“the courage to be an individual”
Leon Kass, an American physician, scientist and educator, says: “We have this bodily life, and the question is, are we going to turn it into a thing of beauty and a life of meaning or not? Courage is the virtue that responds to the fear of death.”[i] And not just the fear of death, but so much more.
Challenges are immense in our Global Village. And oddly enough, unconscious humans seeking happiness through plenty, pleasure and power are the most terrifying, destructive “dragon” we will ever encounter. Our self-destructive community has always deceived itself about the truth of our behavior, but things will not get better unless those of us with a strong intention and the courage to face the dragon take a stand.
It takes courage to commit to change. But as psychologist Rollo May reveals: “The patient cannot permit himself to get insight or knowledge until he is ready to decide [change], until he takes a decisive orientation to life and has made the preliminary decisions along the way.”[ii]
“The kind of change that we are talking about … is not relative change or change within P-B, but rather profound change, meaning a paradigm shift, a change in our story.”[iii]
Insight # 99 comes to us from Rollo May (1909-1994) an American psychologist and author. He developed an existential and humanistic approach to psychology where he favored the individual’s strengths, internal resources, and abilities to make better decisions.
Nietzsche’s “concept of ‘will to power’ implies the self-realization of the individual in the fullest sense. It requires the courageous living out of the individual’s potentialities in his own particular existence. It does not refer to aggression or competitive striving or any such mechanism. It is the individual affirming his existence and his potentialities as a being in his own right; it is the ‘courage to be an individual.’”[iv]
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Additional Reading:
- Courage, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
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[i] Moyers, Bill. Bill Moyers A World of Ideas. New York: Doubleday, 1989, p. 365.
[ii] May, Rollo. The Discovery of Being. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1983, p. 73.
[iii] Henry, Roy Charles. “Change.” The ABC’s Of Simple Reality, Vol 1. May 2018, p. 66.
[iv] May, op. cit., p. 79.
