The stories of ordinary people cast more light on our times than those of the famous. I was thinking this as I was reading the obituary of a man called Derek Mather. You've probably not heard of him before - I certainly hadn't, which is a shame as he was a hero.

He was a Navy pilot who was shot down in the Korean War. His captors gave him a choice: renounce your allegiance and be treated well, refuse and be treated as a war criminal. He refused and for the next nine months was tortured and starved. Several times, he was taken from a freezing six-foot cell and ordered to dig his own grave. When released he was congratulated on his conduct and, without fuss, resumed his naval career.

Reading about his ordeal, I could not help comparing it to the frenzied and farcical circumstances surrounding the detention of Navy personnel by Iran earlier this year.

Captain Mather did not weep over a confiscated i-Pod. He did not apologise in TV interviews stage-managed by his captors. The British public did not get daily doses of his relatives demanding the government do something. No journalists waved chequebooks at him.

I'm not criticising the young servicemen and women. They were placed in an awful predicament and then given bad advice on how to deal with their sudden celebrity. But they illustrate how attitudes have changed - many would argue for the worse.

For people in the 1950s, duty and deference were all-important. You did what you were told by people presumed to know better. The media reported events, it did not shape their outcome.

This gave our country an appearance of stability that many miss. But it disguised awful weaknesses. There was little tolerance of people whose views, lifestyle - or even appearance - challenged the status quo. Sexual and racial discrimination were rife. Powerful people were seldom called to account and often got away with blue murder.

However often we polish our rose-tinted spectacles, the old days won't return. Our society is now questioning, sceptical of authority, non-deferential and tolerant. The influence of tradition has been supplanted by the power of the media, which more than ever shapes our views and lifestyle.

But individually and as a country we are capable of great things - acts of moral and physical courage, self-sacrifice and self-control. Pause and think for a moment how we reacted to the latest terrorist incidents. There was no panic, no howling for retribution. Instead, there was a collective calm and outstanding acts of personal bravery. In other words, we reacted in a way that Captain Mather and many others like him would have recognised and applauded.

We need to create a set of values that reflect the realities of life in our urbanised, democratised and multi-cultural Britain, but which still give us something to reach for, something in which we can take pride.

Few of us will ever have to face challenges as stark as that of Captain Mather or his many contemporaries who met evil head on in armed conflict. But there is still much to do in tackling the bad things in society - from cynicism and prejudice to poverty and environmental degradation. A lot of the work will be dirty and unsung, but we can derive a lot of benefit from doing it. In particular, we need to give young people a share in the task.

I've often said in this column that we need fewer idols and more heroes. The best thing about a hero, of course, is that we can all be one. So why not start trying today.