I actually believe that there are cases and instances where you should not speak up, where discretion is the better part of valor. Do you speak up when you learn some compromising detail of a friend or family member? Do you speak up when you learn some compromising detail of an enemy, or even a stranger? Maybe that latter one you might because you feel like you have no skin in the game and it's an easy way to win and show your power to crush some anonymous person. Wow, what courage. And that's what the call to speak up is really about: it's either your conscience or someone else, an ally, that is asking you to act courageously.
There are lots of injustices in the world that need attention that is true. If someone is being physically harmed by another person, then, yes, by all means, speak up. If someone is being psychologically abused, then, yes, by all means, speak up to bring restitution to the victim. But besides exercising your mouth during speech, you should also exercise your brain and think before you speak. And measure the risks to you and to the person you're talking about and how your audience will react. Will your audience be offended as much as you are? Did the person you're talking about offend some kind of community standard for which you and your life is the exemplary standard-bearer? Is it worth it to you to bring the community down upon one individual and that once that individual has been dealt with you and your life has been restored? Just because you're encouraged to speak up doesn’t mean that your speech edifies your audience. They may not care as much as you do about someone else's activities unless they're being directly harmed, assaulted or stolen from. How involved or invested are you in someone else’s life?
The other thing to consider is that people are petty. They don't require much of an ethical standard for them to destroy and degrade other people. And those who like to destroy others will do so just because it's a lift to their perceived power or self-esteem, which is even more of a banal motive. There's that song by Band of Horses, called The Funeral," about a guy who hates the ethics of small talk and other people's expectations of you at social gatherings. It's the lyrics that are stark,
I'm coming up only to hold you under
I'm coming up only to show you wrong
And to know you is hard, we wonder
To know you all wrong, we warn
Ooh, ooh
Ooh...
Really too late to call, so we wait for
Morning to wake you, it's all we got
Danny MacAskill made that song famous by his 2009 video of him pulling bike tricks around Edinburgh.
The lines are interesting for they tend toward mean interpretation of others and events. The speaker is talking in general about his performance at informal and formal social events. His line of "I'm coming up only to hold you under" is in itself vicious envy with the subsequent line "I'm coming up only to show you wrong" tempered by argument; it's less violent.
I'm coming up only to hold you under
I'm coming up only to show you wrong
And to know you is hard, we wonder
The 3rd and 4th line seem to temper his opening envy,
And to know you is hard, we wonderTo know you all wrong, we warn
"We wonder" is the narrator admitting that he doesn't have any social skills to know someone, so instead of getting to know another he is left to wonder, left to construct the details of someone else's life in the abstract. And conceding the limits of this form of acquiring knowledge of another person by saying, ". . . To know you all wrong," meaning that in conjecture people get it wrong, that we mistake someone for who they are.
I am not a fan of this. I am not forgiving of these kinds of errors.
Back to the speaking up. The real courage required to speak involves taking on the government or corporation oppressors. Speaking against these folks, whistleblowing against these institutions is different that spreading destructive and unproductive gossip about a coworker, friend, or family member. Betraying your family, why, that's just shitty. Likewise is betraying a friend. But I've seen one coworker gossip about another and the gossip left her crushed and she quit her job. I knew the gal who quit. Whether what was said about her was true or not, I found her to be a competent and decent woman.
Too many folks think they need to be cruel to gain respect from others as though cruelty is a kind of virtue. In war, maybe. Least that's what the American soldiers in Vietnam admitted from those involved in the My Lai Massacre.
There is that famous phrase, “
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
I don't even think that most young people today know this phrase or understand it. It’s a quote routinely attributed to Edmund Burke. Apparently, he never uttered these words. It looks like the quote can be traced back to the utilitarian philosopher, John Stuart Mill, who delivered an 1867 inaugural address at the University of St. Andrews and stated:
“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”
CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING
Understand
the context here. This was said on the
cusp of the revolutionary war, a statement that was made to indict the
complacency of fellow citizens to rise up against a tyrannical government. This is not one person indicting another and challenging
him to a duel. This is not someone
making a speech to incite a mob to go kill a single man. This is not the context of a fight between
two individuals. But in today’s social
justice world, its acolytes adopt this mob-like tactic to every personal
grievance, to every personal offense. It’s
that jealous boyfriend who writes on a freeway wall, “Jeffrey Sucks Dick.” We don’t care. But in today’s social justice world, corporate
heads are now forced to care and delegate to managers to make sure they care
about the slightest offense to one of the little women at the water
cooler.
So think first before you speak. Think about what the pay-off is. Think about what you gain by it. Think about who it hurts and if that punishment is just or equal to the offense or crime. It’s just as Carl Jung said, "Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge." And it was English writer, Graham Greene, who said, "We'd forgive most things if we knew the facts."
