Finally, Sontag’s insight points toward strategy as much as sentiment: if you want a braver public, don’t wait for mass courage—seed it. Small, intelligible public acts can function like sparks that make it easier for hesitant people to join, especially when the action is specific and repeatable.
Over time, repeated acts form a culture where courage is less exceptional and more expected. The lesson is not that everyone must become heroic at once, but that one clear public move can reorganize a whole room’s sense of what is possible, allowing private conviction to surface as shared resolve. [...]
