sandbaggers: Re: Burnside as hero

Re: Burnside as hero

Kenton A. Hoover (shibumi@cisco.com)
Mon, 18 Sep 1995 11:39:14 -0700

>I don't know if this is actually an active list--I haven't seen any
>posts since I joined a week ago. I just wondered if everyone agreed
>with me that Burnside was, fundamentally, heroic (if tragically so)--
>sacrificing personal happiness and the comfort of an unburdened
>conscience for his ideal of duty. I was also wondering if everyone
>else enjoyed as much as I did the friendship/suspicion/manipulation
>interaction between Burnside and his ex-father-in-law.
>
>Jonathan Tracy

Burnside's sacrifice of his personal happiness and comfort was a *choice*,
not a requirement of his job. Other members of the service (Willy comes to
mind) and others who also have responsibility for the safety of the UK
(Wellingham) seem to have comfortable personal lives while still doing
their jobs. Burnside rather has drawn himself into his job so far that he
deprives himself of some parts of his humanity. Burnside chose to ruin his
own life, and as a result, I can't see his behavior as heroic; so many of
the obsticles he must overcome in his journey have been put there by
himself.

| Kenton A. Hoover Staff Technologist | shibumi@cisco.com |
| Engineering Computer Services | |
| cisco Systems, Inc. | +1 408 526 5249 |
|================== http://www.shockwave.com/~shibumi/ =====================|
| "Fifty percent of the companies that lose critical business systems for |
| 10 or more days never recover. Ever." |
| -- PC Week, Febraury 6, 1995, page 129 |