Ryan Holiday || How to Have Courage

It's always a great time chatting with Ryan, and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. So, without further ado, I'll bring you Ryan Holiday. Hey, Ryan, it's so great to chat with you today on the Psychology Podcast. I appreciate it. It's always fun to talk to you. So yeah, I always love chatting with you. And your new book is just as interesting as the other ones on courage and it's called Courage Is Calling.

So why do decide to write this one? Well, I'm doing this series on the cardinal virtues, so courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom, courage being not just I think the first and the most important of the virtues. I do feel like it is the most timely of the virtues. I'm not sure there's anyone that looks at what's going on in the world and thinks like we have too much courage.

I think I think we are living in the shadows or the wreckage of of what happens when you're leaders and artists and academics, and you know, sort of every facet of society is is either deficient in courage or has chosen to prioritize other things over courage. Well, what are some things you think we're prioritizing over courage? I agree with you, But like, what what do you have in your in mind right now that you think is kind of the forefront of society's priorities right now? Well,

I mean this as an indictment across the board. So I'm not just like one segment of society and other segment I think generally, and I'm not exempting myself feels like we're deficient in courage. I would say, you know, on one end of the spectrum, you might have a prioritizing of the self of like sort of what's good

for you your self interest. So when we look at sort of the pandemic, we see I think a deficiency and courage in this sort of people's willingness to be even the slightest uncomfort uncomfortable, the slightest bit uncomfortable, or take the slightest risk that might benefit someone else. Right, you go all the way to the other end of the spectrum, and we have a deficiency encourage in our sort of unwillingness to engage with ideas that make us

uncomfortable or that might challenge beliefs that we have. So I think what we when we think about courage. Of course we're talking thing about physical courage and also moral courage, but we're really talking about what we're willing to risk in alignment with our values, our obligations, and you know, the potential that we're trying to fulfill as individuals. Yeah, it's a really good definition of courage. It's one of

the succinct definitions I've heard. I've heard. You know, there's lots of definitions of courage in the psychology literature, and they can get quite long and convoluted and complex. I really like that you argue in your book that it's in short supply today. What do you think are some forces, causal forces that are making it more difficult for us to express that that's within most of us. Yeah, I

don't know. I mean I think when I look at, say, my own childhood, I don't really see courage as a thing that anyone talked about that like a value that my parents sort of held up as an important one in the way that you know, one hundred year years ago or five hundred years ago, courage would have been courage and honor, right, like, these are sort of very primal but timeless virtues in a like let's say, in a warrior culture, you might there's almost nothing that's held

up higher than courage. So I think, you know, my parents wanted me to be successful. They wanted me to be safe, right, They wanted me to do They wanted me to do a lot of things. Taking risks was not one that was high on their list. And in fact, one of the biggest challenges in my relationship with my

parents was my decision to drop out of college. You know, my parents thought this was you know, like the idea that it might be courageous or scary or you know, the necessary buy into an unconventional life was you know, to them, overshadowed by the fact that it would make them uncomfortable in front of their friends, or that you know, it might it might not be as safe, or as secure or as dependable as like the sort of more conventional path. So I just I think a big part

of it. And one of the reasons I wanted to write the book, which I really just tried to tell a lot of different stories of courage, stories that I think should be more well known, was the idea of just like, let's celebrate courage for what it is. Let's make it part of the topic of conversation, because I think that's how you get courageous people. There's this great quote from one of the biographers of Theodore Roosevelt. They said, you know, Theodore Roosevelt grew up hearing about the great

men of history and decided to be just like them. Right, And when we think about courage, I mean, it's about trying to be like the people you admire, the heroes that you had, and I think we do a poor job of that as a society. I completely agree. You know, your definition of courage seems to have baked in a pro social or positivelopment to which is interesting. One couldn't make the case that you know, it's be worthy to have the construct of courage that could go in either direction.

You know, you have a quote in an ugly world, courage is beautiful. It allows beautiful things to exist. So I just just a riff on that a little bit. I mean, do you not see did Hitler never have courage and any of the things he did? Like, in order to have courage, must there be this sort of like beautiful aspect to it? As what I'm wondering. No, I think it's a great question. Look, if we think about courage as simply the taking of risk, then sure, anyone who takes a risk or faces down insane odds

would be said to be courageous. But if we're talking about courage as a virtue, and more specifically, we're talking about courage which sits among four inter related, interconnected virtue, then I do think it's impossible to look at courage independently. So courage isn't like, hey, look what I can do. I could put a gun to my head and in the chambers and not flinch, right, I think courage as

