The investor Peter Thiel, in his great book, Zero to One, states the following: “Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.”

When we think about the preservation of the status quo, we should think about the nature of cowardice. Cowardice is driven by the old sins of fear, greed, vanity and, of course, institutional submission. And while critics of a leader’s actions have an idea, from the outside, of what principled courage looks like, we fail to understand deeply that the fallen nature of human beings is going to lead to cowardice.

Courage indeed may be fear disciplined by principle. But in order for that to be true, people need to observe principles acted out in real life. They must observe people bucking the institutional structures that bind them, and they must observe people experiencing the consequences–good, bad, or ugly–of such principled behavior. They must see leaders going ahead first.

If people don’t see this. If instead they are exposed to smooth ideas, smoothed paths, and vanilla outcomes that preserve the status quo, they not only won’t recognize when courage is missing, they will actively resist those who are principled and have a desire to engage in principled decision-making. Courage has always been in short supply, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.