I Offer You Struggle, Danger and Death

Thoughts on Courage

I have nothing to say about Ukraine - so I won’t. But the events have had me thinking a lot about heroism, and the relationship between courage and meaning. 

Orwell had some characteristically brilliant thoughts on movements that inspire courage - in this case, the Nazi Party - which I wanted to share here.

“Also he [Hilter] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all Western thought since the last war, certainly all ‘progressive’ thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues.….