a virtue is bravery in pursuit of what is right. Right, So let's take something sort of very of the moment vaccine resistance. Right, if you simply look at courage as I won't be told what to do and I will be willing to brave any obstacle, difficulty, punishment, or threat to protect my autonomy. In that sense, then of course, you know the school teacher that gets fired because they won't get vaccinate Andy or Kyrie Irving who gives up, you know, millions of dollars to not be vaccinated would

be said to be courageous. But courage in relation to the virtues of justice, the virtues of wisdom. Being anti vaxx is of course, you know, preposterously out of step with sort of courage in that sense. So when I think about courage, were there brave, courageous Confederates in the in the US Civil War? I mean absolutely, just as you know it takes a certain audacity to invade Russia or to declare war on the United States, in Britain

and Russia all at the same time. But I think when that courage is in pursuit of a monstrous cause, I think we can all agree that there's something hollow and uh wrong about it. Well, I think this would be a fun thing to riff on because it's a really interesting point. And just to zoom out for a second, these I want to make poor to our audience. What the four virtues, cardinal virtues you're talking about that are well when they're well integrated. I completely agree that's some

badass stuff going on there. If you've got courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom, I'll take I'll take the integration of those four things. So, yeah, I really liked what you're saying

about that. Yeah, they balance each other out, right, So courage is checked by temperance, because unlimited courage becomes not just unbalanced and unrestrained, but it also becomes dangerous and therefore unwise right or needlessly dangerous, or think about a reckless form of courage like I don't care, I'm charging ahead anyway. You're a soldier in the army, Well, you're endangering the other men and women in your platoon. So

it's also unjust right. And so the virtues they check and they balance each other out in a really important way. They do. They do. And so, but regarding your point about the anti vaxxers, I know that you know you you get some pushback obviously on that, right, on your I've seen comments your Instagram page now, so from their perspective, their point of view, they are they do think they're being They think they're being courageous by going on your

Instagram page and responding to you. So it's a very they do. You know, they'll probably hold each other up and say like, yeah, you were so braved to take that risk. Now, who's to say they aren't the brave ones and you're not the brave one. There are a lot of people that do a lot of things the name of justice and courage that eventually it goes very, very wrong. But in their heads at the time, they thought they were being fighting for justice encouraged, you know

what I'm saying. Yeah, Look, it's obviously very complex, and we have to look at these things with the sort of a view of distance of course, to know what was right and what was wrong. So it's difficult obviously to make sweeping judgments. But take something like speaking truth to power, right, which is what I think a lot of vaccine resistors think they're doing when they're let's say, commenting on my page. Although not powerful, but let's just say,

speaking truth to power is a form of courage. But what if the truth that you're speaking is nonsense, right, Like, it's not take vaccines out of it. Let's just say it's not based on anything real. Right. Let's say you're just accusing a powerful person of something that's not true. Now, it's courageous brave in the sense that you're willing to

risk their ire or anger to speak this truth. But if it's not true, you're not really speaking truth to power, right, And so I think what's tricky about you know, this specific issue with courage. Yeah, Look, being willing to risk one's livelihood or one's reputation for what you believe is, you know, not a thing that should be taken lightly. And I have a kind of a begrudging respect in

the abstract for anyone that does that. Right, But if what you're protecting is your ability to be a vector for a deadly virus that is currently killed three quarters of a million people in the US and millions of people all over the world, Like, what you're not doing

is being courageous. In fact, you're afraid of doing the thing that would be just and honorable and wise, and you're dressing it up in courage and acting like you're doing a good and noble and virtuous thing, when in fact you're doing an incredibly selfish thing that you've already done dozens of times in your life when these things were not so politicized, and now suddenly it's different. Are are there? Is there also some gray area here with

some religious exemptions or whatever. Sure, but by and large, thirty percent of the population does not have a religious exemption or a health exemption. They have simply been misinformed and radicalized and are taking an action that affects not just them and not just the healthcare system, but sort of negatively externalizing their bad decision on the healthcare system, but is actively endangering, you know, millions of fellow human beings and citizens, many of whom are now dead and buried.

And so I take a very strong and I think it's a great example of courage or a great sort of test case of courage. You know, just because you're risking something doesn't make it courageous. It matters. The why matters a great deal, and the what matters a great thing. You think about Roberty Lee. Roberty Lee gives up everything to join the Confederacy. He's one of the top ranking generals in the Union Army. He's a descent, he's a

relative of George Washington. By the end of the war, he loses his home, which is now Arlington National Cemetery, he loses friends, you know, But was that courageous or was the courageous thing for him to have had to choose country over identity? Right, and he couldn't do it. And so I was just talking to a great biographer,

