[lit-ideas] Re: Follow Up to Fly in the Fly-Bottle
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 00:14:49 -0800
On Feb 28, 2009, at 4:19 PM, John Wager wrote:
In my most polite sergeant voice, I asked him to please get down
before he got himself killed. He did, and no one was injured that
night.
Was he a hero?
Yes, I think he was. Heroes are out-of-step with reality, which is
defined as what we, the mean or median, define reality to be; they do
or say things which we might have done if we had more time to
reflect, or if we had their sense of timing. We don't. So, to mark
their difference, we call them heroes. This, of course, differs from
the case in which someone achieves something great. Here, the major
variable is reaction time.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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