Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Angaangaq Lyberth: Sara, that is one of the most interesting questions anyone has ever posed me because myself, I’ve been looking for courage all my life, courage to be myself, courage to be the best I can be, courage to speak for myself, to have courage to stand up for myself, and the courage to uphold anything I believe in within myself. Myself, just like you, I’ve been so depending on being liked by someone else in this great circle of life, wanting to be recognized and accepted for who I am, being loved and cared for and then when someone doesn’t like it then I become so defensive, so saddened, so I fall apart. So what does it all mean? Probably that I didn’t have the courage to be who I am and then look at the great circle of life, how many have had the courage to stand up for what has gone in life all throughout ages. Few. If everyone had the courage, do you think we would have been where we are now? I do not think so. I think we would have advanced ourself to a far greater degree than we have, had we had the courage to stand up for us. To have someone stand up for us. No. Sara, I don’t want to depend on others any more. I want to depend on myself. I want to have the courage to stand up for what I believe, what I know is right for me and the world in which I live. I pray to the Great One you too will have the courage to stand up for who you are and deliver to the world in which you live the very best you can give for times and times to come. I’m wondering within myself if I’ve been able to answer your question. Please let me know because I want to be able to answer that very simple basic question you posed.

by Angaangaq Lyberth

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Anthony Arnove: The question of what courage means now I think has often been taken in a context that I find distorts meaning of the word "courage". It is sometimes spoken about particularly in the West, in the United States that courage means speaking up, speaking out, speaking ones mind. The reality is I don’t think that takes nearly that kind of courage that for example it takes for someone who is in Columbia today to go into work every day, to try to organize a union in Columbia, a country where the government aren’t backed, supported by the United States. It is carrying out death squad activity, supporting militias or carrying out death squad activity against trade unions where people everyday just going to work are risking their lives just saying that they want to have a right to a [voice are] risking their lives. That to me takes courage. That to me is courageous or Iraqis today having the courage to voice opposition to stand up to resist US Empire. That to me is courageous. To be in the United States and denounce the war, to criticize the war, to me that doesn’t take courage, to me that’s a basic moral responsibility.

by Anthony Arnove

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Anuradha Koirala: Courage, that we have to speak honestly and to start with the person. Courage means to stop hypocrisy and speak out honestly.

by Anuradha Koirala

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Anuradha Mittal: Well, for me, I think the definition of courage hasn’t changed just because we are in a different time. Courage has always meant the same thing, which is being able to stand up to corruption, to oppression, to exploitation. But I think courage also means not just to struggle for something which affects one directly, but courage is really about struggling also for the rights of the others. That’s what takes real courage. But also for me personally, I feel courage is also not just about changing this world. It is really also about ensuring that the present day world has not changed me. So for me, more and more courage has come to mean that.

by Anuradha Mittal

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Ashok Gangadean: I love this question because the question of courage has always been alive in my feel of philosophy. To be courageous, of course takes wisdom. When we think of Socrates, for example, looking at the great virtues of courage and wisdom and temperance and justice, these are integral. And in terms of my understanding of the meaning of the "courage" - core rage or rage of the heart, enlightened rage, proper rage that comes for being outraged at injustice. That sense of the heart rage, "courage" and the real courage, what does it mean now? It truly does shift according your context, but what doesn’t shift is a genuine courage that comes from awakened consciousness and genuine knowledge or wisdom. And wisdom and courage are inseparable. And temperance and justice, these are all interconnected, as we saw from Plato and Aristotle and our Greek traditions. But, it was also clear in all of our great spiritual traditions, that it takes courage to be human being. It takes courage to be. Because in these great traditions, the attempt to step back from privileging one's ego and clinging to the ego as the true self, the illusion of the ego, takes enormous courage. It always has taken courage to let go of one’s ego identity and dare to have the courage and the faith in the wisdom to let go and cross into allowing the true awakened self, the self of interconnectivity, to come forth. All human beings are called to have this profound courage, to step back and let go of that artificial self, so that their higher self may come forth. And we are challenged for that kind of courage. And, whether it’s in ancient times or now, this courage of the heart to dare to become a true human being is more required now than ever, as we enter our global age of awakened human beings.

by Ashok Gangadean

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: Courage today is courage of yesterday. It is really a state of [inaudible], a state of -- internally as well as externally, it is the ability to keep getting up every day, facing the challenges in your life, facing challenges that are posed to our human family, facing challenges that are on the global arena and not giving up. It means that each day we must find our inspiration within ourselves, within the lives of others, to see the beauty, to live life with gratitude and to know that we have the capacity to lead a meaningful, fulfilled and fulfilling lives. If we would look for that which is positive, look for our purpose and meaning in life and to know that life itself has value and that we have to honor it, we have to respect it and to recognize that life in all forms is sacred. Living life with courage is having guts.

