[lujim]

I think a heroic act happens at the individual level in the moment. It's when someone has to overcome their survival instinct to do their job in a given moment. Are terrorist heroic? No, they want to die because they think they will be rewarded. Where there heroic soldiers fighting on every side in WW2? I think so. Just because Hitler was a psycho doesn't mean that a German soldier jumping on a grenade to save his close personal friends didn't act heroically. He wanted to go home to his wife and kids but in an instant, without thinking about the macro political motives behind the leaders of his country, ignored his survival instinct and saved a few friends. Dying doesn't make you a hero, but I do think by definition a heroic act is when an individual ignores their self preservation instinct with no expectation of reward or gain to do a task that they might rather not do. I think the word is watered down to describe people that do nice things, but aren't risking literal life and limb.

[pangram]

I'm not sure that whether the individual believes there is a reward is relevant.

Example: atheist terrorists -- atheistic suicide bomber, say -- would be heroic because they don't believe there is a reward?

[lujim]

Are there atheist suicide bombers?

[anandr2013]

I get what you are trying to say, and i think it boils down to how you define a hero. If you had asked me about a heroic act, my definition would be very close to yours, while for a hero, my definition has now become, as you put it, a little watered down, thanks to how the word hero is used in todays culture.

On a related note, would you consider someone like Ozymandias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias_(comics)) a hero?