Rediscovering Courage

It has been in decline

Consider this scenario: You and your co-workers are attending a mandatory diversity workshop. Unlike the Equal Employment Opportunity classes of the past, this program does not seek to address behavior. Its goal is to change attitudes. You feel that is none of your employer’s business, but you – and most of your co-workers - say very little in the session. In fact, the trainer gives a variety of opinions with which you strongly disagree, but you remain silent.

Why?

You don’t want to risk jeopardizing your relationship with any of your co-workers and you know that, in modern America, surfacing contrary opinions on the subject of diversity can be a career-killer. An old joke from the Soviet Union comes to mind: “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”

Judging from the post-class feedback from a diverse array of your co-workers, there is a new rule: “They pretend to train us, and we pretend to learn.”

Courage is not fearlessness. It requires overcoming fear. But you don’t see courage as an issue in your case. Your silence is a strategy in a game in which courage has no role. You listen to the diversity trainer drone on, but you do not see any point in disrupting the class – and you think that any dissenting opinion might be called a disruption. In your eyes, your courage is not in question. The courage of the management team that decided to hire these diversity trainers, however, is very much in doubt.

And that’s part of the problem with courage in America today. The deficit is largely at the top. Get together a diverse cross-section of truck drivers, plumbers, electricians, construction workers, cooks, teachers, firefighters, and cops and you’ll get some frank opinions about what they’ve been seeing on the job. Unfortunately, the picture is not always pretty.

They see places where the best people aren’t chosen for promotion. They know that upper management is far less likely to back the people on the ground if there is any sort of complaint. And many have suffered when jerks are kept on board because a potential threat of legal challenges is paralyzing to the executive suite.

The members of our cross-section go to movies where ridiculous casting decisions regarding historical figures reveal that the film was produced by people who are willing to sacrifice accuracy in order to placate advocacy groups.

They see anti-Semitic demonstrations on university campuses and wonder why the police weren’t immediately called in to protect Jewish students.

They are baffled when the same people who call for safe spaces and trigger warnings also call for the suppression of free speech.

They see milk and cookies and Legos and coloring books being offered at Georgetown University to soothe students who were upset by the results of the presidential election, and they realize that most, if not all, of those fragile souls are going to be ushered into well-paid and high-ranking jobs in the future.

In many instances, the children of our cross-section go to schools in which poor teachers are seldom fired and where students who have next to no grasp of the study material get inflated grades and are passed along to the next level.

They see reporters on television who, unlike journalists of working-class origins years ago, have instead emerged from some of the most prestigious schools in the nation and who seem more interested in shaping public opinion as opposed to informing the public.

They see that despite all of the noble talk about education, the cost of education has skyrocketed, the trades are hurting for workers, computerized walls surround businesses as well as people and, because of that, personal connections are more important than ever before.

But it’s harder to connect without courage. Unfortunately, one of the prime messages of today’s society is “Trust no one. We’re not in this together.”

In the end, the primary victim of the decline in courage is trust.

We need a major revival of courage

Years ago, the late and great journalist Michael Kelly wrote about the need to return to “cool” values that eventually came to be associated with being “square.”

What were they? “[C]ourage, bravery, strength, honesty, love of country, sense of duty.”

Note that courage was first. That is proper. Go all the way back to Aristotle and you will find courage leading the list of virtues.

The explanation is simple. Without courage, the exercise of the other virtues is blunted.

We need more of it on campus and in the boardroom. At the PTA and on the Internet.

This doesn’t mean that courageous sainthood is necessary. Michael Kelly recommended a role model: Rick, the thick-skinned and hard-nosed bar owner played by Humphrey Bogart in the classic film Casablanca. In other words, a flawed person who was both cool and square and whose skepticism was ultimately matched by his decency and courage.

How many people today have even seen Casablanca? That is both a good question and a great start. We can build on that and then supplement our film list with books such as those by Stephen Crane, Elie Wiesel, and Viktor Frankl.

Let the usual suspects have their milk and cookies as they play with Legos.

It’s time for the rest of us to rediscover courage. Here’s hoping they catch up with us.

Stranger things have happened.