Could a Normal Person Be a Hero?
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Could A Normal Person Be A Hero?
The barriers between death and survival, devil and angel, murder and hero are “impermeable.” We never know what part we belong to until we face a situation. Nobody wants to be the devil or murderer; we all want to be an angel or a hero. However, according to psychological studies done by Zeno Franco and Philip Zimbardo, they stated have that “circumstances can force almost anyone to be a bystander to evil, but they can also bring out our inner hero.” It sounds easy to force “anyone to be a bystander to evil,” but not the other way around. Its difficult to “bring out our inner hero,” especially in our modern society where people only care about themselves and their benefits rather than what is all around them. How about during war when people have to fight for their ideals, rights, and even lives? Lets go back in time and take a look at one of the most awful truths of American soldiers during the Vietnam War to see how an ordinary person could be a hero and how are they going to heal after that truth.
Back in March 1968, when the Vietnam War was at its peak, My Lai was a small village in central Vietnam. The US Army suspected this village was harboring the Viet Cong (fighting forces belong to the Northern Vietnamese Army). The US Army was ordered to find and kill the Viet Cong and their supporters, including burning down houses, killing off livestock, spoiling crops, and polluting wells. However, when the US troops entered My Lai, they did not find any Viet Cong soldiers or weapons, what they found were civilians; the majority of which were women and children, who were trying to hide before the US Army raid. The US Army began to fire at what they claimed were enemy positions; this order was led by Second Lieutenant William Calley, Charlie Company. According to BBC News, “Murder in the name of war – My Lai”, they reported, “Elsewhere in the village, other atrocities were in progress. Women were gang raped; Vietnamese who had bowed to greet the Americans were beaten with fists and tortured, clubbed with rifle butts and stabbed with bayonets. Some victims were mutilated with the signature C Company carved into their chests. ” A large group of seventy to eighty of civilians were gathered in a ditch and killed by the first platoon. The soldiers of the second platoon killed at least sixty to seventy civilians, mostly elderly men, women, and children. Right after these raids by Charlie Company, US soldiers killed all people and animals that were unfortunately found alive, even though these innocent people surrendered from where they were hiding. The number of dead after the massacre was 504 people.
Hugh Thompson, Jr., an observation helicopter pilot saw the massacre while flying over the village. He described a large number of dead bodies, mostly elderly men, women and children; there were no signs of young people or weapons. After witnessing these terrible crimes, Thompson and his crew tried to land to rescue the injured Vietnamese people. They tried to land next to a ditch full of dead bodies, where there were several people still moving, including a bloody child covered with blood from dead people around him. At their second land attempting, Thompson and his crew were able to save about ten people in a trench, which was about to be approached by Charlie Company. Thompson used hand signals to convince the Vietnamese people to come out while his gunner and his crew chief helped him protect the Vietnamese in the trench by shooting at any American soldier who tried to kill the any of the civilians.
Hugh Thompsons mission was not part of Charlie Company, he was only an observation helicopter pilot. Thompson could have just flew over and ignore what was happening below. However, what he did was not only distance himself from the crime, but he also decided to stop the massacre and help the victims. Almost 30 years later, on March 6, 1998, the Army presented Thompson the Soldiers Medal for heroism not involving conflict with an enemy.
Thompson is an example of how circumstances can force someone to bring out his or her own inner hero. He decided to protect and rescue his “enemies”, in this case innocent civilians. He knew what the American soldiers from Charlie Company were doing was wrong. Thompson stood by his “enemies” side and stopped an act that he believed was wrong.
What Thompson did was opposite with what revealed from the study of the Milgram at Yale psychologist which obeying the order, even that order could lead people to pain, injury or dead. Stanley Milgram “designed an experiment that forced participants either to violate their conscience by obeying the immoral demands of an authority figure to refuse those demands”. The Milgram experiments required two roles: “teacher” and “learner”; the “teacher” would give an electric shock to the “learner” if the answer was incorrect. If the “learner” kept failing, the “teacher” would increase the voltage intensity of the shocks. In reality, the “learner” did not receive any shocks. At the end of the experiments, there were “thirty-seven of forty adults continued to the highest level on the shock generator” (Stanley Milgram 324). There was a female among others participant that refused to go further and the experiment was terminated. While explaining her decision, this female participant stated that she felt that the last shock she administered to the learner was extremely painful and reiterated that she did not want to be responsible for any harm to him (Stanley Milgram 316).
The female participant and Mr. Thompson are those who resisted a figure of authority; they decided to resist the authority because they knew that what they were doing would be wrong if they obeyed the authority. The difference between the act of the female participant and Mr. Thompsons is that Mr. Thompson not only stopped the action but also saved other lives. He chose to stand on his side instead of obeying a blindly order. According to Zeno Franco and Philip Zimbardo in “The Banality of Heroism”, “the banality of heroism concept suggests that we are all potential heroes waiting for a moment in life to perform a heroic deed” ; Mr. Thompson in this situation acted like a hero. He shows