Living Dangerously By Charles Taylor

In these dangerous times, a spot of philosophy from the warrior wisdom of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is in order:

“I greet all the signs that a more manly, war-like age is coming, which will bring valor again into honor! For it has to prepare the way for yet a higher age, and assemble the force which that age will one day have need of -  that age that will carry heroism into knowledge and wage war for the sake of ideas and their consequences. To that end many brave pioneers are needed now … men who know how to be silent, solitary, resolute … who have an innate disposition to seek in all things that which must be overcome in them … men accustomed to and assured in command and equally ready to obey when necessary, equally proud in the one case as the other; men more imperilled, men more fruitful, happier men! For believe me, the secret of realizing the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously.” From: The Gay Science (1882), looming before the word changed its meaning.

Nietzsche’s proposal will now become part of daily life in the struggle for existence.