Lately I have been ruminating on morale. While establishing good morale can be effortless when patterns are neat and attended to, and is largely resilient when underway, it can quickly go off the rails if one falters or is moved against.
“Morale” in its meaning as “mental condition as regards confidence, courage, hope, &c.” (especially as regards soldiers, sailors, or any body of persons engaged in a hazardous enterprise) is allegedly first recoded in 1831, and as EtymOnline has it, “...from confusion with French moral (Modern French distinguishes le moral "temperament" and la morale “morality”).” The word “moral” whencefrom “morale” is derived comes from the French morale (“morality, good conduct”) which itself derives from the Old French moral (14c.) and directly from the Latin moralis "proper behavior of a person in society.” I quote EtymOnline again: “...literally "pertaining to manners," coined by Cicero ("De Fato," II.i) to translate Greek ethikos, from Latin mos (genitive moris) "one's disposition," in plural, "mores, customs, manners, morals," a word of uncertain origin, perhaps sharing a PIE root with English “mood.”” The root of the Greek ἠθικός, “of or for morals, moral, expressing character,” is ἦθος, “character, moral nature.”
This digression illuminates that morale, as we understand it to mean today, derives from a misunderstanding between temperament and morality, and morality itself comes from an attempt to translate the Greek term for the expression of character. This winding derivation would imply that, at root, morale is a function of one’s character and temperament, even of one’s personality; that, while it may be affected by external factors, it arises from within; that, going far enough back, there is a close crowding at the roots.
Morale is a function of conscious and unconscious factors. Unconscious, from the food one eats and the physical ability one has; conscious, in the inclination one’s mind has toward certain forms of description, rationalization, interpretation. There is also the filmy layer at the horizon-line of action, that is, habits: of thought, deed, and instinct, which are much harder to train and extract.
The unconscious factors are in fact quite malleable. One’s physical energy is not a tank or reserve or a finite thing with quantity. Rather it is a process, a feedback loop that can compound itself into greater heights with positive encouragement, or subside and flatline when neglected. This feedback loop will respond to what it is fed: small successes and doses of energy breed more of the same, while lassitude and rumination creates more of itself.
Small successes build momentum for larger attempts. Patterns make for easier motions. Why else is the raiding of the first, second, and third places so common? Or things coming in threes, or essays starting with “dictionary definitions,” or the rhetorical structures, or any formulas for composition? Tools for beginning lead to easier beginnings, which beget more frequent beginnings, which beget even more frequent beginnings. Energy renews itself through action.