coruscanttojerusalem said: want to say more?
I donât mean this in a judgy way; vice doesnât first and foremost make you a âbad personâ in the way tumblr means it (a hateable person)âbut it does kind of make you bad at being a person. vice is an entrenched habit which prevents you from realizing happiness and fulfillment, and cowardice absolutely does this.
it seems like people are starting to catch on to the fact that if your fears are preventing you from ever having joys, then you have given your fears too much power. Mr. Woodhouse from Emma is a great example of this kind of character. his fears have completely prevented him from living a full life and regularly prevent him from enjoying even the small pleasures he has left. and crucially, this isnât just something heâs done to himself. his cowardice also causes suffering for those around him, both in small ways (subjecting Emma to painful social moments) and in large (almost costing Emma her happiness with Knightley). if your fears have enclosed you into a progressively smaller and smaller box in your quest to feel perfectly safe (even and especially from things that objectively are no threat to your safety), then I think you have a real responsibility to try to face your fears and heal whatever is making you believe that they were worth losing everything. you have this responsibility because you were born to be a full human being, not a caged animal.
but thereâs also another sense in which cowardice is a vice. if you possess every other virtue, if your system of values is perfect and just, but you crumble when under pressure, then you do not fully possess those virtues and youâre not able to live up to your own values. all virtues depend on each other; everyone has areas that theyâre more naturally gifted in or theyâve practiced more, but you cannot completely leave out one virtue without cancelling out the ones you do have. courage is especially universal, because it is all other virtues practiced under fire. if you cannot be kind or you cannot practice justice as soon as it is difficult, then youâre not very kind or just at all.
this isnât to say that we canât be understanding and compassionate towards someone who caves or freezes in a moment of fear, and it certainly isnât to say that there canât be mercy after the fact. but it is to say that we have to be able to recognize the entrenched habit of the person who consistently prioritizes their own comfort and their own safety over everything elseâespecially when the safety being prioritized is a âfeelingâ of safety not based in reality or a social safety related to reputation, instead of a real threat on their life. if your fears prevent you from living out your convictions, then your convictions are pretty worthless. if thereâs nothing you love more than your own skin, then you canât love anything very much.
all this to say that I think we are slightly too quick to give a blanket pass to anyone who fails to do the right thing when it is hard. we donât have to pretend it isnât hard. but thatâs precisely the point. weâve forgotten that an essential part of the moral life, i.e. being a fully developed person living a full life, is the virtue of doing hard things.