This has been percolating since November. Sat in on a panel on Heroes in fiction. They really meant protagonists, I think.
Just to get a taste, here's what I think about people who need the 'warrior' label:http://chirontraining.blogspot.com/2009/04/warriordom.html
Needless to say, 'hero' would get more vitriol, except fewer people have the arrogance to claim it. I was taught early that 'hero' is a four letter word for someone who gets his friends killed...and somehow manages to write the report so he looks good. So the panel was about protagonists, not heroes.
Doing dangerous things because they need to be done isn't noble or heroic. It doesn't come from a sense of great passion. It doesn't come from a tortured soul or any of the motivations that writers try to imagine.
It is exactly like cleaning up dogshit.
There's a steaming pile of dogshit in a public place and most people just walk on by, pretending not to see it. A few will get indignant: "Someone should do something." The worst won't even clean up after their own dogs*... just as the politicians will never fix the problems that their policies created.
But a few, a very few clean up dogshit when they see it. Not because it is noble. Not because it resonates with knights on white horses. Not because it is fun and exciting. Not to save the maiden. Because it needs to be done, and if they don't do it, no one will. And if no one cleans it up, sooner or later the dogshit will get tracked everywhere.
So you hold your nose if you have to and you get in there and you clean up the dogshit. As quickly and efficiently as possible. And you try not to get any on you. Because someone has to.
Maybe it's your job and you signed up for it. Maybe it just needed to be done.
Either way, there's nothing noble about it. It just needs to be done. Which I find kind of noble.
*Any decent person will clean up their own mess, pick up after their own dogs.