The term hero has been diluted and abused. A hero is not necessarily someone who survives being in a war, or who happens to pull someone out of a car wreck. We call the former a survivor and the latter a brave person.

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A hero, in the mythic tradition, courageously leaves the comfort of his/her ordinary world to pursue a journey that ends up changing him, so he awakens to become a new being who heals his home community, family, nation. He faces daunting challenging antagonists at great odds. He does it by going through the process of rebirth, in which his old self dies and he becomes a new and better person—more balanced(emotionally, regarding both the masculine AND feminine archetypes,) wiser, with new strengths—knowledge, tools, weapons, allies, insights, access to higher truths… to those kinds of “magic.”

A hero is not necessarily someone who survives being in a war, or who happens to pull someone out of a car wreck. We call the former a survivor and the latter a brave person.

The term hero has been diluted and abused by movie “heroines” who call the most average guy “my hero” because of some simple thing he does for her. Today's dictionaries do define a hero as someone with courage who risks his life. I don't buy it. That was not the definition until recently. In the 1806 edition of the Johnson Dictionary, hero is defined as "A man eminent for bravery." or, "a man of highest class in any respect, as a hero in learning"

There's a difference between signing up in the military and really earning a reputation for bravery. Courage is good. Bravery is better, eminence for bravery is better, heroic is even better. Just as in schools, the feel-good error of easy grading has led to graduating of illiterates, the mislabeling of heroism has affected our language so now, we truly face a dearth of real heroes.

Now don’t get me wrong, a hero can become a hero without fighting a single weapons fight, without killing or wounding anyone. Heroism can be and often is about fighting inner demons. But I get tired of hearing about John McCain being a hero because he survived all those years as a prisoner. I get annoyed when any GI who comes back from Iraq is called a hero. Maybe brave, maybe well intentioned. But I don’t think you should call anyone who volunteers to enter the military in the time of war a hero. That’s because there are real heroes who do go through the whole hero process. And they deserve to be called a name— hero— that is reserved for those who really do pursue the heroic journey. It is not enough to just enlist, follow orders and get through a stint in a hostile territory. It is not enough to survive capture, or live through a fire fight.

The true heroes and heroines among the GIs who have gone to Iraq have spoken out against the war. They have gone in as innocent brave souls, have seen wonders and horrors, made allies, fought and killed enemies, learned the arts of war and perhaps, arts of being a whole person, and they have come through the fire of war with new eyes, new heart and a different kind of courage. Not the courage to heft a powerful weapon. Rather, the courage to face truths that are different than they started with, truths that challenge the ideas about themselves and their world that they first travelled to their destination with.

The true heroes in Iraq have seen other GIs torture prisoners and have, against the “code of silence” reported these despicable acts, putting themselves at risk. This kind of heroism is not reported often. It is hidden, kept from the press, because the whole war in Iraq is based on the opposite of consciousness, the opposite of finding the higher truths

I’m sorry for the families that have lost loved ones to death or injuries that will forever affect their lives. But being wounded does not a hero make.

I routinely ask people who are the living heroes they value and respect. Many people refer to parents, siblings or other family members. Sometimes they seem justified, describing people who have been on real heroic journeys. There are very few famous people mentioned though. Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama….

In these times, we need real heroes, not brave people who get mislabeled as heroes. We need exemplars who set inspiring examples we can look up to. While it is a kindness to call brave soldiers heroes, it is a disservice to our value system, a disservice to our children, who need to learn what it really takes to become a real hero. They see real heroes in some movies. Even Harry Potter, fails the test in his latest movie.

The thing about becoming a hero is that the journey is the reward. When the hero returns to the ordinary world he departed from, with the “holy grail” he successfully acquired to save his world, he has already saved himself and has grown beyond that old world. In movies, the hero often gets a huge reward—a kingdom, the girl, a lot of money, power—but these are not the real coin of the realm for heroes. The true success for the hero or heroineis raised consciousness—knowing who he or she really is, deep inside, and being true to that person.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

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