Tag: Toughness
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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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A Plausible Method for Toughness Training?
There is no easy way around it. Compassion-istas are out and toughness will have to be in. Why? Because our time is just screaming for toughness. Too many are folding, too many caving in, far too many bowled over, snowed under, and generally overwhelmed. Trouble: weakness, softness, flimsiness. Moreover, we have no idea what sort of…
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Sentimentality and Compassion, or Fire in the Belly
Those who can breathe the air of my writings know that it is an air of the heights, a strong air…. Philosophy, as I have so far understood and lived it, means voluntarily living among ice and high mountains… How much truth does a spirit endure, how much does it dare? More and more that became for…
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The Post-Martial Orientation: Cultivating Toughness
Long the pride of place among the educated, compassion, empathy, and presentness are giving way to a completely different order of supreme virtues. This is because, at a more general level, the post-religious outlook is being supplanted by a post-martial outlook. It has to be so, since history is uncompromising. This is what I see. The post-martial…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 