And the good news story that I'm going to hopefully come to at the end is that it makes some of us heroes.

But revolutionary breakthroughs in medicine were starting to turn the tide on these killers, and Indonesia s doctors were celebrated as heroes.

In an economy such as the United States, where start ups are revered, people who would make perfectly good project supervisors or salespeople establish their own companies, starving the ecosystem of middle managers.

But the flattening of the world has led to a flattening of the kinds of people who can be seen as heroes or seekers.

In contrast, United States servicemen who had celebrated victory in Iraq by pulling down Saddam Hussein's statue in central Baghdad and burning the Iraqi flag had been hailed as heroes.

But revolutionary breakthroughs in medicine were starting to turn the tide on these killers, and Indonesia s doctors were celebrated as heroes. I wanted to be a hero, too, so I studied hard and enrolled in medical school.