Human Depredations

What’s the worst?

Human being are infinitely capable of sleaze, betrayal and exploitation. History – or today’s news feed – shows an endless litany of evil that defies definition – or even the most basic of broadcast language and topic codes.

You won’t find any refuge from human sin from scriptures. If you want to see betrayal, cheating, murder and deception up close, look at the Bible.

Escaping the shadow of human evil will never be easy – or even possible.

Conquest and exploitation are almost hard-wired into the human character.

Follow the money. Or the power.

The irony of human evil is that there is absolutely nothing new or original about it.

Variations are infinite, but the impulses are actually very few. Power, control and profit in multiple guises keep history – or at least humanity – in motion.

Virtually every prophet or religious leader warns against the lure of greed, power and lust.

But the profit margins of multiple industries depend on those exact things. Making a living on what was, for centuries, virtually everywhere around the world, considered “sin” is peculiar, at minimum.

What could we afford in food, clothes or technologies if something approaching slavery or child labor were not involved?

Justifications and obfuscations of what had always been considered slave labor, have become routine to the point of invisibility.

I would argue that the ultimate “sin” is not something committed by one person against another – as vile, even horrifying as that might be.

My belief is that the worst sin is not something we do – but of what we might refuse to do.

I am convinced that the ultimate violation is not what we do – but what we allow – or accommodate – that others do.

Few, if any, sins, are possible on one’s own. Enablers, accomplices, silent witnesses make sin – at every level, from domestic abuse to corporate corruption, possible.

Because of that, I am convinced that the worst sin of all is the silent allowance of what we know is wrong.

From slavery to abuse to blackmail and extortion, it all requires something like teamwork – and silence.

Consider what goes through a moral filter to describe an intolerable act to be tolerable, or at least acceptable, precisely – and only – because it happens to someone else.

We find ourselves making excuses and allowances that may be convincing to ourselves and occasionally others.

You may have heard the saying that an action is not as bad as lying about it. The cover up is worse than the crime is another way of putting it.

But for the party faithful – and the literally religious – to diminish the impact – even the existence of abuse and manipulation is beyond cover up – it is deliberate negation. It is the erasure of violence and deception; and erasing or eliminating – or at least delegitimizing the value and humanity of the victims is just another act of dominance, another reminder that the powerful will believe that, above all, they are untouchable, no matter what they do.

Diminishing and dismissing the pain and trauma, protecting the guilty precisely because they are already rich and powerful is what the system is set up to do. Crimes and exploitation are part of their payment package.

Any victims are accessories and props along the way.

Ignoring and minimizing the pain of others and advocating for the perpetrators is the sin of our era. Or maybe every era where the wealthiest and most powerful believe themselves immune from the most rudimentary standards of human decency.

From the Caesars to the Sultans, we the people have always been the fodder for their wars and fantasies. From harems to mercenaries, to the enforcers and masked agents, we have always been subject to the whims of flunkies and yes-men who would gladly, even eagerly, sacrifice us, our well-being and our futures for their career tracks and back room deals.

Those who accommodate and profit from the pain and suffering of others deserve their own suite of perdition.

As The Talmud puts it; Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.

The Epstein files released so far indicate that over 160 girls were “disappeared” or murdered.

More than a thousand were kidnapped, raped and threatened with death if they spoke of their experience. They, and their families, have been traumatized for life.

The legal system, meant to protect them, ignored and demeaned them.

Cowards and accomplices of the predators – and many of the predators themselves – mocked, harassed and threatened them. Again, and again.

How many “souls” were destroyed, and how many adults stood aside and allowed pure evil to thrive in their presence?

Office after office that should have, could have, saved and restored literally hundreds of lives, chose to protect the predators instead.

Virtually every prophet and leader of any world religion called those who would hear, to step up to protect the vulnerable and defenseless. That was the Gospel, the good news.

Instead, we have the ultimate “bad news” – that the rich and powerful indeed have no limit, no restraint, no accountability and no judgement.

And that those who cleave to those who hold power, have a share of that impunity and moral vacuity. At least as long as they too show absolute compliance and subservience.

Those who assist such a system are the worst. There is no word for the darkness and evil they have called down on themselves. And us.

They have dragged us all into their vile web. We, all of us who dare not speak up for the broken and violated, stand accused for allowing, even, some of us, advocating, apologizing for, even voting for, the vile depredation most of us could never imagine.

Their sin has become ours. They have destroyed life after life, soul after soul, and we have let them.

I don’t know what redemption on our streets would look like.

I can’t imagine what justice would look like.

I just know that the body politic aches for restoration and will never find peace until it is reached.

Save one life. Honor one life.

No career or political reputation is worth a human soul.

Save one life. Honor one life. Save the world.