(A personal manifesto, of sorts.)
Why I must doggedly persist in doing good:
Evil is rarely a sudden force, although personal violence is often swift and unexpected. The balance of social evils are slow, creeping things, advancing unneeded at a snail’s pace through our lives and politics and religion.
Those forces in this world responsible for the evils that lie on the ends of the western political sectrum or in the dark corners of religious extremism have done their greatest volence against the human race by acting slowly, sliding along in determined silence as their victims lived on in light-hearted ignorance of the coming storm.
Always, their approach has been against the unsuspecting, and often through the same tactics. The slow suffocation of reason; the snuffing out of sleepy guards of healthy social convention one by one; the whispering voice in many ears that turns one’s countrymen into monsters and common misfortune into peronal insult by the scheming, malicious “Them.”
Thus evil has overthrown the goodness and progress of many great peoples throughout history, and has been beaten back by force of arms. So we have waged war on one another, striking savage blows in delusion at our fellow man while the real enemy escapes, leaving us striving against the symptoms of ignorance and fear and lust.
This, then is why I must persist in doing good. With every fiber of my being and with all the reasources at my command, I must commit my waking hours to spreading light into darkness, to pulling back the cover of distraction and to providing, when I can, the perspective of history and reason to show the advance of evil for what it is. In this I must be unwavering, tireless and sure, leaning not on the approval of my peers, but on the inherent worthiness and urgency of my cause.
I must also, at all costs, maintain an attitude of loving tenderness in my work, being modelled more on a common gardener than on a warrior or a blustry politician. I must cultivate a personal peace because my struggle is not against flesh and blood, not against particular individuals or institutions, and thus I must be prepared to treat all I encounter as being variously afflicted with the pains of unfortunate delusion rather than being the evil themselves. I must also remember that I am as susceptible as anyone the the subtle dangers of the thinking man; particularly to the insidious paternalism that blinds me to the real conditions and desires of my fellow man, and the ever-present urge to take at liesure the offerings of excess that come at the expense of other’s well-being. I must also recognize that I am as vulnerable as anyone to the common, petty evils of greed, lust, fear, and willfulness in my ignorance.
This, then must be my daily devotion: to calmly and quietly do that which is in
my power to eliminate the evil that lies within my reach, and to inspire (rather than attempt to instruct) those I encounter to do likewise. In the face of the unrelenting ignorance and ceasless malice that plagues the human condition, I must persist in doing good without ceasing, without faltering until my time on this earth is finished.
