Conscience. Responsibility. Action.

As much as I talk about the importance of understanding what it means to be human, and about our place in this vast and unknowable universe, I have no illusions about how society deals with it all.

Most don't care.

It bothers me a lot that most don't care about what it all means at the end of the day, but nobody cares that I am highly bothered either.

Thus, in these Covid times, I find the following from an amazing public intellectual/politician from BC (Before Coronavirus) comforting and even more profound than when I blogged about it in May 2016:

[Regardless] of where I begin my thinking about the problems facing our civilization, I always return to the theme of human responsibility, which seems incapable of keeping pace with civilization and preventing it from turning against the human race.

The theme of human responsibility.

Consider a simple responsibility that we now have to shelter-at-home, in order to prevent the spread of the deadly coronavirus.  Apparently we are incapable of even that, and our irresponsible actions--like storming a state capitol with all the military ammo that one can gather--bring all of us humans additional harm.

That same public intellectual/politician continued with this:

The main task in the coming era is something else: a radical renewal of our sense of responsibility. Our conscience must catch up to our reason, otherwise we are lost.

Conscience.

The very thing that 63 million people do not have, nor do they care about!

Vaclav Havel was that public intellectual/politician.  He tried his best to remind us:

Whether our world is to be saved from everything that threatens it today depends above all on whether human beings come to their senses, whether they understand the degree of their responsibility and discover a new relationship to the very miracle of being. The world is in the hands of us all.

It is in the hands of all of us.

So, I will end it with the same ending from that post on May 6, 2016:

So, what are you going to do?