Questioning Courage, Redefining Idealism

Keshavan Nair, keynote speaker, seminar leader and counsel to Fortune 500 companies, said:

With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.

The courage to take risks. What is it really?

To most risk-takers, life is always about the game. It seems dangerous, but it’s actually a bureaucracy of danger. It is like playing a russian roulette, a gun passed on from the person next to you, loaded with one bullet against all odds: If you cried yesterday, then you could be laughing the next day. If you’re hurt tomorrow, then you could be in love the day after. If you’re at ease now, you could mess everything up the next minute. Relativity of life is playing games on us all the time: it is all about taking turns.

Notice that there is no price people wouldn’t pay if it is for something that comes guaranteed for future service. It’s funny isn’t it? We actually pay for something, because it will get damaged one day. We are all psychologically accustomed to things get damaged beyond our control; we are alive now, but eventually we’ll die; we love, but eventually we’ll be heartbroken; the world is beautiful, but eventually God will abolish it. Stop thinking, then; just pull the trigger and pray for luck.

The quotation (as an idealism) also reasoned that courage to take risks also indicates strength to be compassionate and wisdom to be humble. Therefore, “risk-takers” also need to be compassionate and humble, at least so they can complete a circle of their own self-worthy.

Compassionate and humble. Blah. Get real. Is it not true that “risk-takers” are known as strong idealistic people who dares to engage themselves in fights? Courageous enough to stick their body with bombs and detonate themselves? Courageous enough to take over nations and shoot down its generals? Courageous enough to mock and point fingers those who irritate them?

Let’s elaborate, then.

Taking a risk of understanding others

If being compassionate and humble concerns our relationship with others. Let’s relate risk-taking to the process of understanding others, as “to understand” means we’re taking one particular risk of accepting characters or objects we haven’t understand, then comprehending and evaluating it, and as a result, making an action that involves other people.

Here’s an example. Let’s say there’s a Person in the community (P) and he despises fashionable people or anything associated with trend-setting or trend-victimized people. He may or may not show it explicitly, but he often reflected in how he made his ‘lifestyle’ choices and how he made cynical and discriminating remarks on things ‘trendy’. Most people would say that: Wow. He’s so idealistic!. But then, what’s his reasons? Does he feel insecure? Or does he see trendy people as bad people? Then he stated his “defense” by bringing the subject of commercialism and excessive shopping. We may have asked again if he have any solution; even if his solution would be closing down Metro or Debenhams counters. Then he said he doesn’t need to think of a solution because he doesn’t give it much thought, and he just hated the fact.

We wouldn’t understand his answer. How could one argue on the “heavy stuffs” like commercialism and excessive shopping, and saying that one didn’t give it much thought? We should conclude that there’s a thin difference between idealism and matters of like-and-dislike. When we know our idealism, we know that we believe in an idea, then the idea just follows us wherever we are, whoever we meet, and however our life is, it flexes, slides and glides into several shapes and position. Matters of like-and-dislike is quite similar, but the difference is, it’s fixed, static, and limit ourselves from moving: it holds down the process of understanding, hence, risk-taking.

This is where we got mixed up between having conflicts of like-and-dislike and the true nature of a positive idealism.

Let’s say that he encountered Other person (O) that is associated with things he dislike about. What would happened? Would P hates the person, instantly? Would P makes requirements and restrictions if ever O would like to be accepted by P? Or would P learn how to accept and tolerate O? Please note that when P accepted the other person, means he is taking a personal risk.

There’s a theory for that, it’s called “Heider’s Balance Theory”.

Balance Theory is a motivational theory of attitude change proposed by Fritz Heider, which conceptualizes the consistency motive as a drive toward psychological balance. Heider proposed that “sentiment” or liking relationships are balanced if the affect valence in a system multiplies out to a positive result.

For example: a Person who likes an Other person will be balanced by the same valence attitude on behalf of the other. Symbolically, P (+) > O and P < (+) O results in psychological balance.

This can be extended to objects (X) as well, thus introducing triadic relationships. If a person P likes object X but dislikes other person O, what does P feel upon learning that O created X? This is symbolized as such:

• P (+) > X
• P (-) > O
• O (+) > X

Multiplying the signs shows that the person will perceive imbalance (a negative multiplicative product) in this relationship, and will be motivated to correct the imbalance somehow. The Person can either:

• Decide that O isn’t so bad after all,
• Decide that X isn’t as great as originally thought, or
• Conclude that O couldn’t really have made X.

We’d easily assume that a psychologically balanced person would’ve tolerate the differences, anyhow; psychologically imbalanced person would just rant and scream without any purpose — not crazy, just temporarily imbalanced. But what does it take to be idealistic? If being ‘idealistic’ would mean having the courage to express and speak our minds out.

