Week 31: Courage

Heroism

A hero is someone who exhibits courage, bravery, tenacity and imperturbability to good effect. She saves or changes a life, with attendant risk to herself. Dorus Rijkers was such a person. He conducted nearly forty rescue operations at sea, more than twenty-five of them before joining the lifeboat service.
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Imperturbability

Imperturbability is equanimity with an attitude. It’s a little like my sister Judy: if you want to stop her, you’ll have to remove all ability for her to continue.
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Critical Thinking

A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death. [Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion: The End
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Bravery

“Kill me first, before you can kill my patients.” [Hawa Abdi] Bravery: the act of facing down fear.
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Intervening

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. [Martin Luther King, Jr., "A letter from Birmingham jail," (1963).] To intervene on behalf of another: to interpose ourselves in the path
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Altruism

Altruism is an element of courage: doing for another without regard for or at a cost to the self. It is a natural product of evolution in relation to kin and can be cultivated in relation to all living beings.
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Courage

unknown man facing down military tanks in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, June 5, 1989 (Jeff Widener photograph) Courage is an action taken at risk to the self. It is the active component of dignity. By now, it should be clear how each of the elements of dignity – wisdom, caring
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