While there are many virtues (and vices) relevant to my philosophy of violence, the virtue of courage is central. In this context, the virtue of courage is the ability to regulate the emotion of fear so that you feel the right amount of fear at the right time, on the right occasion, towards the right cause, for the right purpose and in the right manner. Sorting out all these rights is challenging.
While cowardice tends to be condemned more than foolhardiness, both are vices. An excess of courage can lead a person to misjudge a situation and choose violence from overconfidence. But I am inclined to think that a deficiency of courage is the more dangerous vice, since fear distorts perception and judgment in ways that can lead to a person acting wrongly. As I found out in the “machete that wasn’t” incident, fear can enhance the misperception of objects, making a stick appear to be a machete or a phone look like a gun. This can cause a person to use what they think is justified violence as they protect themselves from, for example, a machete. Fear can also cause a person to misread other people and situations, such as perceiving innocent movements as dangerous. This can also cause people to use what they think is justified violence as they respond to someone they see as a clear threat. These are two of the many reasons why courage is an important virtue and why training for courage is a worthwhile endeavor.
Thanks to the problem of other minds I, unlike Bill Clinton, cannot feel your pain or your fear. I can only discuss my own internal experiences and infer, by analogy, that you have similar experiences. Based on my experiences, it seems that there are at least two modes of courage. The first is what I experienced in the “machete that wasn’t” incident and the second is the type I experience in the context of heights, such as flying.
When I (wrongly) perceived a person running at me with a machete, I felt a spike of fear. After that triggered a useful burst of adrenalin, the fear vanished and was replaced by cold, calm clarity. I was able to act with courage for the simple reason that I was no longer afraid. While getting a closer view of the “machete” allowed me to see it was just a big stick, the absence of fear no doubt also helped and allowed me to assess the situation more accurately. It also allowed me to act rationally rather than being driven by fear. This enabled me to speak to the person rather than simply attacking or endangering myself by fleeing in fear. I did not feel courageous and can best describe it as feeling utterly normal, as if I was still just running along peacefully or reading a book. Fortunately, I also did not feel fearless in the sense of being foolhardy and ready to engage in savage battle without care or concern. It, to go with my usual porridge metaphor, was just right—just what was needed to take the right action.
While I am a philosopher, I am interested in neuroscience, and I wonder what a brain scan at that moment would have revealed. While I was not aware of any fear (and hence, by definition, not feeling fear), perhaps those fear neurons were firing away as I ignored them. Which leads to the second mode of courage.
I am terrified of heights. While this might be understandable given that I had a ladder fail and suffered a quadriceps tendon tear, I was afraid of heights long before then. Getting on a ladder, being on a mountain, looking out the window of a tall building, and flying cause a welling of fear in my soul. I even feel it in video games. Even when my rationality tells me I am not in danger, I can feel the threat. Yes, I have tried various means of habituating myself to heights, but these have had no effect on my feeling fear. Last May, when I was flying home for my father’s funeral, I told the person (a retired NFL player) sitting beside me about my fear and he sensible asked me “Are you going to be a problem?” I assured him that I would not, and when he saw me showing no signs of concern during the takeoff, he relaxed his vigilance. That was when, of course, I struck. I am joking—otherwise you would have seen a YouTube video about an NFL player tackling a philosophy professor on a flight to Atlanta. While I appeared calm and acted normally, I was terrified the entire time—unlike my courage during a potential fight, my courage in the face of height manifests very differently. The fear is there the entire time. Sometimes it feels as if the fear is like a strong dog pulling on a leash, but I can keep it from running wild. Other times, it is like a wind I can feel, but one that has no power over me. The difference might be because they are different fears, because of a difference in my training, or perhaps I am far more afraid of heights than I am of fighting. Fortunately, the result is the same: I can act rationally as opposed to being driven about by fear. But I do find feeling fear more tiring than the absence of the feeling, although I can endure the fear of heights for hours (and I have yet to find my limit). I suspect that one difference is that my training in increases my confidence in dealing with potential violence, while there is no training I can do to counter the harms of falling from a great height. But I do admit, my fear of heights is excessive, even given the fact that a fall can easily injure or kill me. I am still trying to address this, although without success. But what about when people are trained to be afraid and then sent out on the streets with guns?
In the United States, there is a longstanding trend to train police to be warriors. While there are obvious concerns about seeing the police as warriors rather than those who protect and serve, Warrior-style police training teaches officers to feel, and act upon, fear by presenting the world as an extremely dangerous place where any interaction can kill them. Encouraging officers to view citizens as potential threats is likely to make them more afraid, especially if it is not countered by proper training in the virtues.
As discussed above and in the earlier essays, fear shapes perceptions in ways that increase the chances of unjustified and needless violence. An officer habituated to be afraid is more likely to see a phone as a gun and to interpret an innocent movement as a prelude to an attack. While officers should have a realistic view of dangers, their training should focus on habituating them to be masters of their fear rather than ruled by it. Unless, of course, the goal is to send frightened warriors out into the streets with the intention that they will be more likely to engage in violence. What makes matters even worse is the deluge of fear mongering and racism flowing forth from some media outlets and from some politicians. We, and the police are included in this, are told that minorities and migrants are a terrible threat, likely to engage in violence because they are members of gangs, physically dangerous and morally wicked. Anyone who is inundated with this is likely to have their fear increased, making it less likely they will act with courage—even if they wish to do so. While this is but one factor among many, it does help explain why some ICE agents and police officers use violence needlessly: they have been trained to be fearful warriors and deluged with a spew of terror towards the people they are interacting with. If the goal is for people to be needlessly and unjustly injured and killed, this all makes “sense.” But if we want protectors who serve the public good, we must change the training and the culture of fear propagated by the wicked.
In my previous essay I laid the groundwork for the discussion that is to follow about the anti-abortion moral position and misogyny. As argued in that essay, a person can be anti-abortion and not a misogynist. It was also shown that attacking a person’s circumstances or consistency in regard to their professed belief in an anti-abortion moral position does not disprove that position. It was, however, contended that consistency does matter when sorting out whether a person really does hold to an anti-abortion position or is, in fact, using that as cover for misogyny.