Courage alone cannot break a world record. But, it brings out the finest in human qualities. While it enables ordinary people to triumph in a harsh environment, unique and exceptional acts of courage win universal respect. At its highest level, courage is the emotion, which grants extraordinary strength to a person to steadfastly do the right thing in the face of daunting dangers.
Ordinary acts of courage demand a suppression of the fear emotion. Great acts of courage require both a strong will and inherited excellence in the relevant field. A courageous act is initiated by a subconscious emotion. The emotion improves performance, but can not grant strengths, which exceed an individual's natural capabilities.
What
Does Courage Mean – The Quality Of Courage
When the
right conditions appear, the brain triggers the courage emotion. The individual's objective must be just for an
action to be perceived as being courageous. The emotion is strengthened by the possibility of victory.
A belief in extraordinary strength also helps. Possession of the
physical and mental skills needed to succeed add to the power of
courage.
Once triggered, the emotion acts to strengthen will by
stilling debilitating fear and by persistently focusing the mind on a
positive goal. Courage empowers even ordinary people to persist in
their tasks without expecting rewards, while facing hardship, pain,
shame, intimidation, certain defeat, or even the threat of death.
Exemplary courage enables a person with extraordinary skills to
attempt uncommon tasks.
What
Does Courage Mean – Emotions Guide Behavior
The courage
emotion empowers virtuous behavior. Emotions evolved to control
behaviors to meet survival needs. Emotional controls originate from
the limbic system as patterns of control impulses. The combinatorial
wisdom of the nervous system responds to these impulses by instantly
formulating attitudes and modifying behaviors.
Paul Eckman, the
famous emotions scientist said "We become aware a quarter, or
half second after the emotion begins. I do not choose to have an
emotion, to become afraid, or to become angry. I am suddenly angry. I
can usually figure out later what someone did that caused the
emotion." For each recognized situation, the nervous system triggers
an emotion, which triggers a particular type of behavior. Emotions are not a matter of choice. Courage is also not a matter of
choice.
Anger,
fear, despair and courage are different emotions. The attitude of anger is
indifference to consequences as it lashes out. Fear blinds memories
of past successes and compels the individual to withdraw from
confrontation. Despair switches off pleasant avenues of thought as it
envelops a person in gloom. Courage empowers positive action by
switching off reactions to fear, pain, shame and even bodily
weariness. When courage takes control, it sets an attitude, which
calmly faces fear and disapproval.
What Does Courage Mean
– Emotions Cannot Add New Talents
Emotions trigger powerful
and virtually instantaneous changes in behavior patterns. If, an
average person is suddenly required to walk on a plank a hundred feet
above ground, his fear will kick in. Fear will stiffen him into
immobility. Even slight movements will appear to be life threatening.
Instead of walking, he will desperately want to lie down and grip
the plank. That emotion will instantly suppress even his elementary
abilities.
Within the blink of an eye, an average person will
have lost his normal capacity to walk a few steps on a plank.
Effectively, a single emotion will have modified his entire behavior.
As against the effects of fear, courage can still the debilitating
efforts of fear and enable the person to walk steadily on the plank.
But emotions can only modify behavior to reach the best achievable by
an individual's inherited talents. Courage will be triggered only if
the individual has an adequate sense of balance. Courage cannot add
brand new talents.
What Does Courage Mean – Excellence
Enables Heroic Courage
Great acts of courage are universally
admired. Exemplary actions win the Victoria Cross, the Medal of
Honor, or the Profile in Courage Award. Peter Drucker suggested that
an individual's area of excellence is his/her ability to do something
that others find difficult to do. Great courage stands on
excellence.
Excellence in any field builds memories of
success and grants inner strength to an individual. A gallant attack
against the enemy or the passionate expression of an idea demands the
inner confidence that the contemplated action can be executed
successfully. For fear to be successfully stilled, the system
requires prior experience of success in the field. Exceptional
skills are the needed foundations for the activation of heroic courage.
What Does Courage Mean – Switching On
Patience
Professor Wolfram
Schultz discovered how nature utilizes an intricate neural
mechanism to trigger the patience emotion that enables persistent
efforts. The emotion makes a person persevere to achieve an
objective. To make this happen, the system energizes the forebrain
and switches off the emotion of annoyance and anger in the face of
setbacks. Schultz discovered that, when a reward is expected, the
early reptilian part of the human brain sends dopamine to the
forebrain.
