Hi Oblo, <our standards of courage are woefully low these days>
Too right! We have heroes who did things like dialled 111 [our equivalent of 911] or did some trivial thing when somebody was in trouble.
Which is not to say there are not plenty of courageous people around, it's just that the media love to use hyperbole and make news out of anything. Fortunately, great courage isn't needed all that often.
When trivial things are given the badge of "courage", and "hero", it demeans the truly courageous and heroic. We run out of words.
Similarly, when a couple of dead people is a catastrophe, cataclysm, disaster, etc. What word will we use if a haemorraghic virus wipes out half of humanity? Problematic? Annoying? Disruptive? AIDS might be trivial by comparison. Genocide in Jenin will be a joke. Even the Black Death of Europe etc would be minor in total numbers killed and maybe even in proportion - they largely lived rural lives so infection propagation would have been more difficult than nowadays, with 747s, movie theatres, megalopolis population concentrations, in 100 storey buildings, crowded subways, and traditions of kissing instead of bowing from a distance.
Mqurice |
