When I was a kid in history class, and I was learning about some atrocity from the past, like slavery or the Holocaust, I remember always thinking, how could this happen? How could so many people allow this to happen?
And then naturally the next question, would I have been any different?
The odds are that I wouldn’t.
Of course I’d like to believe this isn’t true. That of course I wouldn’t simply follow the masses. I’d be the one to speak up. The one with the courage to be unpopular. To fight for what’s right.
But I probably wouldn’t be this person. If history has taught us anything, most people are not the kind to speak up. The vast majority of us are blind to the atrocities of our time.
Or if not entirely blind to them, then we’re too afraid to self reflect. To implicate ourselves in such horrors.
Or maybe we’re just too afraid to challenge the status quo, and to bear the consequences of doing so.
At least when we look to the past we can see things more clearly. We can call a spade a spade. But certainly even this can be a challenge sometimes.
And then even more difficult, acknowledging the horrors of the present. How many terrible things have we normalized as a society? And what will future generations think of us when they learn our history?
What am I blind to?
Taj 