He found those who remained calm produced less of the ‘stress’ hormone cortisol. In one 2009 study, Yale University psychiatrist Deane Aikins subjected soldiers to extremely stressful situations to see what happened to their body chemistry. Their responses may be like ‘muscle memory’. Firefighters, airline staff, paramedics, soldiers and the like, will have been trained for dangerous, unexpected situations. Sometimes their calm, practical responses derive from intense preparation. Ingrid Loyau Kennett talkes to Lee Rigby's killer, still holding bloody knife, to try to prevent him from attacking other who act bravely appear not to succumb to fear. 2Įven those who feel no fear at the time of performing heroic deeds may find that the trauma catches up with them later – as was the case for Loyau Kennett, who became depressed in the months following the event. But often the first step towards being brave is to feel fear – then do the thing we are afraid of anyway, to paraphrase Sheila Jeffers’ self-help classic. If there is no fear to start with, there is no need for courage.Īdmitting we are afraid can make us feel small. As Nelson Mandela recalled: ‘I learned that… the brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers fear.’ You have to pluck up your courage to express ideas that are not majority opinion, or to face the hostility or ridicule that may accompany departing from social norms. But courage takes many forms – moral, intellectual, emotional, psychological, political, social, spiritual, financial. Physical bravery attracts most attention, winning honours and awards. When we are witness to real acts of courage, we know immediately what matters most fundamentally to the courageous actor – and it is not herself, not her own physical well-being.’ 1 And it is the self-overcoming character of courage that makes it so poignant.
It reveals that which inspires us to overcome ourselves. In other words, courage reveals what we care about. is the willingness to risk life and limb for the sake of something. For Richard Avramenko, who teaches political science at the University of Wisconsin, courage is the primary means by which humans raise themselves out of their individualistic, isolated and materialistic existence. To Aristotle it was a virtue, the greatest quality of the mind. In interviews later, she said she did not see her actions as heroic – she was just doing her job ‘as a human being’. When help arrived, she got back on a bus and continued her journey. Her aim, she later said, was to keep them occupied so that they would not go on to attack more people, including women and children who had gathered nearby. Then she went right up to his two assailants (armed with machete, meat cleaver and pistol) and talked to them – for 12 long minutes – until help arrived. Ingrid leapt off the bus and tried to save Rigby’s life – in vain his head had been almost severed.
Or an ordinary – and extraordinary – woman called Ingrid Loyau Kennett, who in May 2013 was travelling on the number 53 bus when she spotted a young soldier, Lee Rigby, being knocked down and brutally hacked to death on a London street.
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