Robert Lee, and we sort of talked about this. It's actually Roberty Lee was constantly afraid of doing the harder thing that sort of slides him into this path that ultimately makes him the head of one of the worst causes in world history. Right, It's different than Hitler. Right. Hitler is just a monster who aggressively seeks out this

horrible stuff. Right, Robert E. Lee is actually much closer to an example of someone who repeatedly failed to do the harder thing and then kind of called it courage

at the end of it. Thanks for riffing with me on this and having a little bit of a higher level conversation about this, because I'm really fast, truly fascinated in the idea of courage, the construct as being a narrative and how especially when you have competing narratives, right, So, I mean America has all sorts of narratives that we learn in the history books about like how courageous Christopher

Columbus was coming over. I mean, I can guarantee you there are other narratives that exist as well about the courageousness of indigenous peoples during that time as well. So I I just wanted to kind of riff on this intell actually with you. Yeah, no, no, I think it's important. And look, I think, like most things, those things can

both be true. It was immensely courageous to sail out into the unknown, to brave the elements and the doubts in the way that Christopher Columbus did, you know, to then slaughter innocent people and begin what became a multi century genocide. I don't think we put that under the bucket of courage, right, And so I think this actually brings up a larger question, which is another thing we're

struggling with as a society. And this goes to our point about multiple forms of courage and then the deficiencies of courage across the board. I think where we're really struggling academically, intellectually, culturally as a society is we want history to be really clean and straightforward, right, we want it to be Christopher Columbus is all good, or Christopher Columbus is the human being whoever lived? Right, America is this shining city on the hill, manifest destiny, a wonderful,

you know, beacon of freedom and hope. And then the sort of Howard Zen model of America as like the worst country that's ever ever existed. History is really fucked up and complicated. And the study of history, if it doesn't make you uncomfortable and it doesn't challenge you, and it doesn't make you feel disgusted with people that you'd like to be a fan of or that you'd like to identify with, you're probably not studying history, you know.

And so I think we lack even the courage to face and study the unpleasant, uncertain, you know, unclear nature of the human species and our own ancestors. So I think we really struggle with that as well. And it takes like the study of truth, the pursuit of truth is not for the squeamish, that's for sure. That's for sure. Well, you've done some work on statues being you've argued we should take down some statues, right yeah, I mean, look, I hate this bullshit argument that like, oh, how will

we remember the past if we remove these monuments. It's like, look, this is what books and museums are for. I have an office and a little bookstore here in a small town outside Austin, Texas, and there is there's a Confederate monument on the lawn of the county courthouse where they

regularly judge like death penalty cases. Right, So, imagine you're a black man or a black woman and you have to walk past a Confederate statue celebrating the people who committed treason to preserve their right to enslave you and your ancestors. Imagine you have to walk past that statue on your way into a court, a courtroom where that same county or administration is supposed to render impartial justice

and decide whether you deserve to live or die. I mean, the symbolism of that is preposterous, and I think again you study history. If Confederate monuments were put up in eighteen sixty six by the grieving orphans and widows of the Confederates who died in the war. We could have a discussion about that. This statue was put up in nineteen ten. Specifically, the one I've been talking about is

put up in nineteen ten. That'd be like putting up a Nazi statue in Germany today, seventy years after the battle happened or the war happened, right, And so the connotation the actual history of that statue has almost nothing to do with the Civil War and everything to do with the assertion the dominance of Jim Crow government or

Jim Crow segregation at that time. That basically said, yeah, sure, you black people live here, but you actually don't control government, you have no voice in government, and we are going to use taxpayer dollars and taxpayer time and taxpayer land to put up a to the people who raped and murdered your ancestors. So when like, when you look at history that way, which requires some discomfort and some inspection,

I think the argument is pretty clear there. So anyways, that rant over, I don't think i've ever seen you this fired up. Oh really? You you? Yes, I really haven't. There's there's such a zeal, there's such a passion in you about these political slash social justice topics that. I guess we've just never We've never covered that in prior episodes. We always cover kind of more by the book. In terms of the writings of your books, have you gotten

more interested in social justice in recent years? I mean, it's unfortunate that term social justice is almost a pejorative now, like it has a negative context to me, I don't see myself. I don't mean it as a pejorative, no, of course, of course, I just I'm just saying it says something about where we are as a society that to call some a warrior for social justice is to insult them, when like, ideally that's what we should all be.

I tend to find that the things that I get fired up about are less political issues, although they are political to me, they are basic social contract issues. So to me, the Confederate statue on the lawn of a courthouse is less to do my passion for it and my feeling about it is less to do with like, let's say, coming at it from the lens of social justice, and it's more like, first off, this is historically incorrect.

