On Courage
I.
What is the biggest problem in America today?
You will get a wide range of answers depending on who you ask. Some will tell you it is racism. Some will say income inequality. Poverty. Homelessness. A more interesting thinker might say it is an epidemic of moral relativism. Some, economists in particular, might tell you it is the fertility crisis (economists, if you haven’t heard, are very worried about the impact declining birth rates will have on Their Graphs). And so it goes with claims for or against belief in God, or wokeness, colonialism, global warming, etc, etc.
All compelling answers, more or less, but all wrong: the greatest problem in America today is a matter of virtue. One in particular is lacking: courage.
Courage is the elemental ingredient in virtue, in civilization, and everything in-between. It is the flaming heart of western culture and its many staggering achievements. And it is on life support.
Amidst the dramatic shift in our cultural values over the past four or five decades, even the concept of virtue has become disembodied. Being a good person in the eyes of the default culture is about having the correct beliefs, not about embodying those beliefs through virtuous actions.
Example: a student from an elite university participating in a program I managed complained to me one day that there were not enough black people admitted into the program (we didn’t consider that as a factor in admissions or ask for ethnic identifiers in our application, but okay). A few days later, she lied to our housing department that we had given approval for her to check out not one but two days extended past everyone else in the program (on our dime). I am certain that this person remains well-assured of her own moral righteousness, even though through her actions she de facto stole money from the discretionary funds in our budget that we use to award scholarships for low-income students. And, surprise, she also didn’t have the courage to respond when we asked her—politely!—to explain the situation from her POV.
So it goes.
A lack of courage is upstream of the problems mentioned in my opening. Oh, you’re not having kids because you’re worried about global warming? Coward! Your ancestors chose to bring life into this world during famines and plagues, wars and revolutions. You wouldn’t be here if they didn’t. If this is how your bloodline ends, so be it, just don’t pretend you’re upholding some higher moral cause and doing the world a big favor.
(Also, imagine if any of the thousands of plausible technological solutions to climate change come to fruition – how silly will the doom-and-gloomers look then?)
II.
When it comes to the question of who to blame for our crisis of courage (and we do love blaming people for things in America), there are a few obvious targets:
Some blame must be laid at the feet of our education system, which emphasizes obedience and conformity over earnest truth-seeking and punishes anyone brave enough to dissent.
Some blame must be laid at the feet of the broader culture in America, which emphasizes instant gratification and easy, temporary solutions to problems at the expense of the long term. There is a cost to convenience.
Some blame, surely, must be laid at the feet of the media and journalists, who feed us an endless stream of self-righteous, self-important hysteria, a constant shrieking that, “THIS TIME THE SKY IS FALLING, FOR REAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
(No, sorry, it’s not, I went and checked for myself.)
Think about the world we’d live in if the Wright brothers listened to the editorialists at the New York Times who sneered at the idea of flight as a worthy pursuit?
“Man won't fly for a million years – to build a flying machine would require the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanics for 1-10 million years.” - From “FLYING MACHINES WHICH DO NOT FLY,” The New York Times, October 9, 1903.
Or:
“We hope that [aviation pioneer] Professor Langley will not put his substantial greatness as a scientist in further peril by continuing to waste his time and money for further airship experiments. Life is short, and he is capable of services to humanity incomparably greater than can expected to result from trying to fly …”
- From Editorial, The New York Times, December 10, 1903.
(By the way, the NYT did the exact same thing with rockets and spaceflight.)
At the end of the day, though, the true blame for our dwindling supply of courage must be placed squarely on each of us as individuals. We were created with a divine fire burning inside of us. So long as we draw breath, it is never truly extinguished. But there are so many forces and so many institutions acting against that fire, seeking to diminish its glow and redirect your desires.
Many Americans have let their guard down and fallen into living dull, overmedicated and overmediated lives. I think a lot about the young children who—exhibiting signs of restlessness in the stale air of an elementary school classroom—are diagnosed with “behavioral issues” and given ADHD or other psychiatric medications, setting them off on a lifelong journey of being chemically tinkered with, of adjusting scripts and trying desperately to find balance in a world where they can’t even remember what it felt to feel like themselves.
They never stood a chance. Heartbreaking.
III.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made headlines when he stated, “We’re competing with sleep [not HBO].” That should have been an eye-opening moment of candor. Here is the CEO of Netflix saying out loud that, as part of their business goals, they are okay with making their customers get so addicted to consuming that they forget to sleep.
If you want to put it plain and simple (and I do): Netflix is an enemy of human flourishing. They create and peddle slop. The majority of their content makes you dumber and dampens your spirit.
This is not really even Netflix’s fault, per se, they are just responding to competitive market incentives. But that doesn’t matter to the end user who is being exploited, whose life is being made worse by using their product. Netflix is a homunculus, something demonic and unnatural that people use to artificially fill the holes in their life created by modernity. Lonely after work? Netflix will keep you company.
One of the other side effects of a Netflix-consuming lifestyle is that it neuters the courage-generating part of your soul. It turns you into a passive observer, a voyeur peering into the lives of others from the comfort and safety of your living room sofa.
A controversial take, maybe, but I say people are meant for so much more in life.
IV.
“... courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions.”
- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Speaking from the heart, I have been haunted by a recent personal failure in the field of courage. Something important to me went rather horribly wrong and I know it would have gone better if I had approached the situation more courageously, more directly. What can I do about it now? Nothing. It is done, the result etched in the stone of history. I can only go forward and remember the cost of failures past at the next critical juncture, and share this story so you might do the same too.
Although experience can be a painful teacher (and in this case, deeply so), I am still grateful for the lesson. We must always remember: courage is not zero-sum. Courage begets more courage. I’ve befriended some notably courageous people over the past few years and they inspire me to be the best and most courageous version of myself. And when I am successful at courage, I know that I am inspiring the people in my life, too. (‘People in my life’ is to be interpreted broadly here – if you’re reading this, guess what, you’re in my life!)
If you don’t believe me, maybe this will convince you. See how one act of courage inspired another, and how it grew from there like wildfire? See how they surrendered to their desire to create joy and simply ignored the fear of looking ridiculous? This is the very definition of profound truth. So, surrender to joy, and let it prevail.
The best news is, we can all be starting dance parties at Sasquatch music festival 2009 in our lives. We just need to be courageous enough to start dancing.
V.
A prayer:
Let us go into the days ahead of us with a willingness to defend ourselves from the people and institutions attacking our spirits. With the fortitude to say no to what must be said no to. With the wisdom to ignore that which is unworthy of our attention. With the humility to be gentle and secure and loving in how we move through life and connect with each other. And, above all, may we find the courage so that each of our virtues can endure at the testing point. Amen.
Spinelessness may have trapped us in our cultural malaise, but courage can set us free.
And when the moment comes, remember: courage is a choice. Don’t overthink it.