Suspension!

I just wanted to take a moment to explain why I haven't been posting here over the past many months. Other writing priorities have come into focus, pushing this blog onto the back-burner.

Starting in February, 2008, I re-wrote my "Shalom/Salaam: The Surprising Tale of a Mystical Entanglement" with the help of Virginia Gray Henry, President of Fons Vitae Publisher (Louisville, KY). (To see published articles excerpted from the book, please visit the right side of this page: http://tomblock.com/11shalom/index.php

I didn't finish this project until July, when I got it into my head to write some plays. I wrote "White Noise," a full-length play that is having a closed, pre-production reading by the Calliope Theater Company (and directed by Maryland State Arts Council Playwright in Residence, John Mocogiello) on December 8th, 2008. I recently finished another full-length play, "Night Out in Spain," which I am in the process of submitting to various theaters and festivals. I just began a third play, "The Prophet," which I will work on for the rest of the year. All three of these plays mix (liberally) intimations of sex and violence with existential crisis, God, the meaning of life, farce, absurdity and the occasion wild boar.

I also have two of other writing projects, which grew out of conference papers that I delivered over the past year. "Prophetic Activist Art" is my theory of bringing the historical purpose of art (to raise the human gaze towards our ineffable spirit), 13th century conceptions of prophetic legislation and the post-modern cult of the individual together, to propose specific manners in which art can have a transformative effect on the general society, and not just on the psyche of the artist and his/her closest friends. This paper was just published in the "International Journal of the Arts in Society" (Victoria, Australia), and it is a project that I am trying to find funding to turn into a manifesto/handbook, which could be taught in art schools and universities. To see the conference paper on which this is based, please visit: http://tomblock.com/speeches/ipra.php

"War as Love: How the Spiritual Quest has been Co-opted to Sell War" is an essay that was just published in the Popular Culture Association "Almanack," and is another project that I would dearly love to turn into a book. This piece looks at how all religious traditions not only use war-like language in describing the spiritual quest, but also justify war within a religious context. It then looks at the language and presentation of the Iraq War from 2002 to present, noting how in a population already primed by their religious tradition to see war in a spiritual context, it is not hard to sell them war as religion, and the quickest way to salvation. The book would look more deeply at the underlying human/animal nexus that leads us to conflate war and religion, and posit that war is actually necessary to civilization, as it offers an institutional manner in which to express our unquenchable aggressive tendencies, which would otherwise lead to a violent anarchy. To see this conference paper, please check out:http://tomblock.com/speeches/war.php

There are a few other writing projects that are in various states of disarray, and which I would love to find the time and funding to pursue. I have an 800-page manuscript of a novel, "The Fool Returns," which follows the adventures of the hapless Bartender Bill, chosen by fate to fulfill a 500 year-old spiritual obligation, leading him from his life as a bartender in New York City, through an increasingly bizarre series of experiences in western Spain, eastern Portugal and then finally discovering an incomprehensible catharsis in a brothel in the Alfama District of Portugal.

I would also like to pen the academic sequel to my "Shalom/Salaam" book, looking at the manner in which the earliest Sufi mystics were influenced by Jewish mysticism. This would close the circle between the mystical cores of these two religions -- and provide a strong, spiritual basis for renewal between these two Biblical cousins, who have recently fallen into a bit of a row over a dusty plot of land in the Middle East.

There are even a few more ideas -- a political essay, two one-act plays, even turning the blog below into two books, collected under the titles: "Letters to an Imaginary Friend: Concerning Art" and "Letters to an Imaginary Friend: Concerning Everything but Art." But no one has ever published a second book before publishing their first, so I am currently on hold (publishing-wise, at least), until the "Shalom/Salaam" project works its way lugubriously towards completion with Fons Vitae.

Concerning Good and Evil?