This was an attempt to lie about history. This was an active piece of propaganda put up, not that long ago, Like I knew a guy he died about two years ago. He was very old, obviously, but I met a human being who was born before this statue was put up, right,

so like it was put up very recently. And so when I think about it as as a like what do we owe our fellow human beings as part of the social contract, the sanctity of you know, your right to a fair trial is a very basic issue to me, And so I get upset or vaccines, I get upset, or I get I get committed to them again, not from a like a partisan standpoint or a particularly political view, but I think about it much more in the context of the virtue of the larger virtue of justice, which is, like,

what do we owe each other? What is our what are our basic sort of bedrock principles as a society. That's what I want to enforce. Like I really care less about like sort of what political party one is in, what specific laws one supports, or you know, whether you know the right wing take on this issue or the

left wing take on this issue. I think we're so fucked right now as a society that we're we're struggling to litigate like basic social contract issues, and that's that's where I tend to focus, Like, hey, you owe it to other people not to infect them with a virus if that is avoidable. Oh, wouldn't be wonderful if we could separate politics from truth. I mean, that would be

a wonderful thing. Then part of the reason why a society is so, as you put it, fucked is because these things are so intertwined right now, and perceptions of truth in politics or so we can't have rational conversations about what we think is right apart from people labeling us as in a particular camp. So I very much agree with that, and I think it's that is very well, it's beyond problematic. I'll often find the word problematic like an understatement in a lot of situations. People like that

racism was problematic. I'll be like, no, it's fucked up, you know, yeah, or it's it's implications are like terrifying to at worst destabilizing at best, you know, Like, yeah, I read a great headline from David French, who's a conservaive writer. I wrote, I like, and it was something like, can America be America if Jews are beaten in the streets, right, If Jews are beaten openly in the streets, right, So

that's not a political issue to me. Like a rise in anti Semitic violence is not a political issue, just as you know, a black man being gunned down by three Hillbillies when he's out for a run is not a political issue to me. This is the entire premise of our government and our civilization is that we have sort of rules and laws and norms that prevent things

like that from happening. And so, you know, the peaceful transfer of power, right, which failed in twenty twenty you know, less than in twenty twenty one, less than a year ago, Right, the United States failed to peacefully hand power from one party to another party, and for people just to revert back to normal after that and go like, well, you know, in this election, I'm going to I like the Republican

candidate more than the Democratic candidate. When that when the stance of that candidate, let's say, is not crystal clear on whether, like the peaceful transfer of power is an unquestioned priority for our system of government. Like, yeah, problematic, as you said, is the understatement of the century. Yeah, huge understatement. Well, you know, it just occurs to me that a big part of your courage as well is being completely okay risking alienating audiences that would buy your

book normally. There's a certain authenticity I see in you right now that I've never seen as full force. Not that you've ever been inauthentic. I've always found you, as long as i've known you to be a very authentic human.

But when I said, I've never there's something else going on today, I'm seeing in you like I've never seen this before, it with such intensity, which is sort of like it seems to me like you'd be okay, you know, being committed to a position and stating your position with passion, even if like let's say, thirty forty percent of your audience got upset with you for talking about those things that they veahtently disagree with and they boycott your books. It seems to me like you'd kind of be okay

with that. Yeah, I mean, I'm okay with it. It's a reality I'm dealing with for sure. I guess, okay, the happening, this is happening. Yeah, yeah, I mean I've certainly experienced consequences for stand I mean, I get enough emails to know. There are definitely people who have decided

to head to the exits for some things. But the way I see it as this, like I have been extremely fortunate to be compensated well for the writing that I've done, to have success for the books that I've written, and you know, the things that I've done in life. There is a part of us that we say, like, when I am successful, then I will do X, Y or Z, right, but I have to be conservative or I have to be circumspect on the way up until I get to a place of freeam, autonomy, power, influence whatever.

I tend to find that in practice the opposite becomes true. You work your way up to you almost having tenure or getting tenure, or making a certain amount of money, or being promoted to this position or that position, and then you don't say things because you don't want to lose those things, right, And to me, the obligation the success that I've had, it's kind of weird to write about ancient philosophy and be handsomely paid as a result

of that success. It's not that I'm conflicted about it, but I do feel like that success if I then only say the things that are popular as opposed to

the things the full teachings of the philosophy. So I guess what I'm saying is I could have a much larger audience and introduce more people to stoic philosophy by only talking about the personal development aspects of the philosophy resiliency, you know, self discipline, et cetera, and skip the wisdom or the virtue sorry, the justice part of the virtues. Right If, as you said, if we just talked about courage as being brave, I think that would be easier

and more palatable. But to me that that would feel like like strip mining the philosophy. It would feel exploitative to me, like I was being a bad steward of the ideas. It also doesn't strike me as particularly fulfilling

