Too often, when something terrible happens to people, others justify it as somehow the victims’ fault. African slavery has been justified as necessary due to black laziness, the liquidation of European Jewry due to Jewish provocation, and the desolation of 17th century Ireland because of Papist savagery. This attitude only guarantees that people will commit atrocities and resort to inhuman measures again, because such callousness is the foundation of injustice.
If one faction feels that another approves of and may have participated in a calamity inflicted upon them, they often will not hesitate to return the favor, and thus grievances are perpetuated. It may be an unavoidable part of the human experience that people face tragedy and hardship, but where it is in our power to prevent it, we should. To avoid doing so by simply blaming others is a form of moral laziness. In fact, it is more honorable to simply say “I don’t care” than it is to attempt some justification of misery by pointing to the flaws of others.
Unfortunately, many men in our society prefer to abandon their responsibility to fellow human beings by doing exactly that. Even as the numbers of entirely disenfranchised men grow beyond a double-digit percentage of the population, some are content to sit back, smug and content in a feeling of superiority. Perhaps they tell themselves that these others are genetic losers, or they are lazy and stupid, or even that this is necessary to keep markets competitive. What they don’t realize is that the growth of a class of discontented people will eventually come to have a negative effect on everyone. Not only the helpless and forgotten and their families, but even the content and powerful will face growing instability and a measurable decline in standards. For example, in Latin American countries with a huge gulf between the privileged and desperate, we find a very high murder rate, kidnappings, insurrections and civil war, powerful criminal gangs, and people living in either garbage dumps and favelas or communities surrounded by walls topped with barbed wire.
Here in the West, the lot of ordinary men has always been closely tied to the more egalitarian society we have come to idealize as a better way to live. As we lose any consideration for the ordinary man, that society is slipping away, and once gone it may not come back for centuries, if ever. In that case, we can expect women to suffer, too. More daughters will go into prostitution, more mothers will live in poverty, and in the absence of domestic stability, violence as a solution to problems will inevitably become a cultural norm.
The men who deny that there is a problem – those who insist everything is OK because their own tiny corner of the world is healthy and prosperous for now – are in fact our biggest obstacle. With their myopic view of the world they can ignore the big picture, fiddling as the rest of the world smolders around them. Today an insurrection is playing out in Bangkok, tomorrow, perhaps Mexico, and then one will follow another; finally, there will be one here as well.
If we don’t do anything to address imbalances and restore justice, then whose fault will it be when that happens?
