I thought of this single phrase which describes courage nicely. Tell me your thoughts on this

Courage, is when the desire to do something, outweighs the fear of doing it.

literally speaking, I think the word means positive rage (passion) of the human heart, spirit, or conscience.

Does the courageous act necessarily need to be a desire?

What if it's a need?

It's an interesting idea though.

This makes courage a pretty general thing--a murderers desire to kill outweighs his/her fear of the act; I would not neccessarily consider this courageous (when I refer to murderers I am refering to soldiers~).

I like where you are going with this, but to me courage implies some nobel act.

COURAGE, IMHO, OR FORTITUDE, ORIGINATING IN HUMAN HEART/SPIRIT, IS ONE OF THE GREAT HUMAN VIRTUES. It is also my humble opinion that all virture originate in the GØD-given gift of human will power.
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There is an old saying: "Where there is A will there is A way." I would add: Where there is no will, there is no way. This is why I look on will power as the mother of all virtues.

WILL POWER--THE HIGHEST VIRTUE? WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Above all, it seems that, one way or another, we human beings must learn how to use our WILL power. It is the one way not to allow our animal instincts to use us.

ABOUT MY BLUE-FUNK MOOD, TODAY
Just today, I used the WILL factor to help myself get out of a BLUE-funk mood. Yes, I do get them. Is there anyone who does not?

THE VALUE OF OUR ANIMAL INSTINCTS
By the way, when it comes to surviving dangers, our animal instincts can be very valuable servants, if guided by a will-initiated postive mental/spiritual attitude (love). However, these same instincts can also be very destructive, of self and others, when not so guided by love. I believe that acting on our animal emotional-dominated instincts is what get us into much self-destructive and/or criminal behaviour.

ABOUT THE FUNDAMENTAL, OR CARDINAL, VIRTUES
Temperance is the second of the four cardinal virtues spelled out by St. Thomas Aquinas ("cardinal" means fundamental).The other three are prudence, justice, and fortitude/courage.

WHAT ARE VIRTUES?
Virtues are broad and robust ethical principles that apply to many situations.

Questions: What virtues do you value? Do you value them in a particular order? Or what?

I think that courage might also include the personal effort necessary in order to see what is the right thing to do.

Does it really take effort to see what is the right thing to do? To me at least I always know what is the right thing to do; often it is just a matter of doing the right thing, as opposed to taking the easy way out~

some people do not believe in the will, that it is an illusion, and that we are all automata (i.e., puppets).

I worry about the people who find it easy to know what to do. Religious dogma provides easy answers that are often wrong. The 9/11 hijackers were sure they were doing the right thing, but they were wrong to kill innocent people for an imaginary god.

Bucking the conventional wisdom takes hard work if not courage. Do suicide bombers have courage? Not enough to go against the irrationality of their religion. Lack of courage may explain why many Muslim groups do not speak out against terrorism against the west.

Very intresting questions, I suppose that what is courageous to one is cowardly to another? Do we have universal courage though?

Prehaps if we look past what takes individual courage and look at things that are universally accepted as courageous, we will find a more concrete definition?

I don't think there really are universally courageous acts--the closest I can think of is battling cancer, but that is not a choice, so it isn't really courageous.

I think prehaps a selfless act, where your desire to help another outweighs the fear of injuring yourself. That may be justified as universal courage. I think William Wallace had a great deal of courage to stop the english after 100 years of rape, murder and torture.

Thanks for pointing this out, Rick, But it seems to me that actually making the 'effort' is the by-product of the virtue, not the virtue itself.

Furthermore, let's not be overly modest here. It takes at least of modicum of courage for individuals to participate, regularly, and express sincere opinions in this public forum. The effort of doing so is the by product of that courage. What do you think, lurkers?

People speak of courageous acts, as on the battlefield. A soldier may courageously charge a machine gun, for example. But there is also a persistent dimension of time to courage too, so it is not just an instantaneous decision to "be courageous."

True courage may take many years of preparation. Abraham Lincoln spoke out consistently against slavery and persisted and won the Presidency. I think that's a good example of the more persistent kind of courage.

When Lincoln won the election for President, South Carolina seceded from the Union before he was sworn in, because they knew where he stood on the issue of slavery.