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Avi Primor: In my opinion courage means moral courage. For me courage means to be strong enough to fight against the own environment too. You are brave, if you fight against your enemy, if you fight for your nation. This is a kind of bravery that is connected with the general public. You are doing what everybody else does. You swim with the current, you go together with the others. You are brave, if you stand alone - against others and especially against your own people. So members of Resistance during the Second World War were very courageous people. Resistance fighters need more courage than soldiers on the battlefield. But members of Resistance in Germany not only had to fight against the political power, the public authorities, the state of terror, but they also had to resist the contempt of their own friends, neighbours, of society, even of their own family - they were really courageous. Moral courage is very, very difficult. Not only because it means something for others and for your own people, but also because it lasts for a long time. A battle can be short - you can lose your life there. But to offer resistance against your own society, your own friends for years - for this you need a tremendous amount of courage. Once again: In my opinion courage means moral courage.

by Avi Primor

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Benjamin Fahrer: Courage, what does courage mean now? I only can speak from a place of my heart, of what courage means? In courage means to stand up for what you believe in, to go deep down into your heart, to deep down into yourself and into your spirit of what moves you, of what you feel is right. To find that place that inner chamber of your heart of what you know is right and sacred and special. And when instances come where you are minimalized, where that knowing is suppressed or minimalized or disrespected, disregarded, to stand up and speak, to stand up and exhibit, or to stand up in your mind, and acknowledge a compassion for those that don’t understand where you’re coming from. This type of action of stepping up in what you truly believe in, what you truly know is right within your heart, to stand up in this way is a courage, and there are many different type of courage. And here at this table, a 112 people, coming from different places and different cultures, different forms of courage, accept this courage. It’s true, sounds like the same type of courage in different forms.

by Benjamin Fahrer

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Benson Venegas: Sarah, sometimes in life you feel that because of your opinion, you're standing alone. And that's the moment when you should feel that you should continue. Many years ago, in 1992, there was something where everyone have their faith that was gonna change the history of the planet. And what happened in 1992 was the earth's - first Earth Summit in Rio. Was the first time leaders around the world came together and make major decisions for us to have a better planet. The reality was that ten years or eight years after there was the result of that was Rio plus zero minus zero. There was almost few advancements. Many countries had changes government [over a] five or seven years, and there was no follow-up in decisions or policy or agreements or commitments that was made by previous governments. So, there was a force or a process to try to make a change of the situation. And in the second Earth Summit in Johannesburg, when everyone thought that there were gonna be also major commitments from governments, the result was, more - some governments, some of the most powerful governments, didn't - decided some very important things that were gonna have positive impact; intense issue like global warming, for instance. So, the people that was at Johannesburg found that there was a situation of a loss of hope. But then, from there, we came up with the courage, the spirit, that the only thing that was gonna make difference for humanity in the future was personal actions and personal responsibility. So people stand up and have the commitment that we, as individual, we need to make the difference. We need to make the difference in our societies, we need to make the difference in our communities, in our countries, and internationally. We need to take actions. We need to take responsibility, and that means courage. That sometimes when you take these steps, you’d feel that you’re alone on yourself. But there is when you need to continue.

by Benson Venegas

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon.

by Bianca Jagger

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Bora Cosic: Our live circumstance are not such that we are on the front line in the war, and most of us are somehow socially secured, we also don’t live in the regions of often quakes, so the courage means: steady representation of own options (thinking), no making of compromise, absence of lies, in one word “being mature”. Courage can also be in: solving everyday problems in the life or within the family, fighting with tough diesis, resistance towards many of things surrounding us. There it represents a challenge for some courage that is maybe in each of us, however some prefer not to exhibit it and others make huge hero pose out of it.

by Bora Cosic

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Brian J. Weller: This is a great question – courage; from the French coeur, the heart. A very, very huge question this one. I guess, really, courage now is about speaking one’s truth without any compromise despite the risk of harm, injury, censor loss. That’s the real courage. I think courage now really – this is probably one of the most important questions we’re facing today in the Table of Free Voices. It’s really, really important, I think, to really step into the heart. I guess that’s really what this question is talking about and that’s what courage is. I think the greatest courage, actually, maybe the greatest act of courage today is to feel the pain and to feel the suffering of the people who are in conflict. That takes a lot of courage. You know, in a sense it’s easy just to shut that out, but to really feel what is going on, that takes courage. I think the flipside of that is having the courage to truly forgive ourselves and particularly when we feel we’ve been aggrieved. I think that’s a really deep, personal question. You know, can we really forgive our own past? Can we forgive our guilt? I think if we don’t do that, if we can’t do that, then humanity doesn’t have much of a future. I think this is, again, a deep question. You know, do we have the courage to complete and heal the past, so that we can create the future? That’s a huge act of courage right there. Creating the future means stepping into the possibility of what we truly want together. It’s so easy to completely reason it, continually repeating the past, and I think that’s in a sense one of the real difficulties we’ve got together as human beings. So yeah, the courage to be truly happy, the courage to forgive ourselves, maybe the courage to stand up and say what we truly feel.

