Thats one of my favorite movies…the Magnificent Seven.
Freudian, my only point was to dispute Shodan’s assertion and definition. IMO he is way off base.
To deny that it is brave to take a risk that could be avoided is wrong. Bravery is when you could run away, but you don’t. It’s when you could avoid danger, but willingly go into it. It’s when you know that you will get hurt, but you do it anyway.
If I want Result A, and I know that I could get injured, crippled, killed, or get Result A, and I go ahead and try for Result A, that’s bravery. I could have avoided the risk, and therefore the reward, but I chose to go for the gold… that’s bravery.
Any argument I have seen saying that criminals are brave would also show that people who commit suicide are the bravest of all.
If you think suicide is the height of bravery, I think your definition needs some work.
Personally, I don’t think “brave” or “cowardly” really apply to crime/suicide.
I think it does take some guts to willingly risk injuring or killing an innocent - a line to be crossed in one’s mind. And of course, by living “the life”, one consciously removes oneself from society’s safety net. You can’t go to the police if threatened or if your property’s stolen or whatever, you can’t go to the hospital for a bullet wound etc…
Of course, sufficiently advanced stupidity is undistinguishable from courage. It can be (and, judging from experience, likely is) that the criminal just hasn’t considered what the ramifications of his crime will be, or only in the vaguest of terms, or only considering whether or not he’ll get caught when that’s the least of his/her worries.
Still. Dunno if I would ever risk holding a gun to someone and ask for their money. If only because I have no idea what I’d do if they just said no. I’d be just as scared of hurting them as they’re scared of me hurting them, that’s for sure (and that’s from experience. Don’t ask).
Well, I don’t know about the height of bravery, but again, to me it does take a lot of sand and/or desperation to kill yourself. I certainly know I never could, despite wanting to sometimes (I got better, sorta 
).
Missiles kill people. They kill more people - and a lot more civilians - than physically fighting the enemy does. When you fire a missile you’re not going to war with someone who committed an act of terrorism, you’re going to war with a country. And you’re not just risking lives, you’re guaranteeing that they will be lost. It seems like you mean that this kind of warfare is a way of fighting back without risking American lives.
Shodan’s point is that if you could get Result A with significantly less risk of being injured, crippled and killed, and choose not to, you’re actually just stupid*.
The whole cruise missile thing, we’re not lobbing them in there entirely at random, there are individual targets that the military designated as important to destroy. Destroying the target is Result A. The choices are:
Cruise Missile
Bomb
Land Invasion
Considering that Result A is probably intended to assist the Land Invasion, or allow us to get Result B while avoiding a Land Invasion it would be ridiculous to use an invasion to complete the task. Bombs are no less destructive, put our men and equipment at risk and are just as easily described as “cowardly”. At any rate, all I can say is that Clinton’s penchant for cruise missile attacks worked out a lot better than Bush’s invasion, when you look at the people (collectively) at the business end.
*Note, the world is in fact a marvelously complex place, so I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with an example where it isn’t actually stupid. Bravo.
It’s only brave when you do it for a selfless reason. Otherwise, using a tablesaw with no guard on it counts as brave. I’d count it as stupid. Same for fighting a tiger with your bare hands.
Fighting a tiger with your bare hands to protect your baby daughter? Brave.
A interesting idea, with an element of truth, but still not the whole story.
If a kid stands up to a group of bullies, that can be brave.
It you get back on the horse after getting bucked off;
If someone fights against a phobia to try to lead a normal life.
Bravery isn’t necessarily selfless.
pussy
The risks are unavoidable if you want to achieve some end. Those are the risks that make you brave if you accept them.
A firefighter who runs into a burning building is brave if there is no other way to get a victim out. If he could rescue them just as well in some less risky way, he is stupid. If there were some safer way that carried equal moral force, then MLK and Gandhi were stupid. There wasn’t, so they weren’t.
All of your examples are people abandoning their ends because of personal risk.
Regards,
Shodan
Exactly so unconventional risk assessment is no less likely to be the cause of heroic behavior than criminal behavior. So you have just rendered the term ‘brave’ inert in most cases. Sure there is still the occasional everyman who overcomes his terror to do what needs to be done, but he’s not the sort that is habitually brave. The unconventional risk assessment reduces the acts of Audie Murphy to being a merely hardwired response.
