Courage – Week 2
Where I consider courage as a material feedback loop, the convenience of imagination, and our incapacity to deal with grief as a potential root cause of tyranny.
On this second week with courage, I continued dancing on the street. This time, I had less concern for the people around. Power of habit: we become less sensitive. My inspiration was a paragraph on Shiva from Aldous Huxley’s Island. The God of death and creation dances and plays for no reason other than rejoicing in pure movement. Excess energy wants an outlet.
Courage involves a physical encounter with the world. This is an important reminder for someone who spends most of his day sitting in front of a screen. My work is disembodied. Much as I balance it with long walks and rides, sit in different spots around the day, and hit hard on my keyboard, the connection between brain and result is too fast. I make decisions all day, as I change the shape of the texts I work on. I negotiate around the constraints of language. I have to decide where to cut, where to paste, and how much to share. I know the power of words well chosen. But the possibilities are enormous, resistance weak, and feedback loops distant. It’s a poor outlet for my excess energy. The result is a permanent background of vague uncertainty. Imagination roaming wide anticipates all sorts of outcomes. By contrast, when we do something physical, there is a reaction. It may not be what we want or expect, but it limits the scope of what might be, and forces focus.
An old friend shared a personal project. They will be talking to a stranger every day. They describe how, in the lead up to an encounter, when they’ve chosen the person but haven’t yet spoken to them, there is a flutter of anxiety. This is when we’re most at risk of giving up. This is also where courage manifests. Where other virtues engage us to hold back, courage tips us forward to meet the world.
There is pleasure in that material encounter. I like cooking for that reason. The carrot resists under the knife. The fried egg will not uncook if I press control-z. That resistance of the real prompts a quality of attention that writing and screenwork do not offer. I enjoyed resistance training for the same reason, until I got a tennis elbow. Physically doing things is more than pouring energy out. It’s letting in a feedback loop, pressing against us like a massage or a firm caress. There’s a grip to the world. Feeling it brings satisfaction.
This, however, is where another aspect of courage comes in. Imagination is convenient. It moves with us and shapes itself to us. Not so physicality. Engaging in the world and meeting its grip requires aligning with a range of other rhythms and bodies, which is constraining. As I review the list of ‘difficult things’ I set myself to do, this is one of the recurring categories I observe. I have to get a blood test on Thursday. Which means I must head to the pathology clinic. I can’t eat or drink coffee before. There’s a urine test involved, but it’s summer and – well, I have to go back home, wait a while, and go back to drop the little flask. Then I have to bring an old bike to the store and get it fixed for a friend. Meaning I have to wait for them to open. Push the bike along Little Collins, dodge people and roadworks. Doctors, dentists, tradies, paperwork, and all the work of maintenance I’ve scheduled on courage week: what I find difficult, I notice, is not so much anticipated pain, but the constraints of aligning with the rhythms of others.
**
Towards the beginning of Jurassic World, we see Chris Pratt in the role of dinosaur whisperer jump in the velociraptor cage. With one hand forward and a clicker, he holds them at bay to save a handler who fell down by accident. This is a standard model of courage. The normal reaction to four coordinated dinosaurs is fear, prompting us to freeze or flee. Chris Pratt’s character chooses to confronts danger, inhibiting the natural fear response in favour of controlled calm. In that case, with positive results: the handler escapes. Also, it’s impressive.
One of the philosophical texts I most often refer to is a passage from Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws where he describes three forms of political regimes and the passions that underpin them. Aristocracy, he says, is based on honour – an aspiration to be better than. Republics are based on virtue: citizens hold each other to high ethical standards. Fear drives tyranny. Those relationships go both ways. The nature of the regime will provoke certain passions. The dominant mood indicates what regime you’re in. A shift in the prevailing emotions can precipitate regime change. Governance and people go hand in hand.
When I look at the world around me, or its reflection in myself, I sense a lot of fear. Fear of AI, and losing jobs. Fear of climate change and its consequences. Fear of violence and war, from Gaza to Ukraine. Fear of social dissolution. Fear of deportation, fear of migrants, fear of government control, fear of institutions collapsing. Tyrannical passions dominates.
Fear, writes Descartes in The passions of the Soul, is sadness projected into the future. I’ve written elsewhere, and often commented, that a poor capacity to deal with grief is the biggest impediment to change. Developing our capacity to face loss is key to reducing fear, and therefore avoiding tyranny. This is in part a matter of cultivating individual courage. Do difficult things, take calculated risks, and deliberately meet the world – whether dancing on the street, cooking eggs or doing chores. It’s cultivating joy to offset the unescapable grief that comes with life, dancing and playing on piles of skulls with Shiva. It’s also creating systems where loss is not catastrophic. Mutual care, manifesting as material and emotional support, is the cornerstone of all Republican aspirations.