Boldness Versus Courage

In Tides of War, from which I have pulled earlier quotes, Steven Pressfield puts into the mouths of one of the main characters of the book (and the Peloponnesian War) - Lysander of Sparta - the difference between courage (Greek: Andreia) and boldness (Greek: Thrasytes). It struck me that this quote encapsulates where I perceive we sit at this moment of history:

“Our rock is courage, brothers, upon which their boldness breaks and recedes. Thrasytes (boldness) fails. Andreia (Courage) endures. Imbibe this truth and never forget it.

“Boldness is impatient. Courage is long suffering. Boldness cannot endure hardship or delay; it is ravenous, it must feed on victory or it dies. Boldness makes its seat upon the air; it is gossamer and phantom. Courage plants its feet upon the earth and draws its strength from God’s holy fundament. Thrasytes presumes to command heaven; it forces God’s hand and calls it virtue. Andreia reveres the immortals; it seeks heaven’s guidance and acts only to enforce God’s will.

“Hear, brothers, what kind of man this conflicting qualities produce. The bold man is prideful, brazen, ambitious. The brave man calm, God-fearing, steady. The bold man seeks to divide; he wants his own and will shoulder his brother aside to loot it. The brave man unites. He succors his fellow, knowing that what belongs to the commonwealth belongs to him as well. The bold man covets; he sues his neighbor in the law courts; he intrigues; he dissembles. The brave man is content with his lot; he respects that portion the gods have granted and husbands it, comporting himself with humility as heaven’s steward.

“In troubled times the bold man flails about in effeminate anguish, seeking to draw his neighbors into his misfortune, for he has no strength of character to fall back upon other than to drag others down to his own state of wickedness. Now the brave man. In dark hours he endures silently, uncomplaining. Referencing the round of heaven’s seasons, he does what must be done, sustaining himself with certainty that to endure injustice with patience is the mark of piety and wisdom. This is the bold man, and the brave. Now: what is the bold city?

“The bold city exalts aggrandizement. It cannot remain at home, content with its portion, but must venture aboard to plunder that of others. The bold city imposes empire. Contemptuous of heaven’s law, it makes of itself a law unto itself. It sets ambition above justice and acquits all crimes beneath the imperative of its own power…”

“Courage is born of obedience. It is the issue of selflessness, brotherhood, and love of freedom. Boldness, on the other hand, is spawned of defiance and disrespect; it is the bastard brat of irreverence and outlawry. Boldness honors two things only: novelty and success. It feeds on them and without them dies. We will starve our enemies of these commodities, which to them are bread and air…”

“Thrasytes is perishable. It is like that fruit, luscious when ripe, which stinks to heaven when it rots.”

The bold (says Pressfield) are prideful, brazen, ambitious, divisive, grasping, covetous. When faced with misfortune, they seek to bring everyone down with them. They seek to impose their will on others and steal from others. Ambition is raise above justice, and all things are possible in its service – “the ends justifies the means”.

Is this not where we find ourselves now? In the midst of a culture that flaunts its self-created righteousness, glorifies its ambitious, divides individuals into small and dismissible constituent parts and determines who does and who does not fit in? That seeks what belongs to anyone or anything that it interprets as being too successful or too well provided for, even if that provision has been honestly earned?

But notice the other point Pressfield (through Lysander) brings up: It is a beast, something which feeds and succeeds only on novelty and success. Deprive of these things, and it will collapse under its own weight as all the forces that are turned outward turn inward to rend and claw among themselves.

Boldness, suggests Pressfield, always and eventually overplays its hand. What history suggests is that when this happens, it happens with terrible results. The nations, states, and organizations that suffer it are never what they once were.