Most do nothing – but judge

This intelligent column in the New York Times by David Brooks on the Sandusky/ Paterno controversy makes the point that people love to judge others, but few stand up to evil.

To that I would add, people also love to demonize those who stand up to evil if the results are messy or produce more suffering, even if that suffering is unintended. After all, doing so just makes those who do-nothing feel better about themselves.

Of course, there are times when it is wise, and ethical, to mind one’s own business. Many family disputes or morally murky situations fall into this category. But to stand by and do nothing in the face of clear injustice, or to fail to exercise one’s abilities to help in a case of desperate need, are moral failings worse, in the eyes of this observer, than to get involved and fail to succeed or suffer unintended consequence. Yet society has rationalized the habit of rationalizing to the point that moral relativism is taught as morality on our college campuses.

And then there is sanctimony of the order Brooks writes about: when abuses are brought to light, everyone proclaims, “How could they have let it happen?”

As Brooks explores in the above column, people, when confronted with evil, have a tendency to rationalize. It’s not really that bad. Maybe it’s not what it looks like. Maybe we don’t understand it. And sometimes, especially in pressurized or spur-of-the-moment calculations, it can be difficult to assess what is happening. There can be virtue in prudence and careful analysis, in looking before we leap.

Indeed, it can be difficult to assess the degree and nature of injustice or evil in ongoing situations as well. Here’s a thought exercise: Let’s say Saddam Hussein had continued unchecked his brutalization of his own people and had acquired nuclear weapons (which regardless of his seeming lack of progress toward this goal, he had attempted to do in the past [the Israelis had to destroy his nuclear reactor at Osirak in the early 1980’s]) and let’s say he had used them. How many generations would be taught about America’s reluctance to confront evil before it grew to out-of-control dimensions?

It is so easy to judge and so satisfying to be smug. But not only are most people not heroes, most have elevated the practice of neutrality to a supreme virtue. That is, until the mass graves and testimonies of trumatized children come to light. Then those who failed to act are judged.

Situations must be evaluated individually. But as Brooks notes, it is striking how everyone’s got backbone and resolve in standing up to evil–when they are commenting from the sidelines.

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