The most important thing is that 'people' continue to resist - after they are implemented, and without end - bad laws, policies, regulations, standard practices, protocols, procedures, social-pressures, over-narrow/ over-abstract/ undefined weasel words (like racism, inequality, education, immigration...), tendentious assumptions (e.g false assumptions embedded in questions - forced dichotomies, both false...)...
And so on.
Typically, it is not possible to prevent these evils being implemented - the important thing is not to go-along-with them after they have-been implemented. That is the point when resistance can be, will be, effective.
It is not 'too late by now' - instead, that is exactly when evil must be resisted - after evil is on the statute books, on the masthead mission statement, in the aims and objectives.
If (enough) people don't cooperate with evil, and they continue not-cooperating (taking whatever flak ensues) then evil will be stopped and rolled-back.
The worst thing that people can do - here and now - is to assume that it is too late. That 'it's all in the past' - so I 'might as well' cooperate, indeed I might as well assist, support, propagandise-for...
If I can't beat 'em, then I ought to join 'em - at least then I won't be a 'hypocrite' - I might-as-well sell-out and get some reward for it...
If I didn't do anything in the past, then I can't realistically do anything now; if I don't have a coherent rationale why I have not resisted, or do not resist, all evils - then I should resist none...
These arguments are why cynics are the worst conformists, why cynics make the best managers and bureaucrats, why cynics accomplish more evil than the evil.
All this takes 'enough people', but we don't know how many 'enough' is (in some situations one is enough...); and, the thing is, here-and-now, with things as they actually-are... resistance cannot be organised (not least because there are far too-many things to organise against, and they are coming too fast and too frequently).
So 'enough people' can only come, would have-to come, from an aggregation of intransigent individuals - whose resistance is unconditional.
Several or many individuals changing their minds, individually and apparently-spontaneously...
I am not saying this is likely: I am saying that this is what must happen - if anything effective and good is to be accomplished.
Solo dissidence.
Nobody can 'make you' do it; but it is - I am afraid - a moral imperative.
This ties in with your previous post. If you are able, through real repentance, purification of the ego self, prayer, imaginative response to nature and scripture etc, to make a connection to what you call Christ in the etheric and I think of as the living image of Christ in the heart, then, whatever the nonsense in the world, you will be able to resist that because you know the truth that goes beyond it. But you have to have faith and courage, and a certain amount of pig-headedness helps too.
ReplyDeleteBut it is essential that you resist being corralled into accepting falsehood just because everyone else appears to or, even worse, because acceptance of this falsehood is supposed to be what defines a decent person. At the same time, we must not allow ourselves to slip into the opposite reaction of pride that we know better than the rest of them. If we are able to resist worldly indoctrination we should know it is by the grace of God that we do so. Certainly it is to our own credit too because free will is always involved, but it is God’s grace that has given us the insight to resist.
@WIlliam. A valuable addition.
ReplyDeleteFor most of us, the problem is fear - and an insufficient recognition of the opposition between fear and love. It is often fear that drives pride - or, we try to 'use' pride to overcome the fear.
And then I would say that faith in God (a loving and personal God) is the only real antidote to fear: the stronger that faith, the better it can overcome fear.
Of ocurse, we are here in mortal life to learn, so we will recurrently be challenged by fear - our task, each time, is to overcome it with love.
It is always only after a crime has been committed that we are in any position to apply a corrective reprisal against the criminal. Great crimes no less than small ones cannot be fought until someone actually commits them.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the great examples of not giving up in my lifetime is Poland. They had no chance of ever getting out from under communism and Russia, yet between the Catholic Church and their intense loyalty to Poland they prevailed and were even instrumental in bringing down the Soviet Union.And here I thought nationalism was always bad, but there you are: God 1, Evil 0. Ever since the scales began to fall from my eyes in the 80s I have found myself increasingly in the 'solo' position. It is still difficult to know when to speak up and how, but you are right it is fear that has held me back when I later recognise I should have spoken up.
ReplyDelete