Become Heroes

Become Heroes

Requirement to Become Heroes
A hero is someone who has very special talents such as the ability to help civilians by protecting them from villains. The Greeks revered their actions and immortalized them in stories. Heroes such as Hercules, Achilles, and Hector all had certain flaws and strengths. Even though they were demigods, they were mortal and were driven to complete heroic duties, usually through achievements or self-sacrifice, in order to be immortalized. This led us to view our current heroes as people who are willing to lay down their lives or brave dangers to protect what is important to them. Using this logic, the first responders of the 9/11 attacks fulfill the requirements of being a hero. By courageously laying down their lives to protect the few people that they could, firefighters and policemen on the scene deserve the medals that would guarantee their place in history. Depending on the circumstance, anyone has the ability to be a hero.
Although it seems simple to call the 9/11 responders heroes, recent debates have people arguing about whether they are truly heroes. In Nicolas Thompson’s “Hero Inflation,” he argues that although the firemen died trying to save people from the towers, this was simply part of their job and “to die while doing it isn't completely different from, say, the computer programmers who stayed in the Trade Center and perished while desperately trying to preserve the data backing people's financial portfolios” (Thompson, “Hero Inflation”). Thompson’s argument is reasonable but raises some questions as to how he got these stories. He falsely assumes that the computer programmers continued their work to protect people’s financial information. If they had stayed, they were more likely either trapped or accepted their fate and attempted to make contact with their loved ones. It is slightly unbelievable that anyone would resume computer work after such a catastrophe. And from his assumption, it seems that the computer...

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