I couldnt agree more Rick, you make a good point, sometimes courageous acts are the hardest ones of all. It doesnt have to be something nobel, it could be taking the fall and embarssing yourself to save the dignity of another. I think there are a lot of types of courage.

It takes courage to speak out about something that has been silenced and it takes courage to do something society doesnt accept.

Abraham Lincon certainly showed a great deal of courage, I think that courage is a lot more dynamic and deeper than what first appears.

Some things are inevitable. History is full of events in which someone makes a choice according to the highest reality of equality, or the reality of union, where all things meet in the one.
Choices that are consciously made which foresee the inevitable are made without fear. This does not necessarily mean they are courageous according to the idea that fear is overcome, but that illusions are conquered and the choice to surrender to what is greater than duality is present. This laid the groundwork for all lesser interpretations of righteousness and courage.

Everything has it's place. The arrow has to be drawn back in order to create enough energy to propel it forward and those who would facilitate the appearances of regression are heroes as well, for they lay the groundwork for those who are recognized as the ones who change the direction of regression to progression.
When a society is stagnant in its complacency of intellectual reasoning moving neither forward toward truth nor backward away from it, it has to be shaken so that it will evolve.
As a civilization we still have not achieved a capacity to overcome selfishness nor to surrender our selfishness for the truth. That takes more than courage in terms of right and wrong. It takes the willingness to give up ones own sense of self worth in the comparison to others and to see reality as it really is.

BTW, would I be off topic if I suggested that the North never actually won the Civil War in 1865?

Sure it was important that battlefield hostilities stopped in 1865. But all that really happened at the house of Wilmer McLean, Appomatox, Virginia, April 9, in 1865, was an agreement by the elite, on both sides, to stop warring on one another.

Sure much was done to preserve the American Union, politically, but did the end of war really create a just society for those who were not members of the elite class?

For those who were not members of the warring elite, nothing changed all that much, until fairly recent times.

The question remains: How really concerned are we about anyone who is not a member of this wealthy, upper and elite class?

Unless this thread is about conspiracy theories relating to the civil war... I'd vote for off topic...

Lincoln as example of courage ->

Civil war as example of warring elite ->

Wealthy elite class and politics ->

Political change requires courage.

Close enough.

Guess you can make anything fit if you want to.

Say anything regardless of any measure of meaning to topic = boldness = courage

These threads are sometimes like brainstorming. Uninhibited creativity can be illuminating.

Absolutely. So is there really such a thing as being "off topic" when creativity has no limits?

With that qualification, yes. People have different tolerances for disorder.

Then off topic would refer to the tolerance level of personal preferences. What one is willing to accept or stand for. A measure of co-dependant sensitivity. Where one may be indifferent to anothers tolerance levels another may find that person offensive, flare into a fit of emotion and create projection of rejection, separation and condemnation.

The meaning would be subjective to personal, even democratic analysis.

This is so true!!!!

Lincoln didn't speak out against slavery...Lincoln said that he would do whatever it takes to keep the union whole, and if that meant abolishing slavery, then he would abolish slavery. Lincoln didn't free a single slave--the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to states that had succeeded from the Union.

Political change requires courage--I like that. I would also add that political change requires deviant behavior.

About being off topic,

When is brainmeta ever on topic? Going from one subject to another on BrainMeta is as sure as the sun will rise tommorow. Getting off topic is sort of like a de-tour, it can be fun. Were Philosophers, we always get off topic, thats just our nature.

Actually we are off topic right now because we are talking about being off topic in a topic about creativity! muahaha, lol.

Lincoln was a politician, of course, so he watched his words carefully. Therefore, he never actually proposed abolishing slavery. That would have been impolitic, but the South Carlinians could read his attitude on the subject, which he could not hide (nor did he try), so they seceded from the Union in anticipation that slavery would be outlawed. Ironically, they were wrong, and had the Civil War not started, the south would have naturally evolved toward freedom on their own.

A number of Lincoln's speeches in the several years leading up to his election very clearly state that Lincoln thought slavery was wrong. The southerners paid careful attention to Lincoln.

When I get home I will find his personal writings in which he expresses why he is opposed to slavery (it has nothing to do with granting blacks rights). Like I said Lincoln didn't free a single slave~Durring the war slavery was still legal in the northern colonies--the Emancipation Proclamaition only effected the south over which Lincoln had no control.

