All heroes begin as idiots.
When my mother learned that a cousin of mine volunteered to work in an ICU at a local hospital to help treat Covid-19 patients, her immediate reaction was to wonder how my cousin could be so stupid. She said it out of worry and concern, because I strongly suspect my mother loves my cousin more than me, and certainly does not believe my cousin is stupid in any regard.
Nor do I believe my cousin is stupid. So I corrected my mother, telling her that my cousin was not stupid. My cousin was an idiot, I told her. But, I immediately added, all heroes begin as idiots.
Only an idiot runs into a house on fire, but the hero comes out with persons trapped within it. Only an idiot jumps into a frozen lake, but the hero saves the person who fell in and in danger of drowning. Only the idiot steps into the line of fire, but the hero takes the bullet for another.
The word "idiot" in English initially was a technical term, referring to those who were profoundly intellectually or cognitively disabled. It was still used that way until recently, though relegated to the label "idiot savant," referring to such a disabled person who exhibited an unusual--even extraordinary--intellectual gift in the absence of most others. However, because "idiot" came to be used as an epithet and defined (in the dictionary even!) as "a stupid person," we now normally refer to such persons as "savants." Be that as it may, most people use "idiot" to refer to someone who does something most unwise and stupid, against reason and logic.
But that was certainly not the original meaning of the word. It is etymologically derived from the Greek idiotes, referring to a "private person" or "individual," itself derived from idios, meaning "one's own" (in ancient Greek, before it came in Modern Greek to mean "the same"). Latin borrowed the word as idiota, meaning "common," and later took on the meaning of a "commoner" or "ignorant person." This is when it took on a derogatory sense, passing into French as "illiterate," "crude," or a synonym of "stupid" and then into English. By the 14th century, English used it to mean something more than ignorant, but as actually "mentally deficient." Today, while still meaning the same, it is used only in a derogatory sense.
Be that as it may, the word "hero" also comes to us by way of Homeric (or Attic) Greek, a word denoting a "defender" or "protector."
And this is where we see the connection between an idiot and heroism. At least in the original meaning of the word idios, each of us begins as "one's own" self. The natural inclination and drive to survival would typically suggest that each "self" would be self-concerned, and to do things that risk survival is certainly not prudent or wise. In some sense, risking one's own life is stupid. Unless...
Being a defender and protector of another makes a person a hero, and the very act of defending or protecting another is always, in greater or lesser degree, a risk to one's own self. It is, by one definition, an act of idiocy.
But true idiocy is the mental and intellectual deficiency that suggests that one's own self is sufficient for survival in the first place. We do not begin life "alone" and we cannot, actually, survive alone. We cannot rely on our "own self" and remain human. "No man is an island unto himself," the saying goes. Fundamentally, we need other human beings in our life to live.
A hero is someone who realizes this in an extreme way, perhaps not even consciously. While the dictionary may define a hero as someone who displays courage, noble qualities, and outstanding achievements, the original meaning of defender and protector points to something else: the act of love.
Love is self-less-ness, plain and simple. It is not an emotion (though acts of love may be motivated by such or evoke emotion), but a manner of existing, to defend, protect, and share "one's own" life with another, even to the point of risking life--or in the "greatest" example of love, losing one's own life for the sake of another (which is how Jesus defines the greatest love).
By all accounts of "conventional wisdom," any act that endangers one's own life is almost by definition an act of idiocy. Only idiots would run into a burning building, or step into the line of fire, or jump into the frozen lake.
Only an idiot would come close to those infected with disease and risk contagion, as so many have chosen to do in our day. It is idiocy to do so recklessly and in denial of danger. An idiot--in the derogatory sense--is cavalier about real danger to one's own self and those around one's own self. The hero, by contrast, recognizes risk and danger, and for the sake of defending and protecting others faces the danger anyway head on.
So many persons in our time have demonstrated real heroism in serving the public needs during this pandemic. While most who are infected with this novel coronavirus may not have severe symptoms or even be aware of it, it is unpredictable in its effect on persons. Seemingly healthy human beings fall prey to the contagion, while those seemingly more susceptible survive. There is so much about this virus that we have yet to understand.
And knowing this, recognizing the risks perhaps better than most, certainly not wanting to become infected or infectious, my cousin has still chosen to enter the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital to bring care and healing to Covid-19 patients.
By any stretch of the imagination, only an idiot would do so. And we obviously have many idiots who, day in and day out, enter the ICUs around the world, or drive ambulances, or fight fires, or walk the beat, in order to help, defend and protect their fellow citizens, family, friends and neighbors (and even the idiots, in the derogatory sense, who don't appreciate that fact). Yet these people show themselves to be anything but "idiotes" in the classic sense, because they are not common, they are not private, and not putting their own selves and self-interest above others. They are sharing their very lives for the sake of others. Because that is what heroes do. Heroes love. And that's why my mother likely loves my cousin, my hero, more than me.
