Courage of confrontation

The cruellest lies are told in silence, in acquiescence with wrong doing all around us. Before we pat ourselves that we are not a party to the crime in question we need to examine our conscience, whether we have a moral sense , a moral attitude away from the humdrum mundane existence we have to gratify our creature necessities. Do we have a value system that weighs all actions of omission and commission on the scales of our conscience and arrive at a judgement of right and wrong? Dostoevsky says in The Brothers Karamazov “Everybody is guilty for everyone else.”

When we see crimes at the geopolitical level of countries who are party to wars that ravage, kill and despoil, turn schools and hospitals to killing fields, large countries as predators of the smaller ones, do we stop and think? Except for making appropriate noises when it becomes necessary we do not have the courage to confront the perpetrators . There is too much at stake in the name of diplomacy  and political interests and our authentic voices are gagged. Turning away from the macrosphere we turn to our own limited surroundings where we constantly see injustice unfairness and pitiless discrimination where we shrug our shoulders and move on.

Within our families we often see elders treated with scant regard and even with contempt while everybody looks away without having the courage to confront the guilty and bring them to task. With no voices of protest the wrong doing is perpetuated and continues unabated. We also see little children ill treated in families for various reasons giving them the dreadful feeling that they belong nowhere.

We see domestic servants and ill paid employees exploited and treated beyond the bounds of humanity and unfortunate women caught in the web of domestic violence. While it is undisputedly not possible for an individual to right the wrongs of society at large we can still open our mouths in our limited spheres of home and workplace to condemn an action. Nothing can be more at stake than truth and goodness itself. In denying their humanity we betray our own In the words of Arundhati Roy, “you should never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of life around you. To respect strength, never power. Above all to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never forget”