I like this, history on brain meta

~The thing to remember about history, is its full of lies.

~History is written by the winners.

That is why you go to the primary source--the personal letters and papers written by the individuals themselves. Who better to express Lincoln's views than Lincoln himself?

Yes, indeed, the papers of Lincoln, including his letters and speeches are the primary source. Lincoln opposed slavery for reasons of logical consistency. The nation was founded on the principle of freedom, so to be consistent, freedom must be granted to all. The Gettysburg Address embodies this principle.

More specifically economic freedom~

Was it Henry Ford who said, "History is bunk." ?
Perhaps much of it is; but surely there are some truths.

My experience is that, in the UK at least, muslim groups are very vocal against terrorism anywhere.

Interesting, Simon. I love my American cousins, and I really do have many of them--especially in the New England and New York--but perhaps because they are mostly uni-lingual and have such an interesting and dynamic nation to keep them busy, many of them really do not pay all that much attention to what is really going on elsewhere. Look of the messy wars they have gotten themselves into because of their lack of knowledge of the cultures of other peoples.

For example, Most Americans do not know that much of the population of Canada lives south of the 49th. parallel. And not all that cold weather--and certainly not all that bad weather--has its genesis in Canada.

Another thing: There are many famous "Americans" who were actually born in Canada, the UK and elsewhere. Very few Americans know that the great inventors, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, had UK and Canadian roots.

WE NEED GLOBAL VILLAGES WITHIN THE GLOBAL VILLAGE
Perhaps we all need to have the courage to think more and more of a world without borders--what the Canadian, Marshall McLuhan (Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, 1964) of the University of Toronto called, "The Global Village". http://www.gingkopress.com/_cata/_mclu/undemed.htm
Chapter 14, on the nature and function of money as a medium, is very interesting. He defines cash as the "poor man's credit card".

Perhaps, also, we need a thread in which we courageously discuss poltical and economic ways and means of having free and prosperous "global villages", within the "Global Village", without the danger of people being dominated and enslaved by the new kind of borderless superpowers, the World Wide Corporations--who preach the gospel, "money knows no borders".

"Freedom" implies economic freedon and economic freedom implies equality. To deal fairly with each other, we must tell the truth about what we offer in commerce. That's why false advertising is illegal. It's the unfortunate case that regulation of commerce is required to keep people honest. The government checks gas pumps and scales for fair weights and measures for good reason: where they don't do it, the cheaters thrive.

Speaking of gas pumps--I was in Missouri the other week and some A**hole gas station watered their gas down or something...The car was misfiring to the point where it was causing damage to the master cylinder. It really is sad that commerce has to be regulated...

I'd love to dialogue as to ways and means of achieving economic freedom. Suggestions, anyone? We may need to start a new thread, which is okay by me.

Economic freedom--abndoning the confines of personal posession. I think it is funny that anyone thinks they own anything (especially land). What does it matter when there is a war, and your land is taken from under your feet, or a nuclear bomb is dropped--what does you money mean then?

Flex, you write "Economic freedom--abandoning the confines of personal posession."
Have you become a pessimist?

I have always been a pessimist I also happen to be an anti-materialist (if that makes any sense)

Many anti-materialists don't have much, but most have something. Many anti-materialists become materialists. Some materialists never have much. Many materialists keep what they have until they die. Both anti-materialists and materialists die .... then they both are nothing and have nothing .... That's life ....

Maybe, instead of being materialist or anti-materialist, people should just do what they are passionate about and whatever happens - happens.

When you have had a gf who lived in a $30 million house, and you have a brother who could, but lives in a 12 passenger van, you start to think of these things~I am anit-materialist in the sense that I can't stand materialistic people, not necessarily that having things you earned is a bad thing. I love people who work for the pride of production, not the pride of posession.

http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge207.html#zimbardo

I believe courage is having the strength to do something of which no other person will. Many people get a boost of courage from something bad about to happen to a loved one or a friend. A person will then fear for their friends life, and not their own. Eg. If there's a person trapped in a burning house, another member of their family will fear for their life and attmpt to save them!

Reply on any other thoughts!

Frm

Logical smxi-emo-girl

Age- 15

xxxx

That seems to sum things up nicely.

Welcome to BrainMeta.