Basically I think courage is courage up to a point until it becomes stupidity, and once it reaches that point it is no longer courage...therefore, no, one cannot be too courageous.
But I also think the point of stupidity is much, much harder to reach than most of the rest of the world claims it is.
Is it stupidity or courage that makes/gets/encourages/*some word better than makes* a soldier dive onto a live grenade to save his friends, or single handedly charge a machinegun nest? Or *same word as before* a person go into a burning house to save a baby/child? Or stand up to a bully for someone else, even though they know that they will get beaten to a pulp for that other person, even if they are a stranger?
Courage is generally defined as the ability to face danger without fear.
Fear can be debilitating and degrade your performance under pressure, and so courage is initially a positive quality that allows you to do better than you otherwise would in a given situation. However, fear exists to cause you to avoid dangerous situations, and so too much courage can cause you to not fear situations that you really should, because of the high likelihood of a negative outcome.
You can define courage so that it is only the positive half of this equation, but then you end up with situations where whether someone is stupid or courageous largely depends on the outcome of their actions. eg. Is Carl Boenish (the originator of the term BASE jumping) courageous because he leaped off things with a parachute and filmed the event, or stupid because he leaped off a cliff with a parachute and died.
I prefer to think of courage as a quality on a separate track to stupidity. You can act/be stupid because you lacked the brain power to comprehend your actions, or you can act/be stupid because you were too courageous to listen to your brain telling you not to do something. I don't really think cowardice is the opposite of stupidity with courage somewhere in the middle. :)
Courage is generally defined as the ability to face danger without fear.
I'm not entirely sure about that, myself. Certainly, it seems a common motif to be courageous in facing danger while still being utterly terrified. Quite often, we see great heroes before their finest hour, intimating that they had never been so terrified in their lives as in that moment before they act. This seems to make them more courageous than one might otherwise perceive, knowing that they do what they do despite fear that would paralyse lesser mortals.
I've always considered courage to be the ability to move past one's fear to accomplish things that they otherwise would never do, rather than mere fearlessness.
A quote-ish thing that I like: "Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to overcome it."
So I suppose the absence of fear is the absence of courage. And the absence of fear when there is genuine risk has to be due to either ignorance or arrogance.
If you know what negative consequences you are risking, and what you stand to achieve... and the odds of success... Perhaps then you might be able to judge where the edge of courage is.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 12:24 pm (UTC)But I'm too tired to do that.
Basically I think courage is courage up to a point until it becomes stupidity, and once it reaches that point it is no longer courage...therefore, no, one cannot be too courageous.
But I also think the point of stupidity is much, much harder to reach than most of the rest of the world claims it is.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 01:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-23 01:13 am (UTC)Fear can be debilitating and degrade your performance under pressure, and so courage is initially a positive quality that allows you to do better than you otherwise would in a given situation.
However, fear exists to cause you to avoid dangerous situations, and so too much courage can cause you to not fear situations that you really should, because of the high likelihood of a negative outcome.
You can define courage so that it is only the positive half of this equation, but then you end up with situations where whether someone is stupid or courageous largely depends on the outcome of their actions. eg. Is Carl Boenish (the originator of the term BASE jumping) courageous because he leaped off things with a parachute and filmed the event, or stupid because he leaped off a cliff with a parachute and died.
I prefer to think of courage as a quality on a separate track to stupidity.
You can act/be stupid because you lacked the brain power to comprehend your actions, or you can act/be stupid because you were too courageous to listen to your brain telling you not to do something. I don't really think cowardice is the opposite of stupidity with courage somewhere in the middle. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-23 02:55 am (UTC)I'm not entirely sure about that, myself. Certainly, it seems a common motif to be courageous in facing danger while still being utterly terrified. Quite often, we see great heroes before their finest hour, intimating that they had never been so terrified in their lives as in that moment before they act. This seems to make them more courageous than one might otherwise perceive, knowing that they do what they do despite fear that would paralyse lesser mortals.
I've always considered courage to be the ability to move past one's fear to accomplish things that they otherwise would never do, rather than mere fearlessness.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-23 07:00 am (UTC)So I suppose the absence of fear is the absence of courage. And the absence of fear when there is genuine risk has to be due to either ignorance or arrogance.
If you know what negative consequences you are risking, and what you stand to achieve... and the odds of success... Perhaps then you might be able to judge where the edge of courage is.