Complacency Is The Fertile Soil that Allows the Seeds of Atrocity to Flourish

The fight continues thanks to your generous support!Lately I've had a feeling that the sleeping giant has begun to rouse. I feel it in the air. I sense it in the responses I get to my articles and my comments.The things that would have been rejected out of hand, are finding an audience now.I sense that the spark of human decency is coming back to life. It's as if our communities can no longer pretend to maintain the delusion that all is well. We're starting to see that it takes a greater effort to maintain the veil of denial than it would to solve the problems that confront humanity.All the injustices that have been transpiring all around us for decades are coming out into the light where nobody can deny them. We're beginning to understand that indulging the false comfort of our tunnel vision comes at the expense of our essential humanity.The time has come for us to act. We have to recognize the truth of our society and do the right thing.But the question remains: Why is it that things cannot change until the dangers become so extreme?Why can't we take advantage of reason and foresight and avoid the lure of corruption before so many people are forced to suffer?Why are we so easily lulled into a state of denial which robs so many people from the ability to differentiate between right and wrong?I've come to believe that we go through our lives having to hide from some of the harder facts just to get through our day. When you're very young, you have to remind yourself not to become fixated on the mystery of death. If you become overly fixated on your mortality, you miss out on all the beauty of being alive.So, we learn to explore the compulsion of this contemplation but through the form of a displacement. Kids are fascinated with dinosaurs because it's a way of processing mortality. Here are these magnificent creatures that have gone away. What does that mean? Where did they go? Weren't they mysterious and beautiful?Through contemplating dinosaurs, we can entertain questions that have complex answers. What is loss? What is death?The fear of our own mortality hangs on the periphery. It dances around so we can examine it without admitting to ourselves that's what we're doing.There are many hard topics that we're aware of but we don't like to directly engage.People can be cruel. People can be thieves. People can be murderers. We know this, but, like the sun, we don't stare at these concepts directly. Instead, we orbit them. We develop tunnel vision in regard to our celestial path so we can enjoy our walk through the garden without allowing our day to be spoiled by the existence of foul things.That's both necessary and dangerous.What happens if someone we care about falls victim to the hardships that surround us? Will we pause and recognize them, or will we pass by and pretend their suffering didn't happen?We know danger lurks around us, but when everything is okay it's easier to look the other way. We can seize our complacency, and pretend the world is better than the evidence might suggest.I recently read a story about the era where lynchings were common. Imagine that. Imagine living in a time when you might pick up a paper featuring a story about a young man who was tortured and murdered by a mob of your peers.How would you process that? Would you look at it directly? Or, would some mechanism of self-preservation kick in to create an alternative reality based on denial? How can you go through your day recognizing that many of the people you brush elbows with are little more than monsters? Under the right set of circumstances, they might murder you as well.It's impossible to recognize that and get through your day. So, you create a tunnel to walk through and you hope for the best.Even now people say, “Well, that's in the past.”But there are populations in our society that insist not that much has changed. There are still murders regularly committed by the police. They pull over young men for a bad brake light and those innocent kids end up dead.We send our children off to school knowing that young white men are indoctrinated with right-wing hate rhetoric, and they also have easy access to military grade weapons. We cross our fingers and depend on our tunnel vision to ensure our kids are delivered home safely.“Those threats that exist, do not apply to me.”But they do. Dinosaurs have died out and so will we.Human beings are inclined to pretend everything is fine until it gets to a point where we recognize there is more danger in denying.That's the place where we find ourselves today.It feels as if the era of complacency is coming to an end. All the beautiful lies we've been indoctrinated with have been proven insufficient. Once fooled, we can't be fooled again.It's in these moments of awakening that we can make great strides. We can break out of our tunnel vision, stare down the dangers, and pick a new orbit that better aligns with our essential resonance.We have the opportunity to push back against the malignance and the indifference and the foul forces that demand that we must sacrifice our children.We can stand firm and declare, “No, that's not happening! That will never happen again. I once was blind, but now I see.”We can leave behind the era of apathy. Once we shake off the lethargy, we become deaf to the hypnotic whispers of duplicity. The con artist's lies lose the ability to penetrate our conscious or subconscious minds. That makes us free.Once we can collectively make the transition from denial to certainty, we seize a power that can't easily be pried away. Every day more and more people are lending voice to a message that offers the promise of a better way.We have to embrace reason, compassion, and empathy. We have to shake off our complacency. The predetermined path that we can only see from within our tunnel vision is leading us off a cliff. We have to break through the wall, and try a path that we have trained ourselves not to recognize even exists.The fact is that the way things are now is not the way anyone would ever choose to live. Our life force is squeezed from us until we are lifeless husks, all for the benefit of those that are privileged and rich.They say we must avoid the dangers of a government that makes us dependent, but the truth is they only conspire to make us dependent and beholden to them. What the rich really want is to remove the guardrails of the government which were put in place to protect the general population.They want to exploit us as at their whim. Society has descended to this point before, and we must make sure it never happens again.We must be ever vigilant.We must never become complacent.We can't succumb to pressure to surrender based on the demand that we must be grateful for the benefits we never had.Change can happen fast. Once the sleeping giant awakens, she moves with irrepressible momentum. At that point, it takes more effort to stop our evolution than it does to change.The government gleans its power from the consent of the governed.I revoke my consent.Throughout my fifty years, I've been lulled into complacency by the illusion of peace and the false promise of prosperity. But now I see that all we've truly been granted is the insistence on obedience and the theft of our autonomy.Bold action is required. We cannot be lured into the lie of fear.What started as a single raindrop is about to erupt into a storm. Complacency has lost its gravity. We’re on the move, we’re mobilized. The stars are now ours to explore.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe