In the modern world, all large battles are fought out behind desks.
A researcher who gives up a $200k job at a large IT company (e.g. Google or Facebook) for a measly paid job at a university to work on a project with eventual high societal impact IS a hero.
These are not battles. These are just people/companies having careers and making money. Even the researcher is usually forgoing the well paid job to do the research because the research is interesting to him - he's just trading off one for of payoff (money) for another (job satisfaction). Meanwhile, there's no payoff in volunteering to go to a war with a high chance of getting killed or maimed.
Re: battles. There are still real battles in the world (Ukraine, Syria) where there's plenty of heroes.
To sum up, I'd say that it's a blessing that a lot of the world is so peaceful now that the meaning of the word 'hero' is getting washed down to literally 'people doing their (maybe slighly unpleasant) jobs'.
My father put 30 years into the US Navy. He recently passed away. At his funeral, a Marine Corps Colonel got up and thanked him for his service, and called him a hero. However, it was not for his service to the Navy. It was for his whistleblowing activity at the Veterans Administration, where he worked as a full time civilian. He was never put in physical harm, but his whistleblowing put his career at risk. There were unfair retaliatory actions taken against him and the stress of what he was doing took a toll on his life.
I think you're right that most people that work in a contractual fashion with a money payoff should not be considered heroes, but it's also not true that only people who go to war should be considered heroes. Rosa Parks (and the less famous women who did the same thing and preceded her), for example, are certainly heroes.
> Rosa Parks (and the less famous women who did the same thing and preceded her), for example, are certainly heroes.
Not every activist or revolutionist is violent. Sticking to known examples: Gandhi is another excellent non violent example. Sticking to politics, Nelson Mandela. Mark Felt, also a whistleblower. More recent examples are William Binney, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange. These are my examples, of people I consider heroes. History will decide who the public's heroes were.
These people go against authority, often get ignored or bullied in return, including loved ones and relatives. Like the poster from Fargo, "What If You're Right And They're Wrong". It indeed takes great courage and often sacrifice to go against the tide.
That support employee who's ignoring his protocol and is risking a sneer (or worse) from his boss, the one telling you truth while he's now allowed? He's performing one heroic deed. If its a pattern, we can speak of a hero.
What motivates this crusade to own the word "hero"?
Also, IMO military service is a lot more gray area than black and white when viewed in cultural and societal context. I've known several active and veteran members of a few branches of the US military, and while I commend their skills, I don't think many of them would describe everything the US asks them to do as "heroic". A sizable fraction of the current world mess is the fault of the governments currently fighting it.
But all of this is barely relevant to a discussion about what might be termed everyday heroism.
If you listen to the podcast, I think that "someone who puts [them]self in harm's way for the benefit of others" very precisely describes what these customer support employees are doing.
"In harms way"? Doesn't that seem rather ... barbarian. It seems to reinforce "Only those that die gloriously in battle shall sit with the Gods in Valhalla."
I did not used to hear the word "sacrifice" a lot. I hear it a lot now. I don't like it as a standard of behavior and wish it would stop.
I though it was a short way to make a clear point. Let me write a longer version then:
Is it barbaric? Maybe, but, whether we like it or not, the world has a defnite component of barbarism to it. There are wars going on as we speak, and there are threats of much bigger wars constantly hanging in the air.
It not impossible to eliminate physical danger out of our lives and to dismiss it (because one does not witness it first-hand at the moment) is not very mature. I'm not even mentioning the natural calamities, fires, car crashes etc., where there's room for heroism as well.
We mostly live with less barbarism and physical danger than any cohort of humans who have ever lived. Obviously, the people in Aleppo drew the short straw there.
I'd just prefer to see no sacrifice of any kind, especially on my account.
