Month: June 2015
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Toughness Trained Through Harder and Harder Contests
Our Predicament We are forever holding back. We are always backing down. Every day we stand aside, give in, crumple up, let fall. Has panic settled in? This is meekness. Look around you and you will find it–so dour, so damp, so commonplace–almost everywhere. The Desirability of Toughness Suppose, like me, you say, ‘Enough is enough.’ Then…
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Endowment Effect and Wrenching Toughness
In behavioral economics, the ‘endowment effect’ states that individuals ascribe higher value to the objects they possess than to the objects they could secure. If this is true, then we are ‘loss averse’ creatures that prefer to keep what we have and are more disheartened by the loss of our possessions than by the gain of some other, perhaps…
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The Limits of ‘Creating Safe Spaces’: Contests of Toughness for Our Time
The Limits of ‘Creating Safe Spaces’ There is a great deal of talk going around about ‘creating safe spaces’ to ‘foster communication,’ ‘open dialogue,’ and ‘facilitate exchanges.’ Discomfort is to be removed, managed, or adjusted. Being uncomfortable is ruled out or encouraged it means being ‘at the edge of one’s comfort zone.’ Ground rules are set, based…
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Contests, Modes of Toughness, and the Spirit of Our Times
Not everything in life is a contest but surely some things are. In a contest, I struggle, I risk something, I stake myself. I can avoid contests but only at the cost of avoiding becoming a more excellent human being. I doubt whether we can continue to avoid the contests we face in the coming years. Some…
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How to Learn to Stand Up for Yourself
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that one mode of physico-ethical toughness is standing up… (e.g., standing up for oneself, standing up for what one believes, standing up to oppression) as opposed to backing down (e.g., backing down from one’s opponent). So, there would be situations in which the right thing to do would be to…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 