Real Men

[onlinebiker]

I don't think it does matter. Even if you're ordered to, you have a choice. There is no moment before a heroic act where you don't have a choice to do something else. They didn't want to, but they didn't back down. Having that tenacity and moving forward is the heroic act. No one who's a hero wants to do what they're doing. You think guys want to jump on grenades to save their buddies or run out into the open to be killed by the enemy just so that they can get a signal to call for help, to save the rest of their unit? These men don't have to do any of that because of their jobs. They are trained to do it because of their jobs, but they still need the character and they are still heroes.

I won't argue the minutiae. I will agree with you regarding free choice. They'll always have a choice. I would disagree that they don't want to do what they're doing. In any sense you can't do anything without wanting to do it (whether instinctual or conscious). I posit that they do want to do these heroic things. This is exactly what pre-empts the need for a defining reason behind the actions. I think we completely agree that having a character that pushes ahead (tenacity) is a big part of what's heroic for each of us. Here again where we're disagreeing is that an action, by itself (without value or reason) can be heroic. I don't think being a cop(firefighter, soldier, etc.) is heroic, however many cops can do heroic things. This is mainly because it takes a certain character to be successful in some risky career lines. A cop afraid of guns won't be a cop too long. Thus there are less cops that are afraid of guns generally, because they would have been fired. I would posit that there are far more heroic firefighters (cops, soldiers, etc.) simply because of the qualities that make them successful in that line, hence and explanation of the societal basic increased respect for successful people in those positions.


@onlinebiker - ok I got it, you didn't really want a real conversation and your qualitative standards of real man are intrinsically low. A tree exists, thus it's a real man.  

There isn't a gradiation of real.

It is inherently either/or.

Only by misuse can the concept have "a low bar".

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Why all the hero talk? Isnt having a penis and being a decent human being enough, do I really have to run into a burning building to prove my manhood.

It's what happens when people try assigning qualitative values to a binary condition.