Evil things, horrible things, wrong things happen in this world because good people do nothing.
It’s a fact. Most of us sit on our hands and look away. We know. We seeth inside. However, we seldom act. We seldom act until it is too late.
This is a lesson we need to learn. Along with truly recognizing our own weakness to authority.
I was reminded of this during my morning reading and a talk by Auschwitz survivor, Marian Turski. [Download the full speech in pdf] There has been a lot of debate surrounding the “causes” of the Shoah but few state as clear an argument as Mr. Turski. He says it better and stronger than even Pastor Niemöller.
We need to read and digest his thoughts given our present times. The wholesale trampling by money, power and government on individual rights and freedoms.
You no longer have the right to move and travel, to your body, to say things online, to walk the streets at night safely, to consent, to a liveable wage … and this is just in the West. Imagine you live on the streets of Khartoum or the back alleys of Rio or as a Uighur.
It starts with the small things - like this man, soldier, losing his life savings to the police and FBI. Yes, just taken out of his car. And it ends with many poor, downtrodden, disadvantaged while Number 10 Downing throws a party. Only the rich and connected have rights.
A poem on this topic - from my book Last Train To Auschwitz.
Food For Thought
Uncle Jacob
forty years kneading dough
after the war,
told me he had found only
two ways of making bread;
The slow bake of philosophy
the luxury of the rich or high minded,
for the rest, the quick snatch of wonder
between the long steady strokes of the whip.
Then sternly, his strong hand on my shoulder
he said,
“Son, always be on the other end of the whip,
for there they eat not bread but cake.
Living is an affair for those who turn on the ovens.”