by Brian J. Weller

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Catherine David: Courage can have relatively different meanings depending on the places where one lives and eventually fights. There are places where you risk your reputation, where you risk eventually being ridiculous, where you risk being outcasted. It doesn’t seem to me that you can compare it with places where you purely and simply risk your life. So I believe if we keep up the courage, associated to our circumstances , it can mean in the so-called democratic and occidental societies, in which we live, not to be afraid of the dissent, not to be afraid of belonging to a minority, not to be worried of displeasing, not to be worried of being dissonant with etc. etc. This seems to me like a “little courage” compared to those who simply risk their lives. I think that we have to keep this in mind and it should make us all the more radical and motivated that we do not risk our lives and sometimes only trouble and a bit of ostracism, a bit less of well-being. So I think that all this should encourage us to a well reflected radicalism and a minimum of consequences and pigheadedness.

by Catherine David

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

China Keitetsi: For me, courage is not to give up. Try always before you give up. Try to think of those who are wishing not to die, for example. Before you commit suicide think of what more could you do before you commit that suicide. For me, courage is not to give up on anybody, not to give up on myself and to do what I believe in. When I'm humiliated, I should not give up. I should keep my courage as long as it is the truth, as long as it is something I believe in, I should [carry] on and do it. Because you have a choice. You have a choice in life to decide where your life should go; whether you simply want to live with yourself and give up. Life has everything. We are offered everything. We are offered many opportunity. For example, like in Africa, if God ask me to vote for woman, I would vote for an African woman because they are the most amazing being I have ever met. Women who lose so much in life and still go on. But also I think sometimes you're so busy trying to survive that the moment you go to think of giving up, you're already tired.

by China Keitetsi

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Constantin von Barloewen: There is the well-known sentence: The terrorist is an anarchist who can't wait. If we keep this at the back of our heads, we can only welcome courage, courage concerning civil law, human rights, courage for civil disobedience, disobedience in order to attain civil rights, courage in democracies, but in particular in the states of oppression, in the states of the Middle East, in the Latin American, Asian, African dictatorships. Courage is the necessary condition of civil disobedience. Thoreau, in the nineteenth century, showed courage when he did not pay his taxes, Emerson, the great transcendentalist showed courage as the forerunner of the civil movement of disobedience, Gandhi showed the courage to shoulder human suffering, personal suffering, Martin Luther King also showed courage until he was assassinated. Courage is the condition for civil disobedience against a technocracy, against the pinnacle of technology, against an opposition, against all consumerism, an opposition to a seriously dictatorial society of consumption which only legitimizes a share of the society if there is a share of consumption. This is a great danger. In this context, the courage to defy the situation can really be justified, the courage to find an inner niche, a niche of poetry, a nice of an poetical existence, a niche of an existence which is free from the requirements of the purely industrial society. And also the courage in the fight against dictatorships, this is even more important. A civil society has to be established and this can only be done if the population courageously gets involved in this process.

by Constantin von Barloewen

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Cornel West: Well, this is a very important question my dear sister Sara. I think courage means now what it has always meant, which is trying to care enough, to put oneself at risk in speaking the truth, in bearing witness to justice, holding up possibilities of hope. That courage has everything to do with looking the future into the face, always acknowledging an element of the unknown, but believing that if one sacrifices, if one suffers, if one takes a risk and allows oneself to be vulnerable, that one can still make a difference. So, it means fighting cynicism. It means fighting pessimism. It means fighting forms of injustice be it vast economic inequality, be it vicious forms of male supremacy or white supremacy or homophobia or religious intolerance, and still believing that what one thinks and what one does matters, that what one thinks and what one does makes a difference. And this is the kind of courage that constitutes the raw stuff of any movement for justice in any experiment in freedom and democracy.

by Cornel West

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Dedi Baron: Answertext will be available soon.

by Dedi Baron

Sep 9, 2006 1:50:00 PM cite

Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas: This is one value or trade that each of us could really have, and for me - courage for me is the ability to face the individual challenges that we are facing in this world. And on the other hand courage from me is the ability also to face the challenges of service to be able to serve others. You have to face the courage to serve your communities and that's courage in spite of the hindrances, in spite of the modern and global being challenged, courage for me would apply if you have the ability to face those challenges, to serve your people and possibly serve other communities, especially those who are in the marginalized countries. And, we are talking here of the local and indigenous people who need our intervention, and that for me is the actual application of knowledge that we should have in order to be useful in this world and be able to contribute in the development of this [moderate]. So that’s courage. To be courageous just for yourself is I think a selfish courage and therefore to have courage, to be able to face your challenges and the courage to be able to serve your fellowmen, especially the poor people, those who need help would think be another kind of a new courage and that it's more than a selfish courage.

by Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas