Cowardice may be the defining sin of our times - such an extremity of cowardice that people are afraid even to think virtuously.
Modern Man has no courage, because he has no reason for courage: nothing to be courageous about.
Acts of the most disgusting cowardice are observed and reported daily, without comment or even with approval - almost any excuse of expedience, of fear of risk - or the mere possibility of risk, is regarded as sufficient to justify cowardice of men or women.
And if there is real courage, it is undercut and dismissed by cynicism - the same cynicism that justifies cowardice, erodes courage.
Modern Man takes cowardice to new levels.
In the past people knew what they ought to do, and realised that cowardice was when they did not do what they knew they ought to do. Thus Men convicted themselves of cowardice.
And as CS Lewis remarked in The Screwtape Letters; to know one's own cowardice - to know that one failed to do what one ought to have done because of cowardice - is a really horrible feeling. It is one of the worst forms of guilt.
And Modern man is so systematically and frequently cowardly, that this self-conviction would be intolerable - If he allowed himself to have genuine moral principles...
However, by pre-surrendering to evil, by denying the reality of God and thereby emptying his soul of natural Goodness - Modern Man acquits himself of cowardice. We are indeed Hollow Men, Men-without-chests...
Without God - without any God - in a universe (supposedly) created from random change and blind causality - there is no compelling reason to be virtuous; and cowardice can be redefined as Nothing-But a psychological control mechanism, a manipulation by religious authorities (as indeed some of cowardice sometimes was).
Insofar as Modern man has any conviction it is that he has a duty to be happy, attain pleasure (especially sexual), avoid suffering - and therefore, avoid trouble, and keep on the right-side of those with power.
In the past, there were those who resisted alien occupying nations at great person risk and despite great personal suffering. The Resistance.
And there were those who collaborated - who made the best of the actually-existing situation, and made most of the opportunities they presented - the cowards who systematically did-the-wrong-thing, and benefited immediately and personally in terms of pleasure and avoiding suffering.
However; the collaborators mostly knew exactly what they were; their actions indicate that they were convicted by their own conscience; but other motivations (e.g. fear, greed, lust, conceit) were more powerful than shame or duty to conscience.
Now The West has been permanently occupied by aliens - by a strategically-evil Establishment, by a ruling and governing class who actively and openly lie-to, exploit and oppress the People.
But there is no resistance: resistance has evaporated.
Why? Because for Godless cowards there is never any sufficiently-compelling reason to resist.
We are all collaborators now, pretty much. Yet most Modern people lack sufficient integrity of conscience to acknowledge this simple reality to themselves, even in private thought.
So, in reality, we are something worse than collaborators.
