Who Are Todays Heroes?

Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 84 points –

Who are the heroes of our time? Who is driving us to a better future? And who is inspiring and guiding us?

Anything goes: famous people, people in your own life, fictional people who represent something to your culture, groups of people working behind the scenes etc.

The only rule is they must be current.

72

Open source software maintainers, thanklessly (and often without pay) maintaining infrastructure without which the global economy would collapse immediately

Any garbage man that picks up my trash. Any sanitation engineer that cleans my sewage.

Anyone who is still doing the right thing and not in it for money or themselves. Which is fucking rare as shit these days.

Plenty of people do a lot of good out there taking care of others. They are just not seen because of the narcissists in the spotlight.

Eh, nothing wrong with making a living and still doing the right thing. Doing the right thing is right regardless of your motives.

EMS ; chronically underpaid and overstressed.

When a cop complains about the terrible things they see on their job, they are talking about the stuff the saw watching EMS work.

This. "Overstressed" doesn't begin to cover it. It's an unimaginably stressful job even when things are going right.

Under appreciated movie from the 1980s, "Repo Man."

Harry Dean Stanton tells Emilio Estevez "I hate normal people. Normal people spend their whole damn lives trying to avoid tense situations. Repo man spends his whole life putting himself into tense situations."

The transgender population, especially transgender youth. If one group’s rights can be stripped away, then any group’s can. They are the front line soldiers against the spread of fascism.

Weird that this is getting so many dislikes, tf is up with people

They recognize that one person's rights can infringe another's. That's all.

How could this possibly infringe on another's rights?

not in any specific order:

SPI, the foundation supporting debian and arch projects.

boeing whistleblowers, and anybody willing to step up against these kinds of corpo shenanigans.

people who wear masks.

stephen colbert, john oliver and their news team

lemmy posters

Teachers. It is such a widely known trope that teachers are overworked and underpaid. So many that want to pursue teaching now enter the market, understanding that they will likely need a second job at some point. Although internet kudos do little to actually address the problem, my respect goes to the teachers.

Stephen Hawking.

He has influenced how physicists look at the world, and they in turn have taught us how to see the world, and nearly everybody believes what he has told (even though some of the topics do not fit with newer observations anymore, but still nobody has come up with really better explanations).

Kind of on the tail end of their careers, but Senator Ron Wyden on privacy/surveillance, and Bernie Sanders on most stuff. Good question for a thread.

Alexandra Elbakyan (Scihub) has probably done more for scientific progress than anyone alive.

Mick Lynch and Shawn Fain

Mick Lynch is definitely one of mine. We're lucky to have him.

Are these made up names? Never heard of them. Must be an American thing?

Mick Lynch is currently the most badass man in Britain. Absolute unit.

Richard Stallman

I would've said the same some years ago, but then I actually went to a lecture by him in person at my university and... I'll just say that it was not a very pleasant experience and very much a "never meet your heroes" kind of moment.

Oh dear, what happened?!

I don't know how accurate each of the claims in this article are, but this is the kind of stuff that he's been accused of, and as a result most people don't really worship or admire him much anymore: https://www.wired.com/story/richard-stallman-and-the-fall-of-the-clueless-nerd/

On a personal level he does seem like bit of an odious character. Even some of his behaviour in talks I've seen on youtube. I think in his case it's what he represents that makes him heroic.

EMS, the scientists who made the vaccines which have prevented millions of deaths from COVID, and the mothers who are making the effort to raise up their kids to be the best people they can be.

Scientists and other rationalists. If you wanted to be dramatic, their fight to save ourselves and the planet would be against the inertia of "common wisdom", known bugs in human psychology, the resistance of wanting to disregard the unknown or unpleasant, everyone for whom the truth (to the best of our knowledge) is economically inconvenient with the considerable economic and societal power they wield.

They are not good odds, but it is correct against incorrect and often against malignantly incorrect, and they are all extremely formidable villains.

It makes me sad David Attenborough has this world in his later years rather than the one he fought for. But without he how much worse would it be.

I was so keen to hear everyone else's that I forgot to put my own! In no particular order:

  • Mick Lynch (standing up to the system)
  • Yanis Varoufakis (for a new system and for insight into the current one)
  • Edward Snowden (for his principles and courage and lifting the lid)
  • Satish Kumar (for his wholism and his ability to inspire with hope and goodness)
  • Tyson Fury (in his almost mythical resurrection against Deontay Wilder and his retelling of the fight. Someone needs to use it as narration for animated film for children.
  • Will edit if more come to mind!

Europeans

While flattered, the real heroes are the EU

They been killing it lately with how they leached all the unbridled tech companies of the US. And it isn't stopping soon.

To quote Måns Zelmerlöw: "WE are the heroes of our time, but we're dancing with the demons in our minds"

He said like about 9 years ago.

Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman.

They noticed that naively adding test tube synthesized mRNA elicited immflamatory responses from immune cells, while mRNA derived from cells did not. They figured out that chemical modifications to mRNAs were responsible for avoiding these immune reactions to the mRNAs.

These results would open the path for development of mRNA-based vaccines, like the vaccines repsonsible for limiting the damage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2023/press-release/

My parents and parents-in-law.

Your parents and your in-laws are my heroes too. Because whatever they did, it must've been really great.

Mothers. For raising up kids.

Too broad. I've seen my share of really bad mothers.

'really bad' can be applied to fathers also.

Well sure and to all other humans, too. You specifically mentioned mothers though.

How can you compare a Father( other humans ) to a Mother?

Nature prepares a lady very earlier than a man. Menstruation , Pregnancy, Giving birth, Caring a kid from Day one to years (at least couple of years ) .

Think of all that sufferings, at least.

You argue like a toddler. Or I'm too dense to sense the trolling - in that case: well done.

You have a male centric ponlint of view and cannot accept the facts.

Do one thing, ask a male if they can through menustration for the rest of their life. If you are a male, ask yourself

I cannot accept facts? You're the one making claims and moving the goalpost with every reply. Now we've come from the "heroic" deed to raise a kid over giving birth to just having a menstrual cycle.

Do you know what a hero is? You can hardly define something as heroic that 50% of the world's population are just born into. Women are not heroes just for being women.

We have different POVs and idea, better agree to disagree.

I'm surprised to see this has been downvoted. I know not all mothers are perfect but just keeping a baby alive and healthy is pretty heroic IMO.

Humans identify power/mighty ( even angry ) people as Heroic. Those ones with empathy, love are considered as cowards.