Whether we hurl the bigot’s slur or fail to protest the bigotry, humanity is insulted. The accountability for authentic leadership — informed by core human values — is our karmic obligation, never forgotten, often delayed.
In the name of fear or self-deception, we tend to strangle our better voices and dampen our inner light in a flood of self-deception that rationalizes adolescent, cruel behavior. When emulated, our stupidity goes uncorrected or gains homeboys-and-girls, and bigotry becomes normalized.
I believe we are at a point where accountability may be possible: Where systemic change for the sake of goodness is closer, like the “Supermoon” coming nearer to Earth on an opportune passage into human consciousness. Although the moon was always present, with beginner’s eyes, we see detail and perceive with far greater awareness what had become ridiculously normalized. Stupid social behavior counts on this.
Today, we regard racism with greater awareness; we see details of human ignorance that shock but were always dishonorable. We may feel freshly uneasy with our personal lack of insistence to change destructive social norms. I do.
We see cataclysms like George Floyd’s murder and the Sandy Hook massacre with a new sense of Us.
I am personally ashamed of my lack of persistent activism, enabling self-absorbed legislators to avoid passing systemic change for everyone. Influenced by the news cycle, I have carelessly turned my attention away, presuming that elected officials would do the right thing in my distracted moments and years.
Well, now to persist in assuring that systemic changes engineer a dawning new normal — one culturally more conscious and truly loving for all.
Vote. Lobby. March or drive. The more, the merrier! From now on, let’s leave nothing to chance.