You have read about brave heroes who fought against great odds even when they did not want to. how do you believe the hero stories of long ago can be used to people develop character?

The use of heroes, and depicting their lives, has been a major theme especially in literature. From Ancient Greece, where the talk of heroes and their struggles and triumphs were a common topic, to the literature of today, these human beings are the depiction of all the characteristics that regular people would like to have.  An example, from a very old time, is Odysseus, from the Odyssey of Homer, and there are many examples like it. These characters are human, they face human problems and have normal difficulties, but in the face of struggle, even in the face of moral and ethical difficulties, they are able to not just overcome them, but even surpass them and thus they embody what most people would like to have. Because of these characteristics, heroes can become good influences for people, as they teach us the value of courage and of facing difficulties. However, they can also become at some point negative, as some of them embody characteristics that are impossible to achieve, and sometimes, they can become idolized to the point that a person wishes to exchange his/her identity for their. So the knowledge of heroic stories can be a good thing, but it can also have negative impacts.

John Stuart Mill is arguing against conformity. The human being, through its faculties of "perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference", only excercices those faculties when going against custom, against what is known as received wisdom. If someone merely follows the dictates of custom, then he is not thinking, or judging, or making moral choices: he is, so to speak, on autopilot, or simply following the herd. He is not asserting himself as an individual in full command of his humanity. In our daily lives we face many situations where we follow preestablished behaviors: at work, in the street, when dealing with our family. But it is only when we depart from what is expected from us that we become individuals, when we reject the well-worn path of custom and make personal choices.