When you see something wrong, are you more likely to act without thinking or think without acting? (Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, p.1372).
My first response to this question is in the line
of self-justification. In too many areas
of society we are carefully taught to tolerate wrongdoing and to turn a blind
eye towards it. It seems especially in my
own country this is so. Even though I personally
hate and detest the suffering, addictions, and insensitivity alcoholic
beverages inflict, I am grossly intolerant if I should ever mention this in a
polite, indulgent society. In other
words, I have steady, daily practice in thinking without acting all in the name
of tolerance and liberty. I opt for the
bland response rather than one based on conviction.
The second thing this brings to mind is my own
failure to be intolerant of wrongdoing when my own self-interest is at
stake. Once I was an employee of an air
conditioning company. Some new owners of
the company were stunningly unethical. One
afternoon in the alley behind our shop I discovered that one of our vans had
its back windows smashed and was obviously the victim of burglary. I immediately went inside and told the
owners. They looked at one another,
smiled, and said it was staged in order to collect insurance. I regret to say I did not report this, or at
least did not immediately leave the company in disgust. I knew which side my bread was buttered on
and this allowed for the shameful tolerance of wrongdoing. This attitude is pervasive on a larger
scale. Since I am a democrat, I tolerate
indefensible beliefs and lawmaking regarding abortion in order to affirm the
remaining areas in which I am in agreement with the party. Obviously my “larger considerations” mean
nothing to thousands of murdered children.
Certainly, the time is long overdue for me to err
on the side of action—to act without thinking when thinking is in reality quite
the opposite. Rather than vividly
imaging the realities of alcohol, tobacco, insurance fraud, and abortion; I
intentionally turn my mind’s eye away and carefully cultivate a phony blandness. This has not been my sole response to evil. But it occurs frequently enough to render all
feelings of prideful rectitude sourced within the cultivated province of a carefully
selective memory. This brings to mind
the words of T.S. Eliot:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion….
(from: “The Hollow Men”)
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