Comment on Do you think that Edward Snowden is a hero?
BilboBargains@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A hero is a concept and since people are much more than concepts, the question is invalid.
Comment on Do you think that Edward Snowden is a hero?
BilboBargains@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A hero is a concept and since people are much more than concepts, the question is invalid.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s a descriptor of a person or personality.
BilboBargains@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Okay but a doctor is a profession. You could have a heroic doctor but nobody’s full time job is ‘hero’. A hero is a term that’s useful in a novel but some people wanna cosplay the role and that eventually becomes a cult.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Anyone who is regularly engaged in heroics would be a full-time hero, in the same way that anyone engaged in full time medical practice would be a doctor. In Snowden’s case, he effectively quite his job at Booze-Allen and became an advocate for dismantling of the surveillance state effectively full-time. He stopped drawing a salary as an intelligence analyst and focused all his time on assembling, distributing, and propagandizing the nature of the PRISM program and the need to end it.
It’s a term that is used to describe an individual engaged in a heroic effort on a sustained basis. To your point, you could easily describe a Doctors Without Borders volunteer or a volunteer firefighter as a hero-as-full-time-job. Depending on your ideology and the individual’s circumstances, you could also describe a civil rights advocate or a military operative or a journalist as a hero.
It’s a weak descriptor, because just calling someone a “hero” doesn’t explain their heroic status. Whereas, calling someone a doctor pretty clearly illustrates how they’re (presumably) spending their time. But “Hero Journalist” definitely conjures an image that is different than “Paparazzi Journalist”.
BilboBargains@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
According to that definition Snowden doesn’t defecate, he goes for a heroic dump. I’m just saying the word gets abused and people are lots of things, including heroic and deplorable. Osama was a hero to many people.