In a blog on Big Think today, I looked at the challenge Maya Angelou took up herself and passed on us. According to Angelou, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.”
Virtue has been taking a hard hit of late with selfishness and greed rewarded handsomely. The baton Angelou passed to us is one of turning this condition around — of having the courage to stand up to degeneracy. Courage, after all, is more often a calculation used repeatedly rather than a one-time spontaneous expression of heroism. It involves blocking the path of those who spend much, if not the whole of their lives, seeking to raise themselves at the expense of others.