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Greatness is rooted in risks
NOTICE ARCHIVE - 02/10/2021

Our age has been called many things, but an age of cowards may best describe it given the immense fear, anxiety and helplessness that most people display in the face of even trivial threats. We are not a generation that moves forward into the uncertain future in a bold and heroic manner, instead most people fear the future and prefer safety, comfort, and ease of life, to risk-taking, experimentation and freedom.


Overawed by uncertainty, fearing the future, conceptualizing oneself as vulnerable, weak, and fragile is not a recipe for individual or social flourishing. Rather this way of life promotes mental illness and paves the way for authoritarian rule and so the world would benefit if more people were willing to live just a little more dangerously.


Frank Furedi writes in “How Fear Works”:  “Historically some of the most prosperous societies – Ancient Athens, Renaissance Italy, nineteenth-century Britain – were among those that were most oriented towards experimentation and the taking of risks.”


In taking the opposite approach and in showing a strong preference for safety over risk-taking creates fertile ground for tyrannical, or even totalitarian rule, for as Alexander Hamilton famously stated: “to be more safe they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free”.


When a society elevates safety to the superior position, freedom is by necessity demoted to a second-order value which can be trampled on by those in power who, throughout history, have disguised tyrannical intentions with claims of wanting to make a society safer. What makes matters worse is if a society socializes people to be fearful of the future and overawed by uncertainty, the masses will welcome, or openly call for authority figures to protect them.


It is up to those who favor freedom to take a more heroic approach to life. The authoritarian rule will be installed, unless more people are willing to take risks and face danger in the service of values such as freedom, justice, peace, and social cooperation. “A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free.” (John Stuart Mill in “Principles of Political Economy”)


As role models for the task of living more heroically we can look to the Ancient Greeks, a civilization that rightly held safety to be a secondary, not primary value, and which saw risk-taking and facing danger as morally commendable: “Danger makes men classical, and all greatness, after all, is rooted in risk.” ( Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death). Friedrich Nietzsche was also a proponent of this classical approach to prosperity and he wrote in “Götterdämmerung”: “Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources: our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong – otherwise one will never become strong.”


By demoting safety to its rightful place as a secondary value, we will cease living as a helpless pawn who must be coddled from youth to old-age by an authority figure and we will regain the ability to shape the course of our life. We will mature psychologically and become better equipped to cope with whatever the future brings


While taking greater risks and flirting with danger can shorten one’s life, it is helpful to remember that a long life is not necessarily a good life. A safe life, lacking real challenges and absent in adventure, is inert and leads to a withering away of body and mind into staleness, repetition, boredom and stagnation – such is not living, it is mere existing.


In addition, to helping one live more fully, a courageous willingness to take risks and to flirt with danger can turn us into a great benefactor of mankind. For so long as the values that guide us, and the goals we pursue, are noble and life-promoting, courage reveals a caring attitude for the well-being of others. For unlike the coward who is concerned primarily for his or her own safety and who demands everyone else conform to his or her neurotic ways, the hero is willing to risk life and limb in the service of values that move society forward.


If, therefore, we desire a fulfilling life, care for our mental health and care for the future of our society we need to act with courage and not worship at the altar of safety. We need to take risks in the service of life promoting values, and not adhere to the view that a good life is a safe life.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3EsCIjvrSw&list=WL&index=5
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