I personally do, he actually risked his life to release information about the government spying on people. And there are for sure more advanced ways now. Even your phone is listening.
I personally do, he actually risked his life to release information about the government spying on people. And there are for sure more advanced ways now. Even your phone is listening.
I think you are being pedantic. If you went in risking your life to rescue a puppy from a burning house but the puppy doesn’t make it because of the fumes or you jump on a robber but he kills and leaves with the money anyway, do you stop being a hero because you failed to enact change? That’s ridiculous.
I think the difference in your hypothetical is that people would care that he tried. But inventing a scenario to put words in the mouth of a stranger has no relevance to the reality I’m commenting on.
Think of me as you wish. I answered the question in good faith, and that’s enough for me.
I don’t personally believe in ‘heroes’ and ‘villians’. I think it’s a very rudimentary way to view the world, as if through the lens of a storybook. We have deeply corrupt and selfish people causing harm, we have considerate and compassionate people fighting for their principles. Most people are some measure of both.
Reducing people to Hero and Villain frequently excuses us any responsibility of self-reflection, as we can simply call ourselves ‘Good’ and justify unethical acts in the name of Goodness. It reduces the world down to in-group and out-group binaries, and then devastates us when we learn that a Hero has, as a fallible human, also done harmful things. It also denies Villians any opportunity to change for the better.
If you believe that Hero is an objective trait one can achieve, but that social approval is not how one achieves it, we have very different views on humanity and ethics.
I wouldn’t imagine that OP meant the question as Snowden being permanently labeled a hero for all of his life actions, nor should anyone ever be labeled as such. We are judging a specific action he took many years ago and also in a context of people generally labeling his action as good or bad since then. We are also not talking about comic book characters that are consistently one way or another through all of their actions. We can agree that a convicted felon can be heroic and a puppy loving doctor can do villainous shit as well depending on circumstance, opportunity and personal moral beliefs.
But for this specific action of exposing a terrible truth and essentially losing his way of life and being forced to live as a refugee, I don’t think we should get into the pendatry of what a hero in theory is or if his action led to any actual change. Being suppressed by forces with way more weight than you doesn’t eliminate whatever label your actions deserve.