Courage or wisdom?, A Human Strategy, Matt Berry, aphorism 230

230
Courage or wisdom?  When this becomes the choice, can’t we convince ourselves that pursuing wisdom is, if only within the inner sanctum of the heart, a species of courage?  ... that the common species of courage promotes nothing but fools admired for their luck — and in proportion to the improbability they faced, making it an honor to be as foolish as possible? Yet we cannot withhold our admiration!  ... even when a “cowardly” prudence would have dispensed with the danger more efficiently. 

There are those who did not comprehend the danger they faced, and therefore received the glory of being stupid enough.  There are those who did not comprehend the higher aim enabled by restraint and therefore received the glory of not being smart enough.  But it takes a higher species of courage even to see the victory of prudence: an intelligence that leaves our knuckles white with clutching the mundane and never letting go of maximum efficiency ... not even for the sensation of heroism as it begins to overtake us.




A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism



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