"Not Right, Not Fair, Not Just"

Yesterday, Congressman John Lewis said, "If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it."

That statement is not burdened with any political freight, or at least it should not be so burdened. It is simply a statement intended to cause any person of conscience to rise up--by voice or with actions--against meanness, dishonesty, injustice, inequality, and reprehensible behavior against living creatures. None of those words is hard to grasp for meaning; we all know what each one of those characteristics or actions, when seen and felt, both personally or to another living being, do to our guts and our conscience.

Now, the issue I suppose, is what is meant by "moral obligation," because not everyone will agree with my, or your, definitions of morality or obligations. But let me try to simplify the term "morality" by a general exclusion: I believe anyone who willingly and consistently practices one or more of the behaviors, or exhibits any of the attributes I mentioned in the second paragraph--meanness, dishonesty, injustice, inequality, and reprehensible behavior against living creatures--has a moral compass that swings to a very different pole than the generally acceptable Polaris of morality.

We don't need to invoke a deity or religious codes to support our feelings of discomfort; we don't need to point to western civilization vs. eastern or middle eastern or other cultural differences to know that certain behaviors, when directed against an individual, or another creature, or whole societies, are wrong.

It's as wrong to beat a dog as it is to beat a man; it is as wrong to allow the destruction of a city as it to permit the destruction of the very air we breathe; it is as wrong to deny a woman the right to vote in a foreign land because she is a woman as it is to deny an American woman the right to vote because her skin color, place of residence, or her choice of who she loves does not suit the election officials in her own country; it is as wrong to bully a disabled child on a playground as it is to bully a disabled reporter in a press conference; it is as wrong to mock the grief of a fallen hero’s family, as it is to mock an imprisoned hero for his sacrifice; it is as wrong to denigrate the lifelong service of a civil rights activist because he speaks his mind as it is to seek to elevate oneself above the law of the land. 

So many things are patently wrong—things we see every day—we should not need to debate them: genocide, torture, poverty, segregation, lack of access to education, gender inequality, crimes against women, crimes against children, public humiliation, faith-based means testing, ageism, xenophobia, homophobia, racism writ large. My word…this is just a short list. And yet, these things exist. So what do we do?

We do what Congressman Lewis asks us, implores us, importunes us, pleads with us, scolds us, to do. We look within ourselves to what the word “obligation” really means, and when we recognize that it means we are all in this together to rebuild, improve upon, or otherwise advance this generation and the next toward a better future, we act. We act in whatever way we can, with whatever tools we have at hand.

I am a writer. My tools are the keys on the keyboard and the monitor in front of me and the portal that allows me to share my thoughts. My obligation is to use words to express my moral outrage at meanness, dishonesty, injustice, inequality, and reprehensible behavior against living creatures. Photographers with the skills and tools to share with the world those conditions that need illuminating, fixing, changing, or eliminating…that’s what they do. Among my Facebook friends are photographers who have brought to the world’s attention many of the inequalities and inequities that plague the world. I can’t speak for them and say they feel obligated to do what they do, but I’m guessing they do.

But you don’t have to be a writer or a photographer to bring to the public arena your own tools of outrage. We all have voices, and whether we speak to a hundred million people through the megaphone of social media and television, or we speak as one person to one person, we can exercise our obligation to speak truth to lies. To show respect against disrespect. To call out the bully, and protect the child. Our voices are inexhaustible when applied to great causes.  

Congressman Lewis’s tools were the muscles, sinews, and bones in his body that were beaten and broken when his moral obligation took him to times and places in America where the peaceful demonstration of outrage was met with clubs, dogs, and fire hoses. His skill was his resolute courage in the face of mortal danger. How can any of us not see that courage and at least try in our own way to emulate it? And how, in god’s name, can a man with no similar frame of reference, sit in a high and golden tower and belittle such courage? That is, in itself, immoral, and, in John Lewis’s words, it “is not right, not fair, not just.”

The four years ahead will challenge us to speak out. I cannot help but do so.

To be continued.