The subject of courage is one modern society hardly talks about- at least in traditional terms- and waters down to utter meaninglessness when it does (by design).
So how to address this? One fellow seems to have made a start at it, and it seems interesting.
I think his analysis of the problem and how it's related to "safetyism" seems to me to be on the money:
He seems well on the right track.
He also seems to understand the importance of Horsemanship in the process-
Let us hope his dream of establishing an "Academy of Chivalry" by 2030 becomes manifest. It can't happen soon enough for our society.
What he needs now are benefactors, hopefully he can find some.
10 comments:
What do we do? Same thing that has always taught people. Positive and negative examples and consequences.
For starters, take every cop that stood outside the recent school shooting with their thumb up their ass , strip them of their jobs, pensions, and try them for dereliction of duty and cowardice in the face of the enemy. Just WTF about kids are being shot right fucking now did they not understand?
Ever read the story of Stephan Willeford who shot the murderer at a church in Sutherland Texas? He grabbed his rifle, a handful of ammo ,barefoot and ran out the door to engage the bastard. In his commentary, he said every shot he heard, he knew someone was dying, and he could not waste time. Barefoot. Five fucking rounds of ammo. FIVE ROUNDS. So what were these pieces of Public Paid Tactical Operator Shit doing as the bang bang bang was coming from the school?
Waiting for the fucking donut wagon?
Then find the few that actually did their jobs and promote them to the highest level commensurate with their abilities and desires.
I am despondent today- this entire episode brings into stark reality the fact our country and culture is disintegrating- both the broken insane killer and the equally broken response.
BTW, if one pulls up the wiki article on the Sutherland Springs murders, you will find Mr. Willeford, a genuine hero, barely noted. Lots about the killer, and his guns , and gun control screed, but damned little about the man who actually stopped the POS. In a former age, when we had a culture and country, he would have been prominent.
If we had a real culture, we'd shoot the cowards instead of firing them. As it is, we shall do neither.
The horses are a big deal. I think you can do it without the horses, but the horses definitely make the process smoother and easier. He's about where I was in 2013.
https://grimbeorn.blogspot.com/2013/08/what-chivalry-is.html
For starters, take every cop that stood outside the recent school shooting with their thumb up their ass , strip them of their jobs, pensions, and try them for dereliction of duty and cowardice in the face of the enemy. Just WTF about kids are being shot right fucking now did they not understand?
No knock on raven, but this is what happens when we take an intrinsically mendacious press more interested in its hype and jumping to its preferred conspiracy concepts (I won't dignify them with calling them theories) than in reporting facts seriously.
This morning's (27 May) presser makes clear a number of things the Wonders of the journalism guild missed with their determined early sensationalism: one is that many cops entered the school within four minutes of the beginning of the trouble/shooter's crash and shooting at funeral parlor employees responding to the crash. Those cops were inside throughout. The cops outside should have so advised the parents who were on the verge of panic and especially in view of a group of parents getting ready to penetrate the school on their own.
Another thing the press missed in its haste is that the shooter gained entry--after shooting through windows from the outside--via a backdoor that protocol required be locked along with all outside doors other than the main, front door. That back door had been propped open by a teacher seeking to retrieve a cell phone s/he had forgotten, because personal convenience was more important than following rules.
A third thing is that the delay in penetrating the classroom of interest was because the commander on scene made the deliberate decision that the situation had evolved from an active shooter to a barricaded shooter--no immediate threat, so wait for keys to the locked door. That's being decried as definitionally wrong by the same sensationalist press--and by the Texas head cop.
What the press is still missing--and after all the pressers extant, I have to conclude that it's a deliberate act of ignoring--is the real-time information flow: what did those cops outside the school know about cops inside: were they being kept current? What did the on-scene commander know about what was going on in the room of interest or anywhere else in the building? Was he being kept current? Some of the failure to address the information flow is on the head Texas cop who didn't address it (maybe that part of the timeline hadn't been completely analyzed by this morning), but who was willing to criticize the on-scene commander in the absence of knowledge of flow. But the press is studiously not asking for that information. The press is, however, sensationalizing the head cop's hindsight disagreement with the on-scene commander's decision as "heavy criticism."
What I'm seeing about the situation itself is that it's the outcome of annual or semi-annual training that (I speculate) consists of slide shows and maybe a walk-through. It's a near-truism that in stress/battle, we perform at 70% of the skill level we've achieved in peacetime training. What happened in Uvalde is a demonstration that those responders' 70% (with the exception of the the CBP's Bortac SWAT team members as breachers, who train much more extensively) was woefully inadequate.
Eric Hines
"What do we do? Same thing that has always taught people. Positive and negative examples and consequences."
Aye, but we don't do that as a society anymore, Raven, do we? In fact, quite the opposite- we exalt the damaged, the vulgar, the profane- and shun beauty and truth- and courage. We need institutions that will at least help maintain a seed of the values we treasure for the future, if nothing else.
Grim, I was hoping you'd be gratified by the recognition of the importance of horses to chivalry, given your past writings.
I agree about horses but the list of activities that build character and courage doesn't end with the one item.
Yes, rodeo. But yes too, surfing. Caving. Scuba. Sky diving. ...
Add to the list any sport where the participant maintains his (most often, "his") gear and studies the principles and then trusts life itself to doing it correctly and well.
Take whatever risks you want for yourself. But it's not courage to increase the risks for others because you are just sure that it will be better for their character. It's not a virtue.
relevant to Courage:
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2022/05/bureaucracy-doesnt-allow-courage/
An important reason is probably fear of ridicule. Many seem to think it's stupid, or even vaguely immoral, for the underdog to fight back. (Unless he wins, and he likely won't.) If someone rushes a gunman and dies, will he be praised as a hero or scorned as a fool? Even posthumous ridicule is a strong counter-incentive.
Take whatever risks you want for yourself. But it's not courage to increase the risks for others because you are just sure that it will be better for their character. It's not a virtue.
It's not a virtue to raise the risks for others; virtue, however, may result in them depending on how they respond to the challenges. Virtue is an internal state of habituated character that enables excellence that wasn't available before the habituation. Giving people the opportunity to habituate is the only way it might come about. (This is not always especially risky, but usually is at least moderately so: one develops the virtue of moderation, if one does, only by exposure to pleasures one must learn to resist, and that is mildly to greatly risky depending on how pleasurable the pleasure is.)
It's also important to notice that developing virtue reduces the risks for others. Having courageous people around might be protective, and having moderate people around, and so forth -- more people who will stand up against criminals, fewer drunk drivers.
Yet I think a fundamental issue where the horses are concerned -- which doesn't exist in the other cases -- is the relationship you develop with a mind unlike your own. This is a chance to widen your understanding, develop a deepened awareness of what other minds are like, and befriend a creature far stronger but far more terrified than yourself who might come to trust and really love you.
All these school shooters are alike in lacking a good relationship with their fathers. We can't fix that; fathers may be dead, may be bastards, may be absent for reasons of their own. You can't give them their father back. But they might yet find a relationship with a horse. Maybe that will help some of them. If not, maybe some of their cohort will develop what it takes to stand up to them while in the saddle.
+1 on "connecting with horses", Grim. A good distinction from surfing or other dangerous sports.
Of emotional connections, though, how much of the admitted benefit could be also conveyed by responsibility for care of a much smaller, less dangerous, animal? (Or at least, does the child who lets the goldfish die or tortures the hamster earn a "red flag" against adult responsibilities?)
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