or exciting. And so I think just in the last few years, I've just made a pivot towards like I have the audience, I had the platform, I have the ability to speak in a way that gets people to listen, to only tell people what they want to hear, or to only speak about the unchallenging aspects of the philosophy. I don't know, it just it just strikes me as

a shirking of duty. That's fascinating. You know, one could make the case that keeping your personal opinions out of it entirely may strengthen the message and the applicability to as wide an audience as possible. But what you've decided to do, which is very interesting, and it's it's happening in our in our chat even today, is there is you're you're trying to live like you've you kind of it sounds to me like you're committed to living your

principles as well. Well, yeah, look, I don't think I'm not interjecting my personal opinion about bands that I like or you know, like my personal opinion about trivial things

is not what I'm inserting into the philosophy. I feel like what I am talking about, or I feel confident in believing that the opinions that I have about these sort of social contract issues are based in the ethical framework of the philosophy, right like, like, look, imagine you're a and I'm not likening myself to this, but as a thought experiment, like let's say you're a preacher or

a pastor in the American South during segregation. Right now, your church for hundreds of years has had a certain set of values, and your congregation has had a certain set of values and expectations about like certain assumptions or cultural ideas that are not to be questioned. Now it's pretty obvious that these things are in conflict with the actual teachings of Christ. Right, you know, blessed are the meek, you know what are a love thy neighbor, et cetera.

So you have a choice as a pastor. You could continue to grow your congregation and have a happy, pleasant congregation by maintaining or arguing for the status quo. Or you can upset and aggravate and perhaps drastically shrink the size of your congregation by speaking the truth that you you then know, or speaking to one's Christian duty to to to to to address the injustices and the wrongs

that are happening around you. To me the idea that you would continue to preach to the choir as they say, you know, it's it's not just shortsighted and immoral, but

it's not helping anyone, you know what I mean. I think I'd rather speak to a smaller audience that I'm helping actually fulfill the ideas in the philosophy then have a bigger audience, like like, I guess what I'm saying is what I rather have a stoic audience of people who actually understand all four virtues and are actively committed to trying to bring them into daily practice in the

real world. Or would I rather have a larger, brower, self helpier, you know, the secret kind of audience, but that we stay at a very level and we don't address things that actually matter, and we leave good large chunks of the philosophy just sort of untouched because it would upset some people. I don't know. To me, that's a pretty straightforward choice. Yeah, I was just gonna say it's it's a deliberate choice you made. You know, you could see a different model where someone just teaches the

stoic philosophy and talks about courage and that. Let's say you have people in the far right that really resonate with your ideas or even dare I say conservatives not an not everyone. You know these days, if you're just a little bit to the right of the far left, they paint you as ault right, which is unfortunate. But let's say you're just a conservative, and let's say you never voiced any of your opinions about vaccinations or any other things that tend to be politicized in our culture.

And they they really are inspired by your work and they use it to be courageous in their own ideas. Are you saying you like you wouldn't be okay with that, Like you want your ideas to be applied to people who you see as aligned with your values. Is that what you're saying. I don't know. I don't know exactly. I guess what I'm saying. I'll give you a good example. So I found out a few weeks ago that Aaron Rodgers is a big fan of The Daily Stoke, that he reads it every day, and he chose it for

this book club thing. Now. I posted about this on Instagram and I sent a message to him and I was like, look, welcome to the tent. Right, Stoicism is a very big tent. Here's I'm glad to hear that you're reading philosophy and I hope it makes your life better.

But I said, like, I do think it's worth pointing out here that the stoic view on this thing not my personal view, but my understanding of having studied this now for fifteen years, knowing that, say, Marcus Aurelius was the emperor during the Antonine plague and likely died of it, you know, and like, having studied this from top to bottom, here's what I think this stoic take on this issue would be, which is that life, like football, is a team sport, and we have an obligation to take small

measures that make everyone else, including ourselves, better and safer. Right. So I'm not saying that like, fuck you, I don't want your money, right, although I'll tell you something in a second, I'm not saying fuck you, I don't want your money. I'm just saying, hey, good to be here. But I'm not going to censor myself just because I see you sitting in the front row, and I don't want to hurt your feelings, right, although I'll give you

I'll give you an example. A few months ago, somebody who's friends with Rudy Giuliani emailed me to ask if I would sign a copy to give to Rudy Giuliani for his birthday or something, and I said, look, again, it's a big tent. I'll welcome anyone in it, but I'm not going to accept money and I'm not going to exert any time or energy personalizing a copy of a book for a person who has tried to overthrow, you know, a free and fair democratic election. That's where

I draw the line. If he wants to buy it from Amazon and read it all he wants, I'm not going to stop him. But you know, if you see him, tell him. I think he's a piece of shit, you know.

