by Andrew J. Zintl

Created on: September 04, 2008

Certainly, young people appear to be less courageous now than they were in past generations. The typical American lifestyle is not conducive to instilling this characteristic into its citizens. The vast majority of Americans rarely, if ever, are confronted with life-endangering situations unless they happen to be cops, firefighters, or soldiers. Usually protected by these three categories of people, we tend to go about our busy little lives, content to watch tragedies unfold on the news from a comfortable distance so that we are not dragged into the situation. Moreover, political protests are more commonly accepted today than they were in the past so participants do not have to fear legal repercussions from their involvement as long as they maintain certain standards of behavior. These things, along with many others, including our greater reliance on technology and lower physical fitness levels, all contribute to the notion of courage as having become an unnecessary virtue in modern society. Small wonder then that courage is not often perceived in today's young people.

However, courage does not only appear when one is faced with physical threats though such situations make it the most easily recognizable to spectators. Courage can be displayed by going against popular opinion in striving to do the right thing, by holding to one's beliefs despite being ridiculed for them, and even, in some cases, by forcing oneself not to assist someone when it would not be to their long-term benefit. All of these, though not so noticeable as someone risking their life in a dangerous situation, may require more courage than is displayed by such a person. At least, the courage of those facing one of the previously mentioned non-physically dangerous situations previously mentioned will generally have to endure for a far longer period than the courage of someone risking their life in a particular situation as the necessity for such courage soon passes, whereas the situations requiring moral or emotional courage do not fade away so quickly, if they ever do.

While it is a simple matter to observe that today's young people are less physically courageous than those of the Seventies, determining whether or not they are less morally and emotionally courageous is a more difficult matter. Moral courage when it comes to drug use, particularly marijuana, is probably about the same as it was three decades ago, if not a little higher because it was in that period that marijuana first became popular and there are some young people today who make the tough decision to abstain from using it, despite the general prevalence of the drug. Moral courage in general also appears to be roughly equivalent to that of previous years as college students still engage in protests regularly, which, despite the fact that they are free from legal persecutions as long as they do not stoop to vandalism, are generally viewed as an unwelcome disruption by society at large.

So, although physical courage has certainly dropped among modern youth due to unavoidable changes in circumstances over the past thirty years, moral courage, which will always be necessary, has not faltered with the passing of time. Therefore, it is fair to conclude that modern youths are not significantly less courageous than youths of earlier generations as moral courage is more important than evidence of physical courage and is itself a good indication that physical courage will show itself should the situation call for it.

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