Many people nowadays don’t speak when they ought to, as we are expected to tolerate those actions which we find reprehensible. However, what is more confusing to me is the lack of resistance to this expectation. What causes this I am not certain, but perhaps we lie to ourselves to comfort that inkling of suspicion that someone is not acting with honest intentions. Or perhaps maybe we aren’t ready to say that they may even be a bad person.
It seems that far from having just the viral pandemic of COVID-19, we also seem to have a pandemic of cowardice. Both are in fact proving to be endemic, yet for entirely different reasons. One is endemic due to the nature of the disease, the other is through active choice. It is up to the reader to decide which is which.
Instead of clearing our conscience, we sit and shudder to think about the potential consequences of speaking out; what will my professors think? Will my friends abandon me? Will I lose my job? Will anything happen to me if I speak out?
While the answers to these questions are seemingly in constant flux, ultimately, this fear of saying what you believe is based in nothing more than a fear of being outcast from society. If society is willing to outcast you because you think of something as evil, then why care about being thrown out? Would that not be the preferable outcome?
Instead, the coward retorts, “Much more preferable it is to bend to those who seek to do evil than to be in bad company with those angles”.
We now live in a time where people are more concerned about potential ‘micro’ aggressions than actual violence. How wonderful a life we must have, if all it takes to take up the white flag of surrender is to simply worry about stepping on the finest of toes. Or perhaps it’s a sign of how bad the situation is?
How awful to not hold any convictions that may threaten those above you. Maybe if you just follow their orders things will turn out just fine. While I can certainly understand why someone might be disposed to believe this, it is a rather naive notion that those above you are always so caring and thoughtful. It is easy to forget that positions of power often attract those least qualified to fulfil it.
If you wish to live this way, then so be it. There is likely nothing I can write to change your conviction. But maybe if you stand up for yourself, and say no to that which you find evil, you may find that you are not the only one standing. And what good company you will find yourself in, if you only dare to speak your mind.
We have only a short time to make our grievances heard, before we may potentially never be able to again. Speak now or forever hold your ‘peace’.
In absentia lucis, tenebrae vincunt.
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