So that's sort of my my Wow. So I do think that you are a little bit different in this space because you do very clearly see a lot of best selling authors sort of have this attitude like if someone no matter who it is, if they tweet like that was the best book I ever read by this person, they'll retweet it right like they'll they're they're just that's their number one thing. Is like okay, amazing. I don't care who it is, but like they like my book,

I like them. And you have a little bit of a different sort of way of being, which is very interesting. I'm glad we're getting into this today. I'm I mean, look, I don't I don't want to give myself too much credit because it's been a journey for me. I mean, I think any the tricky thing is anyone who is a public facing person, an author, an artist, like a

public figure, intellectual like herself. I think clearly that is in some way rooted in I don't want to call it a wound, but it is rooted in a need or a desire for attention and validation, right because otherwise you don't have to have it. You are seeking it out.

And so I think, especially early on in my career, especially early on, even even as I was coming up as an author, you're sort of you'll take whatever you can get, right, And you know, it's easier, of course, in the position that I am in now to say like I don't need this, I don't want this, because

that's literally true. I think it's harder to do when that principle costs you money that you need, or challenges that wound or that that need for attention in a way that you know, can feel like almost like a life or death issue. So I mean, I don't see myself as perfect. I see there's a bunch of mistakes, associations, relationships, you know, whatever, that I've made over the years that if I was doing it over again, I would do differently. But I am trying. It is something I work on

or I think at least consciously about. Yeah, thanks for thanks for elaboration. Another aspect of your book that was really interesting to me is your elements of heroism or heroism however one pronounces that word, right, So why is why do we make our own luck? And how was that to do with being a hero? Well, there's a concept, as you know, called moral luck, which is like when you exist, what time you're born, what situations you find yourself in, determines to a certain degree how heroic or

a great one can be. Like you and I, through no fault of our own, are not part of the Greatest Generation. That's not because we ducked our service in World War Two. It's that we were not alive to be a part of that generation, right. And so moral luck is the idea of like sort of when, when and where you are does to a certain degree determine

you know, what's possible for you to do. But there's a part of that that also feels like a cop out to me, because it's not as if there aren't enormous issues of enormous moral consequence happening in the world today that historically people will wonder, you know what stand we took where we were involved, and so I'm just poking. I think. I guess what I'm saying is courage doesn't just wait around for things to happen to it. I think you also have to to seek out those opportunities

or moments to be engaged. You don't just wait for someone to ask you, hey, do you want to take the unconventional path in life? You can also go seek out an unconventional path. So as heroism an extreme version of courage, Like, how do you define how do you distinguish between the two constructs? Yeah, I'll get it. It's a very academic no, No, it's something I thought a lot about. So a good example. So, Michael Jordan leaves

professional basketball to become to pursue a baseball career. Right, he loses a year of playing time, everyone thinks it's crazy, cost him millions of dollars, but he walks away from basketball at the height of his powers to do this other thing. We can imagine how scary that is and what kind of courage, what a huge bet that is on oneself. Now flash forward about two to two and

a half years ago. The WNBA player Maya Moore walks away from the WNBA at the height of her powers, at the height of her dominance, a lot less financially secure than Michael Jordan, sue not another athletic endeavor, but to try to free a man wrongly convicted from prison, which she ultimately was successful at. So I think you know, had Michael Jordan been successful and become a professional baseball player, he would have read he reaped the benefits of that decision.

Maya More is not the primary beneficiary of freeing a man from prison. Right, It's a selfless acts. It's not just a selfless act. It's an act at great expense to the self. Right. She has not returned to the WNBA yet as far as I understand. So when we're talking about heroin, it's not just that it's an extreme form of courage, because the extreme form of courage could just be recklessness. To me, it's a higher form of courage. It's courage in pursuit of a selfless aim. Nice, I

like that. Yeah, the selflessness of love, you have a whole chapter on that. Yeah. And well, in my research, I've distinguished between love and connection. The need for connection can be actually very selfish sometimes, Right, you only like people that you feel an immediate sense of connection with, but love is a higher form of being where you can even love people you don't even like particularly. So

do you agree with that kind of distinction? I do. Yeah. Look, the connection of like, hey, I'm going to quit my job and move across the country to take a chance on this relationship, right, that's about connection. It's also a courageous thing to do. But you know, the parent that throws themselves in front of a car to save the life of their child at the expense of their own life, I think that is something high. That's not about seeking connection.

