Living bravely.

[Penelope]

William James:
I saw a moving sight the other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where I slept in the dusty fields. The young man of the house shot a little wolf called coyote in the early morning. The little heroic animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his little cheerful body, but his little brave life was gone. It made me think how brave all living things are. Here little coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or anything, with nothing to pay his way with, and risking his life so cheerfully - and losing it - just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely, too, or else we won't be worth as much as a little coyote.
(Letter from William James to James' young son, from Yosemite Valley.)

& & &

Reading (American thinker) William James is like receiving a sobering splash of cold water ... while wandering thru a fecund hothouse.

James:
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

James:
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

James:
Truth is what works.

& & &

Living bravely ...

On a bravery-scale, how brave are you?

(This is the essence of religion, it seems to me.)

William James:
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

Are you worth as much as a little coyote ... ?

 

[The Undecided]

William James:
I saw a moving sight the other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where I slept in the dusty fields. The young man of the house shot a little wolf called coyote in the early morning. The little heroic animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his little cheerful body, but his little brave life was gone. It made me think how brave all living things are. Here little coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or anything, with nothing to pay his way with, and risking his life so cheerfully - and losing it - just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely, too, or else we won't be worth as much as a little coyote.
(Letter from William James to James' young son, from Yosemite Valley.)

& & &

Reading (American thinker) William James is like receiving a sobering splash of cold water ... while wandering thru a fecund hothouse.

James:
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

James:
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

James:
Truth is what works.

& & &

Living bravely ...

On a bravery-scale, how brave are you?

(This is the essence of religion, it seems to me.)

William James:
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

Are you worth as much as a little coyote ... ?

I would say that bravery is a relative term, as it depends on the circumstances and the individual in question. If something is easy for an individual to do then to do it is not brave. You have to be risking something in order to be brave. This could be done by sticking to your principles or simply trying to survive. I would like to think that I am a brave person, but in some situations I have not been as brave as wish I could have been. However, this is how we learn I guess, 'I will be braver next time'.

TU

 

[shawn]

The anecdote had a few word uses which catch and make one say...WHAT??..., to wit:

The little heroic animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his little cheerful body, but his little brave life was gone.

...risking his life so cheerfully ...

He was doing his coyote-business like a hero...

None of these words are really applicable to anything about the reality of what Mr. James is describing.
I see that he is writing to a child and so he has striven to over-romanticize the picture to make a point.
But such accounts create a false impression of what is.

This is perhaps closer to the truth:

The coyote was BRAZENLY hunting/scrounging around the hotel as it looked to be easy pickings and he was feeling particularly lazy that day so easy pickings were appealing , but he paid the price for his foolishness by getting his dumb ass shot full of lead.
Should have known better than to go sniffing around the hen-house out back where the hotel got their eggs and chickens from.

 

[path_of_one]

I am not sure what I think of the whole thing, except to be sad when I have the image of a dead coyote in my mind. I am not sure that one can be considered brave just for trying to survive. There is nothing remarkable about trying to survive- all beings do this instinctively, and it is a self-centered (though necessary) drive.

My horse trainer tells people- don't be brave, be confident. Bravery is a hair's breadth away from bravado, and this can get you seriously injured or even killed. Bravado is what you lean on when you should have stopped and listened to your own common sense and intuition. Instead, we ought to be strong and confident. We should practice (whatever it is we are trying to do) diligently enough that we face our fears with stability and wisdom, not bravado. We should be able to differentiate between fear and caution- in all we do.

Rushing in where angels fear to tread is a phrase that is useful as a metaphor. We have to be in a very strong, confident space... a space in which we know ourselves, our limitations, our weaknesses, our complexes... in order to delve more fully into religious depth. Without this, bravery only leads to rushing in- to risking what perhaps ought not to be risked at an inopportune time.

I tend to think of bravery as being foolish unless it is tempered with wisdom. We've all seen that courage is a double-edged sword. When it is grounded in wisdom, it allows us to rise to meet challenges and fears. But when it is not grounded at all, it plays on all of our weaknesses- our fears, our egos, our arrogance. And the price that some pay for that is death. I daresay the price one could pay, at least in some religious traditions, is insanity. Bravado forges ahead when wisdom would tell us to wait.

My question would be: "Does this help anyone? Does it really help me? Do I need to do this right now? Am I prepared?"

 

[Penelope]

I like to think of this William James 'coyote' anecdote as a 'parable' (like we find in the Bible or in the writings of Kafka). A parable not about our animal-instincts (hardwired behavior) nor about 'extreme sports' (pushing the limit).

But a parable about our 'social conduct' in the world.

& & &

Individual survival is a petty thing, when compared to the affect each of us has upon other human-beings (those within our circle of associates, but also those far away in time or space) ...
Or compared to our failure to produce any meaningful affect upon other persons.

William James:
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

& & &

When our mirror-like childhood-social-reality cracks and shatters into a million pieces (as described by child-psychologist Jacques Lacan), we grow up. Become adults. But we shiver with moral-terror, doing so:
In this particular situation, with this particular person involved, what is the right thing to do?

Adult decisions are not always very clear-cut. One person's 'good decision' is another person's 'bad.'
But decide we must.

William James:
Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.

The answer to moral-terror is moral-courage.
(Picking up the shards of that shattered mirror, and reconfiguring them in some productive direction.)
Once you decide, you make yourself believe in that decision ... to have faith in it as if it were something sacred.

I equate William James' notion of 'bravery' with just this ...
Moral-courage.

So it is my final quote from William James (not his anecdote) which is central to the pondering behind my initial post:
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

... That good moral results, in troubling and difficult situations, do not happen by themselves (there is no sure-fire formula for good moral results). You have to work at it! You have to - concretely - believe!

You have to make the good results come true.

& & &

This ... is moral-courage.

(This ... is true 'bravery.')