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Hemingway's famous definition of courage as "grace under
pressure" may literally remind you of the science of hydraulics. Imagine the
hero as Captain Courageous: someone like Spencer Tracy from the eponymous movie
standing up to bullyboy pressures truly beyond bursting point, with gritted
teeth and flushed face. One could, however, counter that such a portrait is more
evocative of grit than grace , being more suitable for a gun-toting cowboy like
Clint Eastwood than a Constitution-thumping Boston Brahmin like Gary Cooper.
Contrast Hemingway's take on grace that does not wilt under pressure with Norman
Mailer's characterisation of courage: he described it as the ultimate test of
existence: defeat fear and you gain some freedom; be beaten by fear and your
humanity shrinks a little. This is somewhat akin to the sauna experience, where
one is expected to defeat cold by taking it head-on after a scalding bath and
lacerations delivered with green whips.
Alas, it also sounds more like a masochist standing on a burning deck than a
fearless master. As UK chancellor Gordon Brown says in his recently published
Eight Portraits of Courage the business of having the right stuff is really not
about breaking down of culturally approved barriers of endurance and hardship.
It's about character, and the sort of inner metal people display under sudden
stress. The moral component
is crucial, Brown writes. When you defeat fear you're able to move towards
what's good and true. Submit to fear and you debase yourself into a compromise
with what is base and ignoble. Courage and the creation of the good life are
thus the two sides of the same sterling courage to the ladder the possibility of
change. The book profiles eight lives that embody courage in Brown's estimation.
Six nationalities are included: the earliest
portrait is of Edith Cavell, born in 1865 and the latest is of Aung San Suu Kyi,
who is still under house arrest in Myanmar. In conclusion, courage is defined as
"not the absence of fear, nor even the conquering of fear in isolation". Rather
it's the relentless pursuit of moral purpose, undertaken by those Brown
describes as "sustained altruists", who "devote long periods, sometimes their
entire lives to principled causes", This is spiritual courage rather than purely
physical one, which made a Mohandas into the Mahatma. |
