The Inertia of Indifference — Look No Further to Find Evil

© 2011 Peter Free

 

23 September 2011

 

 

Social inertia masks, and often commits, evil

 

Two examples in support:

 

(1) The institutionalized wrongness of Troy Davis’ execution

 

(2) The public’s uncaring acquiescence in the flow of unnecessary deaths in our endlessly purposeless war in Afghanistan

 

 

Premise

 

Soulful morality is almost always the reverse of social and religious inertia.

 

 

Example One — Troy Davis’ execution exemplifies American society’s institutionalized wrong-doing

 

Reverend Al Sharpton made this point succinctly:

 

[W]hat makes Troy's case an utter travesty in our legal system is the fact that 7 out of these 9 witnesses have since recanted their testimony and many said that they were coerced or pressured into pointing the finger at Troy.

 

And yet, he was still executed last night.

 

One of the two remaining witnesses who did not recant his/her testimony was a man by the name of Sylvester 'Redd' Coles -- another suspect in this case.

 

And yet, Troy was still executed last night.

 

A female witness even stated that she was threatened by Coles if she came forward, and yet Troy was still executed last night.

 

Everyone from former President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu to former prison wardens and conservatives who are pro-death penalty pushed for a stay in this man's death penalty, and yet Troy was still executed last night.

 

© 2011 Al Sharpton, The Execution of Troy Davis Was a Miscarriage of Justice and the World Watched It Play Out, Huffington Post (22 September 2011) (paragraph split)

 

 

The key question to ask about Mr. Davis’ fate

 

Does carrying out an execution under these circumstances sound rational, much less moral, to you?

 

 

Answer

 

Mr. Davis’ execution was institutionalized wrong-doing.  The inertia of the legal process overcame even the pretense of ethically defensible behavior.

 

A system that is so ironclad against the uncertainties that Life frequently poses is both witless and immoral.

 

 

Destroying the criminal justice system’s “finality” argument in regard to capital punishment

 

Procedural “finality” in the criminal-justice process is arguably necessary, as the U.S. Supreme Court has said.  Proponents of the death penalty therefore justify murdering Mr. Davis because he had exhausted all his appeals.

 

But the “procedural finality” defense of the capital punishment in Mr. Davis’ case misses the Law’s central intent.

 

Law’s intent is to assign blame to the genuinely guilty and punish them.  The criminal justice system’s purpose is certainly not to foist responsibility on the “unlikely to be guilty” and execute them.  It is not even to assign guilt to the “maybe” guilty and imprison them for life.

 

This distinction between procedure and intent is Reverend Sharpton’s point.  In a just society, it should be all of ours.

 

 

Example Two — the war in Afghanistan: where are the supposedly moral American people?

 

For nearly 10 years our military has been dying and being maimed in Afghanistan for no sensible reason.

 

Yet the carnage on both sides goes on.  Apparently because the military-industrial profits to be made outweigh the lives of those caught up in this nationally self-destructive conflict.

 

Yet most of us stand idle.  Unwilling to serve.  Unmotivated to protest.

 

We let our courage-lacking leaders continue the physical and spiritual mayhem, without so much as an intelligible and ethically defensible strategy to support it.

 

If this is not the banality of evil, what is?

 

 

The moral? — Indifference kills, without justice or soul

 

Whether Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or Jew — this is the teaching.

 

Even secularists know it.