Who's to blame?

We love to place the blame, don't we? I mean, there are so many others, there are just so many places we could place it, isn't there? Why do we have to place it on ourselves?

While I can certainly understand not wanting to be culpable, it is time we started realizing that we all share some of the blame for the terrible shape our world is in. And it's in bad shape. The environment is deteriorating, and it doesn't matter whether it's humans or natural, we need to do something about it. The economy worldwide is deteriorating, and it doesn't matter whether it's the greed of the money-lenders, the corruption in government, or a combination of both, we need to do something about it. Our societies are deteriorating, and it doesn't matter if it is unbridled egotism or sheer indifference, we need to something about it. So many things are broken - big things, significant things - that we have to do something before everything just collapses around our ears, for when it does collapse - and it will (I've got history on my side in that one) - it will collapse around all our ears, not just some of ours.

The ideas I've been pushing the last few posts are not original. Taking on guilt because you don't do something when you should is even a legal precept in Germany, for example (it's called unterlassene Hilfeleistung, literally, "refused help". If you see someone in need and you don't help, it's considered a crime in these parts. It's a good idea, because it is simply part of what holds us together, as a society, and as a race - the human race.

A couple of weeks ago I read a passionate little book by William Rivers Pitt about what went wrong with the first Bush II administration. It was the passion that struck me most of all; the facts, at least in this case, pretty well speak for themselves. He took the title of the book from a statement Bill Moyers made back in a speech in October 2001, over a decade ago, and called it The Greatest Sedition is Silence. I can't remember the last time that truer words were spoken. Pitt put his finger in the most festering wound we've got, worldwide, in every so-called or half-way "free" country: we are silent. We allow bad things - very bad things, cruel things, lethal things, inhuman things - to happen; we know about them; and we stay silent.

We have every reason in the world to hang our heads and hide our faces. We should be more than ashamed. And for that very reason, it is time to speak up and speak out.