That's the profound selflessness of love. Yeah, I completely agree, completely agree. Another chapter you have in that section on heroism is silence is violence. Now, this one that sounds like this can get a little political, So can you tell me a little bit of it? And I know you don't mean in that way, but you know a lot of people will say, you know, in the anti racism movement right now, that if you're not actively fighting against racism, kind of drop everything you're doing in your

life and fighting for that, then you're racist. Yes, So what do you mean by it? I'm deliberately playing on the connotation of that, you know, sort of very loaded provocative phrase. Of course, I'm just I'm just saying that when we talk about speaking up or getting involved in things, often the reason we don't do it is we think,

what will happen to me? Right? What about like why doesn't why doesn't the NBA or Lebron James take a stronger stand against the very clear and profoundly alarming injustices of the Chinese regime? Right? It's because that is a really, really, really bad decision for a business. Right, So we can understand why they don't do it, But that silence they're inability, their unwillingness to do something about it, has a very

real cost for other people. There's a story I talk about in the book speaking of China in the Korean War, it's very clear that MacArthur has sort of gone off the reservation. He started to lose his connection with reality. And this young aide in the war department goes like, guys, I think you think he understands what his orders are, but he does not, and I think you need to

be much clearer. And the Secretary of State says, kid, what are you talking about do you want to go contradict the joint chiefs of staff to their face and the guys well, obviously not. And the result is that World War three with China nearly happens. Right, And so when we think about the things that we don't speak up about, there is a very real cost in meditation. And Marcusurrelis talks about how we can commit injustice by

doing nothing. So the failure of courage is not just an indictment of who you are as a person, can also make you complicit in monstrous things that by not speaking up about, by not lending your voice to you might have either prevented from happening or hastened the resolution of them. Yeah, look, I think it's a really good point. I think we can hold that in our mind simultaneously with the idea that often speaking up about things you have no clue what you're talking about can also lead

to violence. So of course I like to take a nuanced view a video on this. You have a lot of people speaking up about things that with such confidence and they actually have no idea what they're talking about. No, you're totally right. And look, we just saw this with

the Kyle Rittenhouse case with the Justin Smolett case. Right, just because something happened and you saw a five second video about it on the internet five seconds after it happened, does it mean you have to immediately make your opinion known, especially if your opinion has no nuance, no room for complexity, and a limited understanding of what's actually happened. So yes, again,

this is where the virtues balance each other out. The courage to speak up, the courage to to not be silent, is key, But so too is the courage, so too is the virtue of restraint of justice. Right, You don't want to create an injustice by jumping to a conclusion.

And also, wisdom means a careful study of things, right, it means the truth and perhaps the truth is not yet knowable, And by being a tad more patient waiting for all the facts to arrive, you would have been better off speaking Three months later, you still speak up about it, but you're not rushing to a conclusion and just trying to virtue signal on the internet. Well said,

Well said, Okay, so I really like that toggle. Right, So I'm gonna kind of integrate multiple sections of your book in this question I'm going to ask, now, what do you see as the big enemy of fear and how can people overcome that to inspire people through fearlessness? Wait, what's the biggest enemy of fear? What do you mean? Well, you yes, because you have a whole chapter on what is the enemy and yeah, so in your Elements of Fear section you talk about Yeah, I think so. To me,

fear is the enemy. Like we know often what we should do or what we can do. Then fear is what holds us back from doing the thing. But I think the thing we are most afraid of the real sort of deep down rooted fear is what are other people going to think? Right, Like, as a tribal species, as a person who does not want to be exiled, ostracized, canceled, criticized, attacked, made the center of attention, we're just really scared of what other people are thinking or will think, and this

holds us back. Ironically, you know, we try to play it safe and then we do something that I think thinking person understands that five years from now, ten years from now will not age well, right, So yeah, sure, Again, to go to the segregation example, let's say you're a white Southerner in nineteen sixty two speaking out, you know your neighbors are gonna be upset, blah blah blah blah blah. But I think if you could step back and see the trajectory of history, you're like, is this really gonna

Is this system gonna hold? Like? Is this gonna? You know, you end up sticking to a viewpoint that becomes morally unjustifiable or indefensible as time goes by. So it's ironic. We often care about what people think at the expense of our legacy, right like history. There's a great Atlantic piece and I loved your piece recently by the way that I saw blow up, But there was a great Atlantic piece from Annie Applebaum and the title was History

will judge the Complicit. And I think that's what if you care about people, what people think, think about what history is going to think of this moment? Love that? Are you referring to my group narcissism article, by the way, No, you're one about toxic positivity? Oh okay, cool, cool, okay, excellent. I wrote another one on group narcissism, so I didn't know if that's what you were a fray you might like that one too, But I yeah, I really like that,

