Cross-posting: Post No. 1,552 - Spoons of Courage

This originally appeared on my main blog at https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2020/05/post-no-1552-spoons-of-courage.html.

There is a concept from the management of chronic fatigue syndrome that has become fairly widely used, and that is “spoons (of energy)”.

Thus, when considering an activity, it is useful to consider “how many spoons of energy one has available”. To some extent, it is a psychological device, but people being human and having psychologies and all that, such things are genuinely useful for many people.

That comment was put in to the naysayers - who are likely to be so ill-informed as to think CFS is just a form of being tired - and the judgemental holier-than-thou-ers.

No, it isn’t.

I don’t have CFS, but have struggled with exhaustion - physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual - at times; I have, however, known people with CFS, and the exhaustion is just one PART of what they go through. There are a range of other problems, which you can find out from any competent online medical website, your GP, and any other competent online websites (e.g., encyclopaedias).

You won’t find that information from the small-minded, bigots or haters.

Most people find that they can recharge their spoons of energy fairly easily: other people, including myself and probably those with CFS, can’t. (In my case, that is largely the demands of work.)

Similarly, I consider there may be a similar concept which applies to courage - that it is (subjectively) quantifiable, variable / possibly rechargeable (and erodible), and comparable to tasks.

So . . . let’s say I am considering writing a letter for Amnesty International (AI). Writing such a letter from my home in Australia is not likely to incur any particular risk, so I don’t need any spoons of courage, as I see it (maybe spoons of compassion/empathy / commitment to ethics - they give example letters, so I don’t even necessarily need spoons of writing ability [yes, I am being facetious at this point).

But let’s say I am going to the authoritarian nation where I have been campaigning for a dissidents release. Unless you are staggeringly naïve, that would clearly involve some risk. Now, there are ways to assess the risks (such as talking to other AI members who have done the same), but it still takes some amount of courage.

(As it turned out, it went well, although a colleague and I were separately surrounded by plain clothes police and grilled over what we knew about dissidents. I played dumb - said I was just an engineer, and neither of us was detained [although my colleague on that trip was concerning to me for other reasons - wanted to keep his guns despite a recent ban].)

Now let’s say I’m a young child who is being bullied. The bully is likely to be physically larger (when I was a kid, they all seemed to be much bigger than me, at any rate), and the first time I have had no prior experience or opportunity to assess risks or develop strategies for that situation (and most of the strategies I’ve seen over the last couple of decades are, at best, framed in dangerous naïveté and, at worst, are likely to give the sadistic bully exactly what they’re wanting - which is my pain [do those morons who advocate for telling a bully that they’re being successful - i.e., the victim is upset - think that is going to do anything other than encourage the bully? Ever hear of appeasement - because you’re only one step removed from that!] ).

Standing up to a bully is going to require far more spoons of courage than travelling, as an adult, to a dictatorship that you’ve been niggling.

Other activities also have differing requirements around courage - yes, I am inclined towards the view that moral courage is more significant than physical courage (partly because it doesn’t gain the same social validation [rewards] ), but I am also of the view that people who admire moral courage have a tendency to underestimate physical courage.

As an example, consider John Stapp, the military physician who strapped himself to a jet sled and tested the effect of rates of acceleration on the human body - work which led to better seatbelts for cars and ejection seats for jets, among others. He knew, in advance, that he was going to be injured; he knew, after a wide range of injuries including broken bones and the possibility of temporary blindness, what that was going to be like - and yet he kept on going.

At this point, the moral courage addicts may throw up the issue of motivation - the reward of knowing one is doing good. True, that is a factor, but it still DOES NOT get around the fact that the scientist had also exhibited PHYSICAL courage.

Athletes know they are at risk of painful injury, but overcome that with physical courage. Racing car drivers know they are at risk of both painful injury and death, but - irrespective of the flaws of that industry/activity - overcome that with physical courage. Astronauts know their lives are at risk, but fly anyway.

And soldiers on a battlefield know they are at risk of injury, mutilation, or death, but surprisingly many fight anyway.

They may not find their courage initially, and many find extreme difficulty actually killing other people (various surveys have identified the proportion of soldiers in combat who kill as being around 2% - Paul K Chappell has some excellent writing on this in his series of books on peace), but many - irrespective of the moral questions which apply to war - find their physical courage.

This is also a useful moment to move into the topic of how courage can be built or eroded.

Rewards are not necessarily the motivator that many people may think. Soldiers on the battlefield are more likely to be courageous to help their comrades, their mates or “buddies” - not because they’re thinking of medals.

Scientists are probably thinking of the benefits to society yes, but they’re also quite possibly thinking of the fame. Athletes may be thinking of fame - professional athletes are also likely to be thinking of money. (Someone I knew years ago once told me of a triathlete who was amused to watch coverage of an event they were in and hearing the commentator talking about the tactical matters the triathlete was thinking of when the triathlete was actually calculating how much money they would be getting.)

Some people exhibiting what appears to be moral courage may be motivated by thoughts of future rewards (either karma or by the concept of “going to heaven”). If they are, by the way, I’ll still take the actions if they are beneficial.

What is rewarding varies - it could be praise, money, greater service, friendship, being able to talk to others (debrief, as it is termed nowadays), or something else.

In order to know what helps you, you have to first know yourself.

Similarly, knowing what takes one’s courage away is personal. (Being in a situation where people close to you are being used as hostages or the like is not a matter of courage, in my opinion: that is simply illegal and immoral abuse all round.)

So, know thyself, which I think is a translation going back to at least the Ancient Greeks, turns out to be pretty good advice.

And being able to consider the concept of spoons of courage is something I have personally also found useful.