Moral Inversion

Lately, I've been wrestling with something I can't shake.

Most of my life, I believed good and evil were obvious. Not always easy, but clear. Even when people did wrong, they knew. Deep down, they knew.

But now I'm not so sure.

These days, kindness is mocked. Compassion is “woke.” People think cruelty is strength. That if you care about others, you're naïve, or worse, the enemy.

It feels like the moral compass has been flipped, and a lot of people are cheering.

I still believe something, though. Something I need to believe:

The smarter we get, the more we understand how the world works, the more we see:
-That cooperation is strength.
-That empathy isn't weakness. It's vision.
-That hurting others isn't just wrong. It's stupid.

A civilization built on cruelty can't last.
But if we can remember who we are, what we used to agree on, there's still hope.

That's what I'm holding onto.

Next: I question why our society is choosing hate

This essay is part of a series. Here is a link to the top.

Foundations -- Every structure needs a base