and I like how we can underestimate. I like how you talk about how we can underestimate the extent to which we can inspire people through this fearlessness. Right, So we often because we care so much what people think, we may actually be jeopardizing ourselves from inspiring many, many more people. And so I just think that's an important point. That's what I was trying to get at with my integration, which I did a little clunkily, but that's what I'm

trying to get at. No, you're right. I mean, look, there's a great expression that courage is contagious, right, And if you think about courage as this thing that by doing it, you are also inspiring other people, even if it's just as simple as voting, even if it's just as simple as I don't know, being a decent neighbor. You know, you are making a very microscopic, tiny difference

that cumulatively has a large impact. Yeah. Yeah, But at the same time, it's also important to recognize that, well, even heroes aren't perfect, right, And you have a whole whole section on this, right, how no one is unbreakable and why is that important for aspiring heroes too well. I think this is really important within the context of stoicism, which some people have tried to link with this idea of toxic masculinity, like the idea of invulnerability, emotionlessness, you know,

almost an inhuman amount of resilience. You're missing the point. A resilient person is not someone who never breaks. A resilient person is a person who comes back after they have been broken. Hemingway talks about this in a Farewell to Arms. You know, he says, if you don't break, life kills you. But he says the strong become stronger in the broken places. Right, that we we sort of come back from from the blows that life lands on us.

So I just wanted to make it clear that courage is not like I never feel fear, I never feel vulnerable, I never ask for help, I never struggle. To me, that's the opposite of courage. Have you read this book, The Boy, The Fox, The Horse, and the Mole. I have not. It's a little kid it's a kid's book. It's I had I had Charlie on the podcast somewhat recently, but it's it's a it's sort of like an allegory it's kind of like a little kid's book, but like

the Little Prince like, it's also for adults. It's like a fable for adults too. And there's this page in the book where He's where one of the characters says, you know, asking for help isn't giving up. Asking for help is refusing to give up. And I think that's like perfectly expressed and that's what I'm trying to talk about in that chapter. Well absolutely, then I'm gonna have to check out that book. Okay, so hope. Let's talk about hope little bit. You'd say that it's audacious to

show hope sometimes, why is that? I mean, look at the world right now. We're struggling with so many things. We have so many sort of overwhelming problems whose enormity would could very easily be an excuse to despair or to quit, or to turn bitter and resentful. And so I don't know. I just find that the people that I find the most courageous, that I admire the most are the people who who still believe in, people who

still have hope. So, to me, courage is the hope is the most courageous thing, especially right now, Yeah, especially right now, and I actually wanted to ask you as as maybe our last question today is how in this time of COVID of divisions, can people flex their courage

muscle more and practice it. Well, look like we spent a good chunk of us talking about vaccine hesitancy and vaccine resistance, which which is obviously real and alarming, and it's kind of a black light that's been shown on society, and it turns out that things are a little dirtier and unpleasant than we'd like them to be. But the other way to look at that is like, holy shit, in a matter of months, we had like a moon landing, like something akin to the moon landing in terms of

its scientific unprecedentedness and breaks through miss like that just happened. Collectively. Society came together and solved a thing in amazing the record time. Now, is it also illustrative that a thirty percent of the population is like, no, thanks, I don't believe in it. Yeah, that's sad, But seventy percent of the population is on board, and it should give us hope and inspiration that we were able to do that right.

And so that's something that I take hope in just I want to focus on what we did right as opposed to what went wrong, and I want to be inspired by those people. And to answer a question, it's like, well, what breakthroughs are you making? What small or big problems are you? Are you? Are you a part of where are you making a difference in the work that you do?

To me, that's flexing, not just the courage muscle, but I think generally the virtue muscle, Like first, are you part of the problem, Let's let's make sure the answer is no. And then second, are you contributing to a solution, Let's make sure the answer is yes. I love that. I'm going to end today with a quote from your book. I really like It's quite long, but I think you're

our audience is going to love this quote. We have to stop thinking of courage only is what happens on the battlefield or on a bus during the freedom rides. It's also just not being afraid of your boss. It's the decision to follow your own creative path. It's drawing an ethical line. It's being a weirdo if that's who you are. It's voting your conscience. Conscience not what the crowd wants or your parents it's not only doing these

things when destiny calls you onto the world stage. It's also, as we've talked about, making courage a habit, something you do in matters big and small, day in and day out, so that it feels as natural in every moment, no matter who is watching, no matter the stakes. I do hope our listeners today were inspired to make it more of a habit, may courage more of a habit in their lives. Thank you so much, Ryan for chatting with

me again on The Psychology Podcast. You're one of my most repeat guests and I always enjoy having higher level discussions with you whenever you're on the show. It's an honor. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at Thusychology podcast dot com or on our YouTube page

the Psychology Podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.