Moral courage is what separates the great from the rest. One thing I will disclose about my novel The Gray Radiance: it involves one of the truly great, and virtually unknown, stories of moral courage in the twentieth century. From Margaret Anna Alice at margaretannaalice.substack.com:
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
—Albert Camus
“If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.”
—Marcus Aurelius
“Historically, the most terrible things—war, genocide, and slavery—have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”
—Howard Zinn
“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
—Martin Luther King Jr.
“Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.”
—Albert Einstein
What Is the Alchemy of Moral Courage?
I often contemplate what kinds of influences, experiences, and practices forge the alchemy of moral courage. What can we do to cultivate the foundational values and tendencies that produce individuals who bravely defy unethical orders—the Julian Assanges and Daniel Ellsbergs; the 12 men out of 500 who refused to participate in the Józefów massacre; and the 5 percent Diane Perlman calls Veridos in her theory of the Courageous Personality?
