wigins

I think those are two separate questions.Why is courage a virtue? Why isn't cowardice a virtue as well?Why is courage a virtue? I think because society/culture most likely made it that way.I'd also bet that it was a Darwinian process, and lager groups of people, under a homogenous culture, were more likely to stick around by promoting individuals who practice courage (selfless behavior/thoughts) with positive reinforcement, while those who practice selfish behavior are discouraged with negative reinforcement.To use the grenade analogy:There are 10 soldiers in a small empty concrete room, with a live grenade. If 1 guy jumps ontop of the grenade, he ensures the safety of 9 others. Assuming you're in a position where selfless cooperation is a benefit (ie, 1 guy enveloping a grenade with his body), that self-sacrafice could actually benefit his genes and the group's genes. So in a Darwinian sense, it's probably an advantage being able to convince people to do things like march into machine gun fire, where self-destruction is more or less assured, so long as you judge the "economics" of the risks/payoff correctly (eg, never gambling the whole-groups existence unless forced to do so).

That's fine. You can judge the content of my posts for what they are without appealing to the character of the person posting them.

No, it's me. I apologize for being rude on another forum.. I can't promise I wont continue to say things this community probably disagrees with on my own time, or on other message boards. But I can promise, on the freedomainradio boards, i'll continue to be civil and polite. If I ever break that promise, then the mods should justifiably ban me.

According to wikipedia, it's an emotion: Guilt is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that violation. It is closely related to the concept of remorse. Do you not experience guilt?

If the question is: What happens, in a free society, when people's labor can no longer support their survival? Then the answer is: Unless someone else takes care of them, they die.

I don't think it matters where that behavior came from, or how it got there. The only thing that matters is that it exists. As such, the only thing you should focus on is behaving in a different way -- the way you'd prefer. Trying to trace back the root cause of it is only useful if you're interested in preventing it from happening to someone else. But the way you're blaming your mother doesn't seem to be very productive, because it doesn't change anything about your current state of being. Hope I'm not overstepping my bounds or anything. Good luck