly something to think about though!

I agree it's a subject worth talking about! While I don't think any one human could measure up to the ideal, I absolutely think each one of us embodies aspects of the ideal man, and as a whole, we are downright beautiful.

I really do enjoy your threads zosimov, when it's so hard to come on ATS sometimes nowadays, Definitely my favourite thread maker, makes it worthwhile, so thank you!

No, thank YOU and others on this thread and elsewhere who engage in such thought provoking discussion-- and I have to say that ATS inspires me in a very real way and has given me the confidence to do what I love. I just love this place in all of its flawed heroism lol.



Hope you have a great day today!

originally posted by: zosimov
While the demise of chivalry is casually bemoaned from time to time, few bother to mention that, along with knighly actions, the knights themselves have all but disappeared. Does The Hero even exist anymore? In the wake of the cynicism and horror of the 20th century, the apathy and self interest of the 21st, the notion and the appeal of the ideal man has all but been washed from our collective psyche. Our art, music, and literature reflects the abandonment of the ideal in favor of a blemished and faulty figure. And, after all, is this not the more realistic version of man: the mostly flawed hero who, despite and maybe because of his flaws, displays tremendous strength and beauty?

On the other hand, I would also posit that we have so degraded humanity in our psyche that we no longer strive to build cathedrals, compose symphonies, pen masterpieces; rather contenting ourselves with posting pictures on Snapchat, keeping abreast of and debating politics, measuring our success according to commodities accrued or debts paid. We have our modern day equivalent of the Greek Tragedy play itself out on our nightly news, but lacking in depth and catharsis. Greek tragedy imitated life, made it bigger and more beautiful in some ways, but also captured something of the awful beauty of life; our nightly programming is so horrific in that it trivializes real life tragedy through the screen, degrading it and emptying it of meaning. Then we further degrade the tragedy through thoughtless and casual discussion-- using other people’s deaths as fodder for our political stance.

Although our modern vision of man is, in a sense, absolutely a realistic vision of mankind, and although human frailty, error, and even the brutish nature of man is an indisputable aspect of our nature, without the Renaissance first, art like Francis Bacon’s, which depicts the everyday horror of the human condition,

Left: Study for a portrait, 1952
Tate, London
Center: Study after Veláquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953)
Right: Three Studies of George Dyer'(detail)| Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark

would be impossible-to-stomach. We need this

to fall back on.

I think it’s time to bring back the hero, to remind each of us that humanity has and continues to achieve excellence and beauty through actions, words, and deeds. What are your thoughts on the subject of the modern hero?

I am a god