Is courage rational?
Is courage rational?
How notions seem wise even when they are foolish.
The Fulcrum of Courage, Part 4
Children between the ages of 3 and 5 begin to understand abstract concepts but have difficulty telling fantasy from reality.
Their imaginations grow more and more vivid. At the same time, they learn how the actions of others are not determined by reality per se, but by their beliefs about reality.
To be left alone in the dark is to be vulnerable to predators.
We all learn to gauge when fear and reason are appropriate.
When children are afraid of monsters under the bed, their senses are calibrating to their environments. As kids get older and more rational, they tend to stop sensing predators who aren’t there.
This human ability to calibrate our senses and regulate our emotions is a cornerstone of mental health in adulthood.
Yet even today, 4 in 10 adults believe in corporeal demons. 1 in 5 are certain they’ve seen a ghost. 1 in 12 believe vampires roam the Earth.
In Gerbert of Aurillac’s time, Europeans and Arabs alike believed the Devil had unnoticeable powers that could affect both Heaven and Earth.
10th century demons looked like humans but had millennia of experience. They were proud, sinful, greedy, envious, and learned most of their evil ways from us.
These demons were subtle and deceptively wicked. They enjoyed causing pain and would disguise themselves as angels to sway humans from righteous paths.
They were wantonly sexual. No human could resist their advances.
A sex life with a demon would lead to illness, madness, and a miserable death because it would feed on your soul.
Demons themselves lacked souls. It occasionally showed in their eyes. They were not truly alive and their bodies were incapable of reproduction.
To have offspring, they conspired with the Devil to use humans as surrogates.
Female demons called succubae would visit men in dreams and steel their sperm. Then, male demons called incubi would use the sperm to fertilize human women.
Cambions, their offspring, were sometimes deformed. They were odd, impulsive, and potentially dangerous. The Devil had powerful influence over them.
In the 10th century, these supernatural beliefs were regarded as facts.
We like to think we are wiser now than in the past, yet we are still human.
Popular beliefs about the course of history today bear a striking resemblance to the ones held back then. The schema is identical:
History is a foretold series of stages that ends.
A massive violent upheaval will happen on the threshold of the final stage.
Countless people will suffer and die, but the conflict will eliminate evil until the end of time.
Finally, the worthy will enter or establish a utopia.
Then, as now, people who were obsessed with power, consumed by envy, or just plain cruel were constantly listening for what separated individuals from the crowd.
To reject a dogmatically held belief in the wrong company was to risk castigation, ostracization, or reputation demolition.
In 992, Good Friday coincided with the Feast of Annunciation. For centuries, clerics believed this would bring forth the Antichrist and his army of millions.
In 995, the two holy days coincided again.
After Pope Charles V died mysteriously in February of 999, a rumor circulated that the new pope was having sex with a succubus.
As the sun set on New Year’s Eve, hundreds of thousands of people were gathered in the streets of Rome wearing sackcloth, expecting to cross violently into the final stage of history, and hoping to be worthy.
Gerbert of Aurillac dismissed the rumors, but those before him knew for a fact that succubae lurked around cathedrals and libraries. Common sense dictated that even the Vatican was haunted by vampires and demons.
For the people gathered in Rome that night, there seemed no reason to doubt the new pope was a sorcerer who gambled with the Devil. Most thought there was every reason to believe they would bear the cost of his reckless ambition.
Next: Can courage be taught? The kinds of relationship that enable it to flourish.