Svoboda is the first Rustumite hero because he saved Danny.
Danny is the first true Rustumite because he can live comfortably in the denser sea level atmosphere so that his descendants will inherit the planet.
Danny is also a hero to his fellow pupils because of his adventures below the clouds.
Joshua Coffin solved some personal difficulties during the search for his son.
Theron Wolfe has proved himself to be a successfully manipulative mayor by blackmailing Svoboda to rescue Danny and thus become the kind of hero needed by the colony.
This volume ends as Svoboda gazes:
"...toward the horizon where the snowpeaks of Hercules upheld the sky." (p. 158)
Hercules was a classical hero.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And Theron Wolfe blackmailed Jan Svoboda in the first place because of how he had been getting concerned that the libertarian individualism of the Constitutionalists was starting to get too extreme. His idea was forcing Svoboda to help Coffin would remind the colonists they had to also think of the common good.
Ad astra! Sean
Heroism can be defined as "reacting well to a bad situation".
Human empathy evolved as a kin-selection mechanism. Genetically, what counts is not the individual but the gene-complex, which is present in all your close kin. Sacrificing yourself or taking risks for those close to you serves that evolutionary end, which is why the tendency is inherent in human beings.
This is a common mechanism in social animals, particularly in social animals who are also predators. Wolves are a good example; and in terms of instinctual social behavior, wolves are very similar to human beings. It's not an accident that the first and most thoroughly domesticated animal was the wolf-to-dog. We're just basically compatible.
The mechanism by which it's implemented isn't dependent on some biochemical means of sensing kinship -- it just uses psychological propinquity.
In the setting in which we evolved, this works just as well as being able to smell who's your cousin.
And it's more behaviorally flexible. Human instincts tend to operate like that, because our evolutionary adaptation IS flexibility. That's why we can adapt to a new environment so much more rapidly than other animals.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, and humans differ from wolves in being able to EXTEND that sense of kinship to other or larger groups than to one's immediate or nearly immediate family. E.g., the nuclear family, extended family, the clan, tribe, nation, etc. Or to fellow adherents of one's faith, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
The Parable of the Good Samaritan.
Kaor, Paul!
And that too! And one Joshua Coffin would very likely have thought of, btw.
Ad astra! Sean
True, it can be extended -- but the further it's extended, the more fragile it gets, when push comes to shove.
Note that the most successful extension, the nation-state, works by inculcating a sense of "extended family" to the nation.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And real history gives us so MANY examples of how fragile those extensions can be. Hence we get the "family fights" called civil wars in many nations.
Ad astra! Sean
Note the "Hercules" mountains "holding up the sky" -- nice Classical allusion there.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
It was, and I should have thought of that.
Ad astra! Sean
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