It sounds like you are saying the courageous path is privately defying the consensus. It seems to me that courage is only involved when you are willing to do so publicly. I'm not saying that one should, but I don't think the cowardice/courage dichotomy is an apt description of keeping controversial opinions private.
Re:Giving Up on Privacy (2011)
by eternalban on Thursday December 29, 2022 @11:10AM
(#34174073)
I said nothing about "privately". All our actions, private or public, are engendered by the content of our minds.
Ah, so you are saying the mere act of disagreement is an act of courage. I think maybe you mean this in the sense that we fear to be different, that it is our internal condemnation of self we are facing down...a Nietzschian will to power kind of thing?
Re:Giving Up on Privacy (2011)
by eternalban on Thursday December 29, 2022 @11:43AM
(#34174506)
Disagreement would be the wrong word, since that is the pleasure that drives the contrarian. These acts of courage are not about pleasure, rather about fidelity, the expression of which may in fact entail social pain.
It is difficult (but important) to self examine one's motive to insure it is not pleasure that is motivating one's standing in contradiction to (asserted) social pressures. And after that determination, it takes courage to be true to one's self.
> courage is only involved when you are willing to do so publicly
Just disagreeing with the mainstream view on a topic often requires courage, trusting your reasoning and evidence over external sources. Then it typically requires additional courage to be public in your disagreement, especially in areas where it's common for people to criticize others for diverging from the mainstream view.
Still, I've found it really valuable to disagree publicly and then engage with the criticism, because that reduces the risk that my disagreement was due to a mistake.
It takes social courage, and more importantly courage of one's own convictions, to face the tide of conditioned and packaged social truths. "Truths" that will be repeated from friends, family, coworkers, such as "if you have nothing to hide .."
It is so much easier to go with the flow and takes not even a tiny bit of courage to do so.