Does the hero die a hero, or does she survive?
In our worship of the mortal champion for good, is it imperative that the hero dies in the act, or do we need her to live?
What is this uniquely human construct of the hero? Why is it important for us to imagine the hero? Is the individual savior, or even a succession of hero individuals, the true constituent that will save us?
Or is it that a higher-level entity comprised of individual humans is the real savior, and that the individual only takes credit because that is the only way our evolved conscious is capable of telling the story? Does the fact that the onus of our past evolution was the individual cause us to only be able to think of heroes as individuals? Can we elevate our understanding of evolution and the narrative of the struggle to encompass the larger community comprised of individuals?
Rationally and evidently we know that the larger community - that which is larger than the individual tribe and consisting of more members than each individual can keep track of - is the entity effecting real and lasting change. The mark of the hero is self-sacrifice for the common good, but it is for the sake of, and brought about by, the community and the common good. Where we aim our admiration and how we tell the story is a product of our evolved way of thinking, but it is also a way of thinking that we have evolved a capacity for elevating, and we now have the resources and the knowledge to make this transition.
Hero has a meaning, and only needlessly do we need to change it. But perhaps we need another term to properly tell the tale of the hero-community?
The individual hero eventually dies, whether in the heroic act or not, but both the true originator and the benefactor - the community - survives.
Holger Danske rises up against the invading forces, but is personified not by a single individual but as a group.
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Hivestorm1 year ago in Pleiotropy
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The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site1 year ago in Catalogue of Organisms
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The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site1 year ago in Variety of Life
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Does mathematics carry human biases?3 years ago in PLEKTIX
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Daily routine3 years ago in Angry by Choice
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A New Placodont from the Late Triassic of China4 years ago in Chinleana
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Posted: July 22, 2018 at 03:03PM5 years ago in Field Notes
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Harnessing innate immunity to cure HIV7 years ago in Rule of 6ix
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WE MOVED!7 years ago in Games with Words
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post doc job opportunity on ribosome biochemistry!8 years ago in Protein Evolution and Other Musings
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Growing the kidney: re-blogged from Science Bitez8 years ago in The View from a Microbiologist
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Blogging Microbes- Communicating Microbiology to Netizens9 years ago in Memoirs of a Defective Brain
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The Lure of the Obscure? Guest Post by Frank Stahl11 years ago in Sex, Genes & Evolution
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Goodbye FoS, thanks for all the laughs12 years ago in Disease Prone
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in The Biology Files
Will the creationists accept this gambit?
Rejoice in the fact that unicorns (as predicted in the Bible) actually existed, but agreeing to the Earth being at least 29,000 years old?
Extinct 'Siberian unicorn' may have lived alongside humans, fossil suggests
Extinct 'Siberian unicorn' may have lived alongside humans, fossil suggests

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