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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Al" data-source="post: 2299806" data-attributes="member: 2486">My instincts are that we're actually on the same side of the proverbial fence but shouting across it.  Your post is precisely the case I have made (i.e. that it is counter-productive to test our heroes against a yardstick which is unattainable).  The exact reason why I am sceptical about the qualities listed on the first page is precisely because they are unattainable.  It is because they are unattainable that I believe that the list is misleading, since it entails that people whom you or I would regard as heroes are, a priori, not.Let us consider it logically.  If I posit that a hero must have qualities A, B, and C, then we can deduce that unless a person indeed possesses qualities A, B, and C, he cannot be a hero.  Thus we infer that someone who only possesses qualities A and B falls short of the mark.  I hold this to be misleading and wrong.  Misleading because one can be a hero without having to consistently comply with the traits outlined in the LotR manual; wrong because they denigrate true heroes by measuring them against an unattainable benchmark and finding them wanting.  This is not to say that such qualities are not desirable, or indeed to contend that they are not heroic.  Rather, I am arguing that we should be more flexible in our definition of heroism.  If we set the benchmark too high, there can be no heroes at all.</blockquote>