the.com/cowardice
the survival instinct's PR problem — keeping you alive while ruining your reputation
means The lack of courage to face danger, difficulty, or pain — the tendency to flinch, flee, or fold when bravery is called for.
from From Old French coardise, built on coard (our 'coward'), which traces to Latin cauda, 'tail.' The image is an animal slinking off with its tail tucked between its legs — or, by another reading, a creature 'turning tail' to run. Either way, the cowering body and its drooping tail are baked right into the word.
- brain source
- Amygdala fires fear before conscious thought intervenes
- legal weight
- Cowardice once carried execution in several militaries
- evolutionary win
- Fleeing ancestors outbred the brave ones who charged
- white feather
- WWI women shamed men with feathers for not enlisting
- physical tell
- Fear triggers gut-emptying, hence the term yellow-bellied
chamberlain's munich agreement — british pm signed away czechoslovakia to hitler in 1938, avoiding war at the cost of millions of lives
french surrender 1940 — france capitulated to nazi germany after 6 weeks of invasion, then collaborated under vichy regime
bystanders at rwandan genocide — hundreds of thousands watched neighbors murdered in 1994 while un and world powers did nothing