A couple hundred guys in coonskin caps and cowboy hats died at the Alamo, struggling to free (or steal, depending on your point of view) from Mexico the great someday-to-be-a-state of Texas.
Eight astronauts were atomized when the space shuttle Challenger blew up, blasted into oblivion in the vanguard of Humanity's march to the stars.
Oh, and some dude got hit by a car while crossing the street after shooting Justin Bieber (with a camera.)
One way to look at it is that all these folks are losers, because they're dead. But where would we be without Texas, the space shuttle and that picture of Justin Bieber (or maybe just his parked car, depending on which version of the story you reference.)
Admittedly, there are those who think we'd be better off without Texas (and Justin Bieber, too) and who cares about the space shuttle anymore, because all the ones that didn't blow up are in museums now, anyway, and when's the last time you went to a museum? But you can't deny that all of these people I've mentioned must have thought they were doing something important enough to risk their lives for. And that brings us to a really interesting philosophical question: When, in general, is it worth risking your life for something?
I think that you have to start by acknowledging that you're doomed already. You don't have to fear The Reaper, or so the song says, and it doesn't do you any good, anyway, because "you can't cheat Death." So eventually, you are going to shuffle off this mortal coil and who knows then what dreams may come?
Well, those people who come around to bang on your front door on Saturday and hand out the little pamphlets and comic books about going to Hell and salvation and things seem pretty sure. And so do some of the upscale "secular humanists" at my office, who think you just blink out like a light bulb when your switch gets flipped. And of course we've got to acknowledge the wild-eyed Sons of the Desert who checked out so spectacularly on 9/11. (Talk about counting your virgins before they're hatched!) But personally, I think they're all just whistling in the dark.
These days, we seem to want to call everyone who experiences something bad a "hero," whether they survive the experience or not. I prefer a more restrictive definition, like "one who is scared to death but knowingly runs toward danger anyway in an attempt to achieve a noble objective." Of course, not all heroics involve life and death, but the "hero" has got to be risking a serious downside of some kind, otherwise it's just compassion or kindness, not heroics. You're not a hero if you give five bucks to a bum, even if that five bucks is what saves him from starving. But maybe somebody who mortgages their house and uses the money to bet on a racehorse in the hopes of winning enough money to save the orphan's home from foreclosure is a hero, especially if they win the bet and really do pay the orphan's mortgage, but also even if they lose and have to beg for five bucks in order to keep from starving. Or maybe they take a really BIG chance and actually adopt an orphan and bring the kid into their home.
In any event, knowingly confronting the downside is a big component of hero-hood. I don't think there's much room to question whether the atomized astronauts were heroes. After all, they voluntarily climbed up and strapped themselves to a huge bomb, and listened over the intercom while somebody counted down to lift-off. And they did it so that eventually human beings would have someplace else to go, which is essential since they won't stop breeding like rabbits. So they meet both the bravery and the noble objective tests. The guys at the Alamo were given a chance to leave, after the 5000 Mexicans showed up, and they didn't do it, so they must have been brave. History will judge whether wresting Texas from Mexico was a noble objective or not. What with Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush, and the Waco and Luby's and Texas Tower massacres, I guess the jury's still out. As for the Justin Bieber dude, get real.
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