Well, using the analogy of P, he could alter his negativity towards commercialism and shape it into a positive tolerable way, for instance by promoting local brands, promoting the concept of productivity and creativity, etcetera. If ever he encountered other Os, he can still accepted them and holding to what he knows as right and that it’s for a greater good. On the other hand, having matters of like-and-dislike does not allow us to alter and shape like positive idealism does, we just hate whatever that suggested negative feelings in ourselves and we simply need to channel that psychological stress; hence, we choose to be discriminative in our terms. At times, most people even use intellectuality, moral and religious ideals to justify such stress. In this case of P, he’d still hate fashionable people, no matter how productive or financially-organized they are.

Conditioning process to matters of like-and-dislike

Nothing is happened for no reason. Why do we like and dislike, then? Isn’t that a ‘calling’, a personal uniqueness of some sort?

I’ll tell you another story. One scientist designed a test, his name is Ivan Pavlov. Here’s how the test goes: He placed a dog in a cage. The scientist feed the dog with meat (so relax, no animals harmed during the process), but moments before the meat is placed in the cage, he rings a bell or some kind of a buzzer. So, bell ringing, food, bell ringing, food. At the first stages of the test, the dog drools whenever he sees meat; but later on, the dog drools whenever the bell rings, the dog doesn’t need to acknowledge if the meat is visible or not. The bell sound already suggests food. This is called a conditioning process.

Years after, another scientist, B.F. Skinner — using rats in a box — developed the theory into a more complex behaviors, stating that the primary tools of conditioning are: reinforcement and punishment. The whole (operant) conditioning process is also the mechanism that builds matters of like-and-dislike in our actions towards any existence outside of our own. In other terms, we “learn” our like-and-dislikes by experience, in which our ‘likes’ are the ones derived from reinforcement, and our ‘dislikes’ are the ones derived from punishment.

Like it or not, we are all animals in a cage as well. Unconsciously, we are bargaining for the situations we are dealing with and during the process, we are our own and others’ currency. We tend to generalize, stereotype, value others by our own psychological negotiations. For instance, if we’re walking in a dark alley and we see a dirty bumb walking towards us, we don’t need to see him drawing out a knife just to warn ourselves that he could be dangerous. We just sense that he’s dangerous because the situation is already suggests ‘danger’.

What about examples that are closer to our lives? How would we judge a friend? A lover? A colleague? Or an enemy? Most of the times, we judge people in our lives, in a same way we judge that bumb in a dark alley: we associate, we assume, thus we bargain. So it isn’t common for us to value something for its true value, what is common is to value it by the way it is associated with.

How does this conditioning process began to happen in ourselves? Well, we are a product of our own experiences. It is each person’s responsibility to find out who they are. Most of us are accustomed to think that happiness is eventually there if we seek the sound of bell ringing, so we feel unnecessary to find out why we hate — or fear — a particular stereotype of people or a particular sense of opinion/idealism, in terms of matters of like-and-dislike.

One would protest: So what’s wrong with making believe? Why do we have to be sensitive with how we value others, so intensely?

We don’t have to feel obliged to do it, we shouldn’t be. We should just let it take course for a while, especially during moments in life when there will be tough choices, wars of will, obstacles, temptations, complexity or unplanned happenings; because if there’s a metaphor that said kingdom falls because of a woman, I’d say it’s because of a wrong judgment. And wrong judgments often based on the wrong judge of characters.

Then again, the only thing that distinguishes us from dogs and lab test rats, is that human beings have the ability to “understand” and value deeper.

The deeper sense

Expectedly, during such ‘courage-in-demand’ moments, the process of understanding can achieve deeper sense, in a way that we’d have the ability to recognize ourselves, empathize and respect others better, and we’d be more creative in making effective solutions; not only limited in matters of our own like-and-dislike.

If one has the urge to discriminate others, that does not mean one’s principles is based on positive idealism; and that does not mean one has the courage to take risks. Because there’s a greater risk to take to understand, tolerate, and build rather than to discriminate and destruct.

Until then, love life while we still can. Soar up to the sky, dive the deep sea. Communicate our feelings. Learn to see what lies beneath. Face our fear. Share our chocolate sundae. Fight for the remote control. Understand that everything’s there for a reason. At least until we realize that every risk we take to understand others is simply our right to live, and to live good. Compassionate and humble, at its best.

Enough of this sickening optimism. I hope that this essay gives an insanely secure feeling of self-gratification to you.

Sidenote:

The law of operant conditioning process could break down when strong instincts are at play.

References:

• Operant conditioning, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning

• Balance theory, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_theory

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