Courage is the feeling of being deeply grounded in oneself, in one's own values and decisions, so that a person stops feeling fears, doubts and hesitation within himself. This concentration is so deep that it never occurs to us to give it up, neither under internal pressures nor under joint pressures. Although the observer may feel admiration, inspiration or envy, for the actor the act of bravery does not carry any special feeling, it simply arises from harmony with one's own values.
We can easily think about most of the properties important for good cooperation independently, without including other properties. We define them positively, not through opposites. We know that hypocrisy is the dark side of honesty, but it is not necessary for us to see the concept sincerity.
Bravery is one of the few counterexamples. We can think about it independently, but it is often difficult for us to separate it from fear. Of course, courage is not the mere absence of fear, but it is a somewhat rare experience, and fear is so common knowledge that it easily usurps our capacity for thought.
Our all-encompassing innate fragility, at the level of the entire species, leads to extreme caution and easy overwhelm with fear, and allows for only occasional bursts of courage. Just as many people suffer from high anxiety, various forms of phobias or panic attacks, hardly anyone is troubled by too intense courage.
There are people ready to take any risk if someone is endangered and needs to be saved. Whether it's fire or water, an enemy weapon or a means of transportation that no one has control over, some are heroes and are able to even sacrifice themselves to save others, especially if it's larger groups and/or children. This form of bravery is heavily televised, so it's often the first example that comes to mind.
Closely related to this is the so-called physical courage. It is easier for someone to risk pain and injury, to jump, fall, burn or fight. He will not back down easily, and perhaps even seeks danger on purpose, so he dares to engage in extreme sports. He is more ready to protect others and himself, and to attack, so whatever it costs, it costs.
COURAGE AS A VICTIM
In the social sphere, however, many other forms of courage can be far more important. Some refer to ideological, religious or political struggles in which a person will not betray his convictions at any cost. Many Christians followed their savior who endured pain, humiliation, crucifixion and death, and it is believed that he could have prevented all that. Historical examples of different types of revolutionaries are closer to us, and perhaps the best is Gandhi's willingness to sacrifice his life for the freedom of India, but not to kill. Indeed, he endured physical abuse, imprisonment, exile, hunger strikes and was eventually assassinated over several decades, but his quiet courage brought down an empire and inspired millions.
An important phenomenon in political life is that revolutionary fearlessness can turn into conservative cruelty in the blink of an eye in order to preserve power, and thus a form of cowardice. So in Rome today you can see the chains with which the Apostle Peter was allegedly chained, and endless pictures of the Apostle Stephen tied to a tree and pierced with arrows, but also the statue of Giordano Bruno in the very square where the Church burned him because he refused to renounce the scientific discoveries that are taught in every elementary school today. Countless similar stories are related to Goli otok, gulags and Paris in the first years after the revolution.
SWIMMING UPSTREAM
But not everything has to be so dramatic. Any act of rejection of conformity can be said to contain at least a modicum of courage. Our need to be accepted in the group is usually so intense that hardly anyone (before or after adolescence) dares to deviate greatly. Only a few creative or simply honest people dare to express their disagreement at work, at school, in the artistic or scientific community. And that is exactly the kind of courage we need in order to progress, and often many follow the one who dares to break through the ice.
This is quite similar to the so-called moral courage, where, regardless of politics, a person does not give up his principles even under great combined pressure - he will not lie to get a job, he will not steal to feed his children, despite the fact that those around him think he is crazy. Courage here is mainly internal - not to be afraid and not to give up one's decision, in the face of external condemnation and possible personal regret. A perfect illustration of this is the first half of a brilliant novel about a dervish who is constantly questioning what means he can use to try to rescue his imprisoned brother. And indeed, if there is a domain to which "fear often tarnishes a man's face" could be perfectly applied, it is moral courage, since each of us, under pressure of various kinds, stumbles many times and chooses an easier, more painless or more comfortable solution at the expense of faithfulness their values.
ABOUT LOVE, LOVE AND DEATH
The least interesting is the courage that appears in relationships defined by some kind of love. It is known that many mammals sacrifice themselves to defend their young, and Shakespeare uses the legend according to which pelicans, when they have no catch, tear open their own breasts with their beaks and drink the blood of the birds. Sacrifice for children or a family member also happens among people, of course, whether it is life, organ donation, giving up possessions, or sacrificing time. But all that seems more like an "automatic" sacrifice than courage.
It is even worse with the courage attributed to lovers. The urge is so intense, and the potential reward so attractive, that even apparently courageous acts do not involve enough autonomy in decision-making to be considered true courage. When a young woman, unprotected, while sitting on a park bench, agrees to visit a "respectable foreigner" only because his servant, with eyes of different colors, knows for sure that her beloved is alive and where he is, the reader can easily feel the fear for her further destiny and to believe that she is brave. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. She is motivated by the possibility of realizing love for which she is willing to sacrifice everything, but probably nothing has changed in her willingness to save the occupants of a burning building. This is also an example that has appeared countless times on stages, screens and screens. Julia is ready to drink a potion that will make everyone think she is dead, Gilda sacrifices herself to save the man who played with her, Zhivago stays so that Lara and her daughter can escape.
