aaron_pet's Journal: Martyr vs Hero Value of machines and human life

I posted a comment on the Columbia Shuttle disaster.

here:

My coment in reply to Re:Its about stuff not God

--background about some of my philosophy---

Everything is about God... so what/big whoop

These people were trusted with our resources, it took our effort to get them there.

When something I spent time on gets destroyed, I view it as part of my life being wasted.

The netowrk of humans provides me with special knowledge. If we communicate new ideas that are helpfull to us, we can save a lot of lifetimes worth of work.

I use the word God to describe everything.. that which I know, and don't know. We get lots of information from our own sences, but other people can privde really potent information.. My life is much richer with the help of everyone else than it would be without. Other people provide a "concentrated" interface with God. /I view God (currently) as a word that is assigned to EVERYTHING... and all of the motion.... all of that funky physics stuff we hear about... and those physical systems that we only hope to model some day...

=== So about Heros ===

I'm thinking more about why I called those people heros... (entrusted with so many resources)
and have concluded that we need to come up with a new word... "Hero" is a very confusing word...

These people were entrusted with a lot of resources, they were special, they risked their lifes...

yet I normally think of a hero as somebody who enters a dangerous situation with or without immunity to that situation... and FIXES IT, or were successfull.

These people did not succeed with their mission... I value their sacrifice, but they didn't save anything. So I don't think th word "hero" fits for them.

I'd like to come up with another word for that... it's like they're martyrs ...