Increased dopamine strengthens forebrain activity,
bringing clarity to objectives. A person feels more energetic and
elated. Heightened prefrontal activity inhibits the amygdala, which
triggers fear, anger or despair in the face of provocation. Schultz
noted that the system was sensitive to the expected time to be taken
to receive the reward. If the reward was not received within this
period, the despatch of dopamine stops. Energy disappears and
annoyance takes its place. Patience is a system determined attitude.
Courage also triggers patience.
What Does Courage
Mean – Courage Stills Negativity
An
action is seen to be courageous, when it is opposed to “normal”
instinctive behavior. Emotions determine behavior beneath conscious
levels. The courage emotion mandates behaviors, which far exceed the
demands of simple patience. A gallantry award is given to a soldier,
who acts against the enemy with intrepidity at the risk of his life,
above and beyond the call of duty. In public life, courage is
recognized, when people act in accord with their conscience, risking
their careers or lives by pursuing a larger vision, in opposition to
popular opinion or social pressures.
Emotions act beneath
conscious levels and control behavior. A fearful, or despairing
approach will compel a person to give up. Evidently, courage acts to
still many disabling emotions. Fear, which normally paralyzes a
person becomes stilled. Neither is the person diverted from his goal
by the expectation of a reward. The weakening effects of public
condemnation, intimidation, anticipation of certain defeat, or of
physical pain do not deplete the determination of a courageous
person. The effect of the courage emotion is to still negativity.
What Does Courage Mean – “The Biology Of
Courage”
Stanford
University psychologist Kelly McGonigal attributes courageous acts
to a sense of social cohesion, empowered by the presence of oxytocin.
It is a neurohypophysial hormone, which does act to still some
negative emotions. The hypothalamus produces and stores oxytocin in
the posterior pituitary gland. It acts on its receptors in
numerous regions of the brain to support certain uniquely focused
behaviors.
In a TED talk, Kelly McGonigal justified her view with
the report of an 8 year survey of people, who had admitted to feeling
highly stressed during the previous year. The researchers
found that, in this group, people who believed that stress was
harmful were 43% more likely to die than those who believed that
stress was good for them. McGonigal noted that the stress hormone
cortisol acts to constrict arteries, leading to heart attacks.
On
the other hand, oxytocin, which is also a stress hormone, plays the
role of opening up constricted arteries. She suggested that oxytocin,
which leads to good feelings while under stress, contributed to their
survival. McGonigal suggested that the biology of courage comes from
connecting with others. That resilience was created in the body with
the belief that stress is good for you.
What Does Courage
Mean – Oxytocin & Confrontation
The major effect of
oxytocin is to increase empathy, social cohesiveness, warmth and
love. There is improved recognition for positive social cues over
threatening social cues. But, emotional controls act with incredible
precision. The attitudes of warmth and goodwill will not produce
fierce responses to the enemy, or bring the disruptive efforts needed to compel
social change. The overall effects of the hormone appear to be
detached from the demands of gallantry in battle, or of heroic social
struggles.
Social or martial confrontation is an essential component
of courageous behavior. It is unlikely that the confrontational
aspect of courage originates from the effects of oxytocin. Many
of the numerous known effects of oxytocin have little relationship to
courage. Oxytocin receptors are expressed by neurons in many
regions, including the amygdala, ventromedial hypothalamus, septum,
nucleus accumbens, and brainstem.
The most powerful impact of
oxytocin is its direct support of numerous motor functions during
child birth. The attitude triggered by oxytocin supports active
efforts in the face of extreme pain. Raised levels of oxytocin
appear to operate in a feedback loop, which act to stimulate
contractions. The mechanisms, which trigger courage may lie in
other regions of the brain.
What Does Courage Mean –
Purpose & Determination
Great
acts of courage are universally admired. For such admiration to be
present, the objective of the action needs to be chosen wisely.
This implies that the objective of the action has been selected by
the highest level human intelligence, the prefrontal brain. The
philosopher Rudolf Steiner suggested that a true expression of will appeared “when conscious awareness was integrated with moral imagination
in making decisions.”