Courage for love seems easy. The true test of all courage is facing death. And whoever is brave enough to risk injury, beatings, imprisonment or starvation, can recoil at the very idea of death, very often someone else's rather than his own (as in the scene "Boris Davidovich, don't give yourself to the sons of dogs!"). In religious discourse, Jesus confirms his divine nature not only by resisting all the temptations in the desert, but also by accepting the death of his human nature, and Origen believed that Jesus descended into hell on the night before the resurrection in order not to redeem the souls of the damned. And many important literary characters go through a direct encounter with death and only then become heroes. Thus, the exclamation "This is I, Hamlet the Dane" occurs at the moment of jumping from Ophelia's grave, and Tolkien's Aragorn becomes king only after he "tame" the army of the dead.
LOVED CHILDREN TRUST THEMSELVES
Those were a few details about the forms of bravery. But what exactly is courage? What quality does a person capable of an act of bravery have? The answer might be surprising. Namely, courage is, by all accounts, the feeling of being deeply grounded in oneself, in one's own values and decisions, so that a person stops feeling fears, doubts and hesitation within himself. It is as if there is no special emotional quality, but simply that focus is so deep that it does not occur to us to give it up, neither under internal nor under pressure. Although the observer may feel admiration, inspiration or envy, for the actor the act of bravery does not carry any special feeling, it simply arises from harmony with one's own values.
And how do we cultivate courage and raise children to be brave? One of the New Testament epistles teaches us that "perfect love casts out fear". Translated psychologically, one could say that well-measured and well-timed love provides an excellent defense against being overwhelmed by fear and a foundation for developing courage. Children, and even babies, who feel that they are reliably loved, explore the outside world more readily, play with strangers more easily, and later explore their own minds more freely. They, in general, trust themselves more, because they have a lot of "accumulated" experience that help is at hand and that they can help themselves and calm down. This should help them to know fear but not break under it; to be ready to take risks, but to take risks wisely.
It should also be expected that children will be brave if they can regularly see clear examples of courage in the family and society, not only in words and stories about tradition, but also in actions in everyday life. It is also important to note that the adventurism of the adolescent years does not have to have anything to do with courage, but often arises due to peer pressure - which is the opposite of courage - or due to insufficient attention to the obvious possible consequences, which is just recklessness.
The relationship between courage and aging is relatively paradoxical. With age, the physical aspect of courage decreases, but the moral aspect can grow, so many people begin to shy away from jumping from a bridge, but they are less afraid of death and would sacrifice their lives more easily than in their youth.
Be that as it may, our age needs brave actions and brave people just like every previous one. One of our problems could be that courage today is largely confined to sports fields and the world of business, leaving the domains of politics, interpersonal relations and ethics. And it is possible that it will get worse. Because: how do you develop and show courage if your social life is almost exclusively on social networks?
The author is a psychologist
Less than two days of blockade - that's how long it took to see how weak and powerless the public media service is, both from the outside and from the inside. At the moment of writing this text, it is the eighth day of the blockade, and the sixth that RTS is not broadcasting its program. They also seem to be facing a strike inside the house. And the essence of blocking RTS is not in what it publishes, but in what it keeps silent
In the months after the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad, the flames of rebellion spread throughout Serbia. The first protests started in Novi Sad right after the tragedy. The authorities responded with arrests, police cordons and intimidation, but instead of calming down the protesters, new protests followed.
The rector of the University of Belgrade, Vladan Đokić, has been the target of top state officials and regime tabloids for months, who label him as an insidious instigator of student protests, an opportunist, "the face of evil" and "the leader of the criminal octopus." How and why a rector became "state enemy number one"
"I'm standing in the cordon, and my daughter is shouting at me 'aw, aw, killers'. What should I do? If they ordered me - I would throw down my baton and bulletproof vest and stand on the side of my child," a police officer from the south of Serbia, who works as needed in the Belgrade Police Brigade, told "Vreme"
The recent formation of the Đura Macuta government is part of the regime's revenge and cynicism. This can be seen most in the "black troika" of new ministers appointed to deal with the parts of society that are the leaders and symbols of the big rebellion that lasted for several months, the cause of which was the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad, which claimed 16 human lives. Education, universities, unsolicited media and parts of the judiciary that refuse to listen to orders, either publicly, with announcements, or hiding behind legal procedures, should be dismantled. Those who will have no problem doing everything they are told, even reinforcing the orders with their own inventions, are chosen for this.
Who mentions the extraordinary elections when the rating of the party in power is falling, and according to all surveys, Vučić is not the most important political factor in the country, but the students?
The brutal beating of students and citizens in Novi Sad shows that the regime is not only ready to take revenge - it is actually carrying it out
If in reality the principle of balance is violated - the way the incompetent regime violated the relationship between the concrete elements at the Novi Sad Railway Station - reality will behave like a canopy: it will fail to obey
The archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
See all
