By: Rosemary Dewar
Acts of evil are much easier to define than it is to define those who commit them. Our culture has a serious problem with sustaining standards of morality, and the lack of thoughtful consistency and honesty leaves people logically and emotionally vulnerable. It should not be difficult for anyone to conclude that violation of choice correlated with violation of life is socially harmful. Humanity is not short on examples of frailty, and identifying that frailty is dependent on one’s ability to define it.
Mankind is inherently capable of doing great good as well as great wickedness. Anyone who has had or has babysat a toddler can affirm that they can be willful and selfish dictators. Without healthy discipline and stability, any child is at a higher risk of cultivating irregular levels of vanity and validation in their character. Should these behaviors go unchecked, having someone develop into a sophisticatedly manipulative adult is a plausible outcome.
Our culture has acknowledged a new level of awareness in two particular stories: the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock and sexual predator, Harvey Weinstein. Both men perpetrated the most degrading and heartless acts, each violent in their own way. Weinstein used his influence to limit choice and violate the self-worth of his victims. Paddock fed a still-undefined delusion so fervently that he committed the largest mass shooting in United States history.
These men are equally guilty of their crime, yet society does not want to hold them solely responsible. For Paddock, the left looks to blame America’s Constitutional right to bear arms in order to defend ourselves against those like him.
Condemning an inanimate object will not resolve the character issue. As for Weinstein, the left aims to denounce masculinity for his abhorrent behavior. However, conflating sexual abuse and aggression with masculinity is culturally detrimental and, in fact, inaccurate.
Simply because men disproportionally commit more crime than women, does not mean that society has the privilege of convicting all men carte blanche of being subhuman. Absolving women who have committed heinous acts also does not cultivate a stable society. Humanity is broken, but society must do a better job at promoting and honoring men and women who excel at their morality.
Our current culture has yet to define what darkness is. It ought to do so before dancing with it.
In Act I, Scene III of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Banquo warns exactly as noted below:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s
In deepest consequence.
Ambition without mercy is the death of the human soul.
The Judeo-Christian worldview asserts that mankind is feeble and that there are those who choose darkness knowing full well that they betray the light afforded them. They forfeit their humanity. That is not a masculine trait or a feminine trait, but a godless one.
Greek philosopher Socrates stated, “Worthless people live to eat and drink, people of worth eat and drink to live.”
Those who feed on the vulnerability of others are never satisfied, and they do not consider what comes forth from them as they devour every person they encounter. In contrast, those who consider how they affect others are far more conscious of what they are willing to consume.
Should culture continue to worship self-gratification, it will find itself consumed by the very darkness it cultivated. The light is one choice away, accessible by simply refusing to indulge in another’s discomfort.
Justice Louis D. Brandeis said it best when he stated, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
By: Rosemary Dewar
