Sacrificed To A Greater Good

The chimes sing a discordant song orchestrated by the wind. The birds sing their own song in glorious refrain. Looking out on the waters of the bayou, sparkling with wind and sunlight, I'm filled with the life of the world. But I was never here. 

I don't know if the things you've done, good and bad, tip more one way or the other on the scales. I don't know how mine tilt either. How we contribute to the world, even the world doesn't know. The people around us can internalize one thing or another that we've said and done, and be better or worse for it. They may never know the weight of it themselves. 

In a dream I was sacrificed for The Greater Good. I and my child. I tried to define Greater Good first, to make that decision, but that decision wasn't asked or allowed of me. Only my sacrifice was demanded. 

Our Christian history is full of martyrs. Martyrs for God's Good and Glory are of a different story. The World's leaders don't get to decide for me, and especially for my son, what The Greater Good is, and demand my sacrifice. There is no Great Good if it's gotten there on a road paved with human bones. 

Continued in "This and the Moral Line"

This and the Moral Line

Before we answer “Why is this happening?” or “Should this be allowed?” should the whole question be defined first, or the question of what is “this”? 

If we separate and define what “this” is, examine it by itself and question whether it be good or bad and should ever be allowed, we come up with a line, a rule to judge the second. 

 

If, instead, we define the whole question, outlining a situation that may at the moment seem dire and urgent in its own way, we can ask “is basically anything allowable now that we’ve determined that the situation is a thing that really must be stopped?” 

 

In defining the problem first, with no moral line placed on whatever the solution may be (or the determiners may say the solution is,) then there is no line that couldn’t be crossed. 

That is part of the fight over the Constitution and the Amendments, which defined “this” for several things and said for no reason should “this” be infringed: not even a good and urgent reason. 

If we define “this” as never permissible, we don’t force no solution but better solutions. 

 

If anything is permissible under the right circumstances, then the right circumstances will certainly arrive, and we as a race concede that morality may be erased at any moment if it is For the Greater Good. The Greater Good of whom or what entities can be fuzzy. Lines that can be moved were not lines. A humanity that occasionally gives up its humanity for fear or convenience of uncreative solutions has given up on defining anything - up to and including their own sacrifice - as a line that can’t be crossed. 

A whole world view looks at no one in the face, cares about and remembers no one. It makes everyone into part of a chart of statistics. If those statistics are basically trending good, it will be called good, and your particular harms will be defined as an “acceptable casualty.” 

We must never give up looking at humans as individuals with their own humanity, their own choices and God-given rights to choices. If you would not be okay being an acceptable casualty, or your children, neither should you be okay with someone else or their faceless children being an acceptable casualty for your Greater Good. That, ultimately, is human sacrifice; a practice that never seems to go out of style. 

Therefore, we must define “this” and the acceptability of “this” before we define any pressing circumstances that may infringe upon it. When it does, we hold the line.