Cynicism and the belief that we can do nothing are inherently flawed and
destructive - they actively enable these wrongs, and those indulging in such
are as guilty as those doing the wrong - those people are the same as those
nazis who claimed they were following orders during the Holocaust, and those
who collaborated with or enabled evil everywhere, throughout history.
Further to that, this flaw opens the way to active partnering with evil - notably, the issue that Tim Snyder refers to as “anticipatory obedience” in his book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” (pub. The Bodley Head, London, 2017, ISBN 978-1-473549296).
From Chapter One of that book: “Perhaps rulers did not initially know that citizens were willing to compromise this value or that principle. . . . Because enough people in both cases voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders, Nazis and communists alike realized that they could move quickly toward a full regime change. The first heedless acts of conformity could not then be reversed. . . . The anticipatory obedience of Austrians in March 1938 taught the high Nazi leadership what was possible.”
What is the solution to this?
Well, there are a few ways to approach it - hope or faith, for instance, but what I am being impressed with in this instance is Courage - the courage to have hope, the courage to act even if there seems to be no reason to hope, the courage to be one’s best - to manifest, as US President Abraham Lincoln put it, the “better angels of our nature”, no matter how bleak the situation.
Doing so always helps - philosophically, as a matter of principle, by inspiring others, and energetically, through the psychic energy it creates - energy which cannot easily be expunged, particularly if more and more people are holding to their Courage.
There is but one symbol this week: my bindrune for Courage.
An audio version of this post can be found on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WudNeQSGRiM
