First, then, what are the values that enable humans to respond to the ceaseless, uphill struggle of life, the main consequence of entropy, the characteristic of life we know as adversity?

A whole array of values should be taught to young people to enable them to deal with adversity. In order to deal well with adversity, a society needs large numbers of people willing, even eager, to face constant exhaustion, exertion, struggle, and pain. In fact, a society proves most effective if its citizens take up the offensive against the relentless decay of the universe. Children taught to embrace challenge become adults who seek to bring new territories (perhaps even planets) under their tribe’s control, devise new ways of growing and storing food and building shelters, use technology to accomplish more work with less human exertion, and, in general, perform the tasks of survival more and more efficiently.

When we generalize about what these entropy-driven behavior clusters have in common, we derive two giant values that are found in all cultures; these are courage and wisdom.

In different cultures all over the world, courage is instilled in the young, which is what we would expect if it really does work. Bergson spoke of élan, Nietzsche of the will to power.¹ 

Japanese samurai lived by bushido, their code of total discipline, and European nations lived by a similar code, chivalry, right into modern times. But beyond the difficulties of translation from culture to culture and era to era, we see in all these values a common motif: they all direct their disciples to persevere through challenges of all kinds, even to seek challenge out. Achilles chose a brief, hard life of honour over a longer, easier one of obscurity. For centuries, the ancient Greeks considered him to be a model of a man, as do some people in nations that have absorbed ancient Greek culture to this day. Many other cultures have similar heroes.

                     

   

                       The Triumph of Achilles (credit: Franz Matsch, via Wikimedia Commons)

                                                        

                                

           Alleged photo of Apache leader Crazy Horse, c. 1877 (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

                                    

                             

                        Zulu leader, Shaka (credit: Jacob Truedson Demitz, via Wikimedia Commons)

                                                          

                              

                   Martial arts master and Chinese hero, Huo Yuanjia (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Confucius said that the superior man thinks always of virtue, while the common man thinks always of comfort. Nineteenth-century English writer K.H. Digby put it this way: “Chivalry is only a name for that general spirit or state of mind which disposes men to heroic actions, and keeps them conversant with all that is beautiful and sublime in the intellectual and moral world.”²

The exhortation to meet and even seek adversity, and to reject easy paths and lifestyles, echoes through all societies. Young people everywhere are especially encouraged to face hazards in defense of their nations. We can sum up the gist of all of these values by saying that they are built around the principle that in English is called courage.

It is familiar and clichéd to push young people to aspire to courage. But clichés get to be clichés because they express something true. In the hard background of the physical universe, life seeks 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”. Behaviors that meet and overcome adversity flow forward, and as a result, societies that believe in courage survive better because of that belief.