Chapter 14.                               (continued) 

It is familiar and cliché to push young people to aspire to courage. But clichés get to be clichés because they express something true. Amid the hazardous background of the physical universe, life strives to create stable, growing pockets of order. In the case of humans, it does so by programming into young people an entire constellation of values around the prime value called “courage”. From it, behaviors that meet and overcome adversity flow, and societies that believe in courage survive better because of that belief.

 

And now we come to a subtler insight. The value society instills into its young to make them seek out, meet, and conquer adversity must be balanced with a second value that will cause the energy put into seeking challenges to be focused so the individual can deal with those challenges efficiently. There is nothing to be gained by teaching young people blind aggression; it will only run amok in its own society and sometimes other societies. Eager, but directionless, young people end up hurting themselves in car crashes, daredevil stunts, and street fights, while accomplishing little or nothing in useful, material terms.

The courage-tempering value is usually called wisdom, but intelligence and judgment are also terms for this same value. Wisdom has the effect of directing humans to achieve objectives by behaviour patterns that employ their energy efficiently. It is seen clearly in the medieval code of chivalry and the samurai warriors’ code of bushido, both of which contain instruction on how a man may be simultaneously brave and civilized, i.e. “noble”.

                                

                                                                    Merlin and Arthur   (Frazetty) 

        

             The Education of Achilles by the Centaur Chiron    (from a fresco in Herculaneum) 

Not surprisingly, there are echoes of this balancing of courage and wisdom deeply embedded in mythology. The Greek heroes Jason, Achilles, Perseus, Theseus, and Aeneas all needed Chiron, the wise, kind, moderate teacher. Among the early Britons, Arthur needed Merlin. In modern myth, Luke Skywalker needed Yoda, Dorothy, Glinda, and Katniss, Haymitch. Courage tempered with wisdom.

   

                               Characters Dorothy and Glinda, from the film The Wizard of Oz

                         

                                                          Thomas Carlyle  (sketch by Samuel Laurence)

The most familiar moral value that is a hybrid of courage and wisdom is the one known as work. Diligence and conscientiousness are two of its other names, as most of us are wearily aware. But the dreary, tedious, clichéd feel of this values cluster should not discourage us. Clichés, like this one about the nobleness of work, become clichés because they express something that is universally true. “I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” (Thomas Jefferson) “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” (Thomas Edison) 

Courage is good. Intelligence is good. We learn that if we want to achieve great things we have to work very hard. Added together, and spread over lifetimes, wisdom and courage produce the synthesis called work. Thomas Carlyle distilled the idea well:

For there is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in Work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in Idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish, mean, is in communication with Nature; the real desire to get Work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature’s appointments and regulations, which are truth.³