I was talking about this with some friends of mine in my Jujitsu class the other night. We like to go get beer and wings after class on occasion. Someone brought up Lawrence of Arabia and talked about how he believed he was mystically protected by something. Something the Arab mystics called, “Riding the Whirlwind.”, or “Riding the Sandstorm”, or something to that effect, I don’t recall the precise words my friend used.
So was Lawrence of Arabia brave if he had an unconventional risk assessment?
I think mainly people are trying to reserve, courage and cowardice to align with their own sentiment. We like to think of villains as cowards because it helps us believe that they have an achilles heel that is somehow meaningful in their downfall.
I think we can at least draw a qualitative difference between those who are willing to put themselves at risk for the sake of others, and those who do it for personal gain. I do believe there are studies which show that some people have genetic responses to stress which actually gear their metabolisms down rather than up. Instead of panicky “fight or flight” responses, they get cooler and calmer. Their heart rates get slower instead of quicker, they don’t get flooded with adrenaline. They don’t freak out. This quality can be very helpful in any endeavor which involves great deal of stress or pressure. Whether you’re robbing a bank, or engaged in a firefight in Afghanistan. I think you can even see it in sports sometimes, with those athletes who always seem to be as cool as a cucumber in the most clutch situations. It’s a gift, like physical strength, or native intelligence – not something that really has any innate virtue of its own, but which can used for either good or evil.
That guy who landed the plane in the Hudson is probably one of those genetic cucumbers, but chances are the guys who piloted the planes into the WTC were that way too.
I wont reply to directly to anyone else’s post on this point, but here’s what I see going on in this thread:
Bravery is thought of a virtuous quality. Many people want the world to be black and white, good and evil, i.e. clear dichotomies. Therefore, many people are uncomfortable using the word “brave” to describe anyone or any actions that they feel fall on the wrong side of their B&W worldview.
/shrug
Whatever. Myself, I don’t place any moralistic quality on the word. It’s just a descriptive word to convey that someone had balls (audacity, spunk, nerve, pluck, mettle, courage, etc.). That’s all.
I’d say its a hangover from our cultural origins that we consider “courage” and inherently positive trait. Yes some criminals are very “courageous”, but as other posters have pointed courage by itself, purely for personal, material, gain (or for no reason at, such as bungee jumping*), is morally neutral.
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- That said I still wear my “world’s higher bungee - jumpers edition” t-shirt
- That said I still wear my “world’s higher bungee - jumpers edition” t-shirt
Let me guess: you were ruminating upon that truth when you were startled by an elephant shrew unexpectedly appearing at your window.
And that’s how you chose your secret crimefighting identity.
How did I do?
It seems like people are assuming that just because “criminal acts don’t make you brave” is an unexamined “common sense” belief, it must be wrong.
I will grant that the reason most people never examine the question is for moral reasons.
But unexamined beliefs are not always wrong.
If you do think about it, you find that the “common sense” was correct after all. Criminal acts do not make you brave, and most criminals are probably not brave.
- Much of the fear in a dangerous situation comes from lack of control of the situation. You didn’t choose for the situation to happen. Even if you have an inherently dangerous job, such as a firefighter, you don’t get to choose when the fire occurs.
But criminals do get to choose if and when their crime will occur. This gives them an enormous amount of control of the situation, and drastically reduces any potential fear. Indeed, they may be attracted to crime precisely because of the power they have over their victims. That is the opposite of bravery.
- By the standards used to claim crime is brave, suicide would be the bravest act imaginable. But this is absurd. Obviously there is more to being brave than being willing to die. Desperation, addiction, mental disorder, etc, are not bravery.
Good points, Carmady.
I can see suicide under some circumstances being grave. Like, it’s a point of honor like in certain cultures. If it’s out of desperation and you haven’t really thought it through at all, is it really bravery–not so much, in my opinion.
The control point is a good one. Don’t most criminals tend to target people who won’t put up much of a fight? Won’t a bank robber meet very little resistance considering most people working or entering a bank just want to get out of their with their lives?
Courage and cowardice are irrelevent to morality, I think. Its only through their results do we judge the initial motivation to be good or bad. If cowardice somehow improved people’s lives and spurred the progress of civilization, we’d consider it morally good. It just doesnt do that most of the time, but its not impossible
Hasn’t anyone quoted Hemingway? Courage is grace under pressure.
That has always made perfect sense to me.