Extreme Heroism

Book excerpt: On his way to face criminal charges in 1984, a man is declared a hero by three other survivors of a commuter airline crash in northern Alberta, Canada. The Canadian press takes special interest in this story of an unlikely hero saving his RCMP escort, the pilot, and a member of parliament. They describe the mans actions with a reverence and respect usually reserved for the holy, saintly and spiritual. These and many other similar incidents are part of a global pattern pleading for our attention. The impetus behind them unites us across the divides of age, gender, race, religion, nationality, and every other boundary. This type of heroism goes largely unnoticed, but it binds humanity together. Extreme Heroism shares a variety of these stories and offers a guide to understanding and applying this response to injustice guided by indiscourageable good will. It provides methods for analyzing our preferred response profile, understanding our response options to injustice, and overcoming the obstacles to employing the innate extreme heroism with which we were born. This study presents an exploration of heroic responses to danger, tragedy, and the injustices of life through a variety of narratives of people taking extreme heroic action.