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Mom and dad were heroes

I was born in 1934 during the Great Depression. Dad drove a city bus in Amarillo Texas. My family moved to a very small town in Oklahoma before my first birthday; I had four siblings at the time we moved from Texas to Oklahoma to manage a small café and hotel that was then being managed by my uncle who wished to return to farming.

During the next 15 years my family managed that café and hotel. The building and the business was owned by an absentee landlord, Mr. Ruttzel. The operation was a 24/7 job that took the total energies of all members of the family as each of us became old enough to work.

This operation allowed my parents to raise a large family in reasonably comfortable conditions throughout the depression and war years of World War II.

What is the meaning of ‘hero’? I have taken one definition from the dictionary and have modified it to represent my comprehension of this concept of ‘heroic’. Heroic is a concept meaning a “determined effort [directed to achieve good or deter evil] in the face of difficulty. In this definition I define ‘good’ as being that which promotes human life and ‘evil’ as that which promotes human death.

I think that there are degrees of heroic action. Some heroes are greater than others depending upon the circumstances of their action. To be a hero often requires courage and often causes personal hardship.

On a scale of one to ten I would classify the following people as heroes in most people’s judgment:

Mother Theresa (10)

Police and firemen entering the burning buildings in 9/11 attack (8 to 10)

My mom and dad (7)

Men and women fighting in Iraq: our side (5 to 10) their side (?)

Youngster really trying to make good grades in school (7)

The psychologist Alfred Adler said: “The supreme law [of life] is this: the sense of worth of the self shall not be allowed to be diminished.

Heroic actions are our means for maintaining our self esteem. Without heroic action we cannot maintain our own self-esteem. Self-esteem is self-respect. We judge our self as to the degree of worthiness for respect. We rely partially upon the judgment of others but that respect from others is filtered by our own judgments to how heroic our actions are.

It appears that we must feel self-esteem or we suffer mental illness of one degree or another. I gain self-esteem by reading lots of stuff, writing about that stuff, and posting that stuff on this forum, i.e. I am a self-actualizing self-learner (6).

What do you do for self-esteem?

What do you call a formal dance for ducks?

A fowl ball.

Hi Coberst, I've enjoyed this post.

It sounds cliche I'm sure, but my late mom is my hero. She's the only hero(ine) I have ever had. In life she never (and I mean never) gave up. In life she showed me (not just told me) how to be honest, fair dealing, have integrity, show love and appreciation among so many other things. She beat cancer twice with the same grace and humor she always showed. When the third time came she couldn't beat it but she did the best she could and she went with the same dignity she possessed in life. She showed me how to be a good woman.

So you ask what we do for our self esteem. I try to improve myself by taking on new things or learning more about something. I also try to be of use to people and help them whenever I am able to. I try to be a good person.

RedGlitter

One reason that I posted this was because I wanted to introduce a word that is so very important to the sciences of psychology and psychoanalysis.

We have many words in the language that have both a common usage and also have a technical usage. The word ‘hero' is one such word. I have been studying psychology and psychoanalysis for the last many months and these domains of knowledge use the word 'hero' in a technical manner.

One of the difficulties we always have when we try to learn a domain of knowledge that is new to us is learning the vocabulary. The OP reflects how this word is used in these sciences.

Hi Coberst and RedGlitter,

To me hero changes at successive stages of life. I don't look up to my parents never have but I have seen my grandparents as heros, probably because I can introject my own stories into their real stories and make them larger than life. I'm so satisfied though when I read and hear of stories where heroes are people that came more immediate to the person involved.

I do have a slightly humorous and good story to tell of a nephew's hero and even though he expressed this hero through a halloween costume, I knew he was saying to the world how this person was almighty in his book and could help him through life. My nephew a little boy about 6, white as new fallen snow, red headed, scrawny and timid fought to dress up like Michael Jordan. He painted his skin black and wore a (sorry God forbid I've had a name blankoh yes) Chicago Bulls outfit made my day. This little boy was actually courageous to wear this amongst the people he did. I was pretty amazed.

God bless heroes may they keep on setting standards for us all :-4

All that I have read about these two sciences indicate that what are called heroic acts are those acts that reinforce our self-esteem and with out self-esteem we are pitiful creatures.

My act is heroic if I think it is and it is also heroic if others think that it is. If my act is heroic then my self-esteem grows. We are not talking about absolutes here. In some cultures if I stone to death my sister for dishonoring my family then my act is heroic.

Lack of self-esteem is one of the major causes of mental illness. This lack of self-esteem can also lead to obesity when the individual tries to find solace in food when self-esteem is not up to par.

McMansions equals heroic action for American citizens.



"We're not selling shelter," says the president of Toll Brothers, a builder of upscale homes. "We're selling extreme-ego, look-at-me types of homes." In 2000, Toll Brothers' most popular home was 3,200 square feet; by 2005, it had grown 50 percent, to 4,800 square feet. These "McMansions" often feature marble floors, sweeping staircases, vaulted ceilings, family rooms, studies, home entertainment centers and more bedrooms than people.

'House Lust' Hits Home Article from Washington Post Jan 2, 2008

Quotation from “The Birth and Death of Meaning by Ernest Becker.

“Anthony Quinn in his great role in “Requiem for a Heavyweight earned his inner sense of self-value by constantly reminding himself and others that he was “fifth-ranking contender for the heavyweight crown. This made him really somebody, gave him continual nourishment, allowed him to hold his head high in the shabbiest circumstances. Academic intellectuals have their own fine gradations of worth: a six-hour teaching load, with no under-graduate teaching, in an ivy-league school; a three hour teaching load, with only one undergraduate course, in an almost ivy-league school. How these balance in the scale of self-worth can cause agonizing life decisions.

rjwould;753127 wrote: I search for it in my hero's eyes--my children. If I am anything of a hero to them, I can conquer anything.

Good one!:)

BTW--I like your reading material..


Thanks. I have a question for you. I write often about the sciences of psychology and psychoanalysis; not because I am any kind of expert but because it seems to be so very important for people to have some knowledge of these matters.

I am a retired engineer and the human sciences are something new to me.

I find that when ever I post something about psychology or psychoanalysis I often receive a great deal of negative comments about these two subjects. It is obvious that the negativity is based only on ignorance and a bias that must come in a strong voice from our (US) culture. Would you care to speculate as to why our society has placed such a venomous attack upon these two domains of knowledge?

Slightly off topic, sorry, but I read somewhere that there were some similarities and parallels in the writings of St John of the Cross and Freud, though clearly more so in the writings of Jung. I think that's fascinating. I wish I could provide a link but a brief google search just now didn't really help.