From: pharvey@mipos3.intel.com (Paul Harvey)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Who cares
Date: 24 Jul 92 22:40:38 GMT
	<12448@inews.intel.com> <1992Jul24.175100.24808@qiclab.scn.rain.com>

In article <1992Jul24.175100.24808@qiclab.scn.rain.com> 
sallyb@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Sally Bowley) writes:
>trail was pitch black, but i could have made it along okay without
>breaking anything - however i didn't go because i was too scared of
>being attacked. my sensible head told me that the people here were
>good people etc etc - my even sensibler head told me to listen to me
>mum and not go out after dark ;-). i was angry at myself for not
>having the courage to go anyway 

Courage is a funny thing. It is good to take a risk and follow a new
adventure, that's the only way to learn. However, if you are on gang turf,
some new rules take effect. Now you have to weigh risk versus reward. The
reward has to exceed the risk and the chance of reward has to exceed the
chance of risk. In this kind of situation, courage is that which makes you
a fool, a chump. If you get the reward, you are lucky and will probably
do it again, now falsely assuming that it is safe. It becomes just a matter
of time before you become the fool, and in the case you mention, I can't
imagine any reward that could compensate for the risk. I'm not saying gang
turf should exist, I'm just saying when it does, one had better take that
into account. There are lots of examples of war heros who did something
stupid and lived to tell. These are called courageous deeds. They are just
plain luck, for each that survived are thousands who were shot down into
a ditch. I don't know why women have to deal with gang mentality in their
everyday life, but they do. And I don't think anyone is going to call you
courageous for taking that risk and wining, but if you lose, they will
call you a fool. Seems to me you did the right thing, courage only worked
for John Wayne, and only then in the movies. It seems to me like a hard
thing, because some people will say you are only oppressing yourself and
denying yourself of opportunity because of fear. I don't see that. I only
see a question of surviving. If you want to survive on gang turf, you'd
better learn to think and move like those gangs. The reality is hard and
you will not fight it and win. You can only work with the rules and find
the paths that will get you from here to there, mentally and physically
intact. Hopefully it will never happen, but someday you may make a mistake
and get hurt. Save up your courage for then, that is when you will need it. 
Freedom is a funny thing, isn't it? In some ways, it is just another word
for nothing left to lose. It's not a question of self-oppression, it's a 
question of survival. Survival always comes first. Self-oppression is a
word from those who don't see the reality. Casting off self-oppression may
work in some places, but not on gang turf.

>and more angry at "society" for putting me in this position.

Yeah. It just doesn't seem like a life for a human being. I wonder how
much different society would be if this war and gang mentality did not
exist. Seems like it would free up the creative spirit. Maybe then we could
all be artists, maybe then we could talk that freedom talk and walk that
freedom walk. Can you hear that freedom train? I hear it, but I don't
know if it's gonna stop and I know it's still along ways off. Everyone
claims their burden is the heaviest, who feels it knows it most.