A courageous action is an act of virtue,
because the most powerful intelligence within the individual believes
it to be right, regardless of the opinions of others. It becomes a
powerful force, without external coercion in accordance with an
individual's ideals or moral outlook. A courageous action
demands conviction and persistence. In the normal course, an
individual's conscience as expressed by his prefrontal regions may
lack the strength to enforce a decision, because greed, fear, or
anger controls the system.
Aquinas holds fortitude or courage as being primarily about
endurance, not attack, because it is more difficult to allay fear
than to moderate daring. As Schultz noted, when a person expects the
reward of meeting his well considered objective, his internal
systems still debilitating fear. The courageous person persists in
his actions in the face of dangers. Courage becomes the quiet voice
at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”
What Does Courage Mean – Prefrontal
Regions
An act of courage is the choice of a single objective
in the face of a bewildering array of choices. It ignores the
instinctive impulses of fear, shame and weariness. Despite
distractions, the mind
returns to the task again and again. This is because the prefrontal
brain has focused its attention on a specific goal. The basal
ganglia is a basic component of the forebrain which supports the
attentional mechanism, where focused attention controls sequences of
motor functions or thoughts.
Experimental studies show that
the basal ganglia exert an inhibitory influence on a number of motor
systems, and that a release of this inhibition permits a specific
motor system to become active. The region functions by inhibiting
irrelevant motor systems and empower focused actions through
increased neural activity in the focused region. It is believed to
select one out of several possible behaviors to execute
at a given time. When the prefrontal region becomes strongly convinced, the basal ganglia
executes the considered will of the courageous individual. An act of
courage is the powerful expression of the prefrontal will.
What
Does Courage Mean – The Inculcation of Courage
Great leaders
have the ability to imbue their followers with courage. They set the
right conditions for the emotion to be triggered. They train them to
produce their best. They reassure them, when their actions are
successful. They make them believe that they have extraordinary
strengths. They convey visions of a just and achievable objective.
They convince them that victory lies on their side. The visions of a
reward fill their followers with energy and quiet their fears.
Across history, heroic leaders have shown that the moral courage of
people is more formidable than the arsenals of empires. Courage is the
weapon which has won battles across thousands of years of history.
This page was last updated on 18-Sep-2016.
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For my peace of mind, I earmarked 20 minutes for meditation on the terrace. With my eyes closed, I sense my hands on the chair and feel the numbness in my feet.
I feel my breath flowing through my nose, my throat, my chest and my stomach. I can hear the chirping of birds, the phut phut of auto rickshaws, the occasional roar of a truck and the insistent hooting of horns.
The wide sky and the treetops come to my attention, when I open my eyes, I see a pale moon over two hundred thousand miles away. I see the nuclear fires, blazing for millions of years in the pale globe of the setting sun. I see a single star millions of miles away in space.
I can see green shoots coming up on a tree, watch the dives and swoops of birds, the great circles of the hawks and flocks of birds flying home for the night.
Diffused light from the sun reflects off a parrot on the tree and enters my eye through a pinhole opening. I sense the bustling mood of the bird, even though it is smaller than a drop of water in my eyes.
All these things are seen and felt by me in a few brief minutes. In the distance, is the head of a man seeming to be no bigger than a pea. Yet, that head too sees and feels such things. Ten million people in this great city see and feel in ten million ways.
My mind wanders to a misty view of postwar London; an exciting glimpse of Disneyland. An awed view of Tiananmen Square. The looming Himalayan ranges. My mind takes me to distant galaxies.
It carries me into the heart of millions of invisible neurons, where electrical charges flash thousands of times a second powering my contemplation. I see the campaigns of Julius Caesar and Alexander. I feel the longings of Jehangir.
Already my mind has taken me to palaces, battlefields and even the stars. If I lost everything, but can just see and feel, in just a few brief minutes, my mind can travel the world, or imagine the cosmos.
While my thoughts wandered far and near, the thought "20 minutes is a long time" also kept floating in. And yet, life has already blessed me with over twenty million waking minutes! I have an infinity of time on my hands. Have I a right to expect more from life?
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