These post-Modern Catholic thinkers (Maritain, Merton, Niebuhr) are always trapped by the tightening noose of their own necessary religious structure. When they bump up against the tawny strings of orthodoxy, they always choose to twist themselves in its loving embrace, instead of breaking through from out of their Catholicism into the full expression of their humanity. But always, just before they hang themselves on their faith in the human-created Catholic Church, they say some interesting things about God, life and humanity.
Maritain is shackled to the idea of morality as pre-existent, something that any religious person would be, but an idea that I struggle with more and more. For instance, he avers: “There are objective norms of morality, there are duties and rules, because the measure of reason is the formal constitutive element of human morality.”
Now, this is one of those places where religion and humanity might diverge. After all, if there are “objective norms of reality,” then how the hell are we supposed to know what they are? Is the Catholic Church (or any other religious institution, for that matter), really able to suss out right from wrong, the good, the bad and the ugly, and proffer us a literal and final version of objective reality? This is giving humans an awful lot of power – to look into the soul of God and divine just what, in the Grand Scheme of Things, is “right” and what “wrong,” what “is” and what “ain’t.”
There are many religious paths – Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism – which have a much more nuanced view of “good” and “evil,” in some cases even erasing the line between the two. In these cases, both “good” and “bad” fall under the category of “human actions,” after all.

"Actions Exist," acrylic, ink on paper, 10" x 7", 2007

As this tale about the Sufi saint Rabia stated:
“One day, she was seen running through the streets of Basra carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When asked what she was doing, she said: I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to God. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of God.”
Here, “good” and “evil” simply become veils. And, as Dhu’l Nun averred: “Whatever you imagine God to be, He is something different.” Mightn’t this be so for good and evil, as well?
________________________________________
A friend of mine, Colette, had this to say about morality:
“I thought that the best response was perhaps a few words about my bedrock assumptions -- that humans are nothing more than any other creature in the natural world. Different, of course, but no better, no worse, no more part of the divine than sharks or bacteria. I do not believe in a divine spirit, other than the energy that connects all forms of life, and all inanimate objects, past, present, and future.
This, then sheds a whole different slant to ideas of morality-- that it is one expression of human life forms, but no more inherently "important" than the ability to reproduce oneself by mitosis. And so, even as technology increases, and perhaps removes all biological functions from us, it may still be that morality remains the domain of humans. Or, it may be that we surpass such a need, such a state in development -- and move on to another way of ordering the world, that we can scarcely (if at all) imagine.”
If we are willing to open our minds to the extent that Colette has – to move into a truly post-religious worldview, one which eschews even the underlying assumptions of most religions (and approach the conclusion that morality is simply a stage of evolution) – then the idea of “acting” becomes completely disentangled from “duty.” I, myself, don’t know if I can go there – after all, my whole art and thought career is built around working for the common good, and inspiring others to do the same. In truth, so is Colette’s, as she is an environmental theorist who is clearly attracted to undertaking actions and living in such a manner as to be respectful and even positive in her influence on the world.
But perhaps it is simply a matter of perspective. Catholicism tells us that we have to act in a certain manner “or else.” This seems like a position wrought for the infantile. Simone Weil, coming out of the Catholic tradition but refusing (as did other great 20th century Catholic thinkers) to subsume her humanity beneath the proscriptions of the Church), said: “Where there’s a need, there’s a duty.” And the Sufis shared with us this story:
“A Sufi dervish was asked: ‘If you were the lord of this world, and had the reins of divine power in your hands, what would you do, what decrees would you issue?’
‘Oh, my master, if I were in that position, I would have everything continue upon the course that it is presently on. I would never intervene to altar the forces of destiny.’” (Sheikh Nazim Adil al-Haqqani)
I don’t know . . .

The Death of Magic and the End of Time

We live in a time of circuses – at the very least, we have this. Circuses still criss-cross the country: smelly, reprobate throw-backs to another era. The elephants are still horrendously treated, the acrobats are still mind-boggling and occasionally, in a minor circus orbiting at the edges of acceptable society one can still find a two-headed pygmy or a set of Siamese Twins. This something at least, no? The residue of mystery; the last tiny bit of the shamanic spirit.
Not so long ago, magic was everywhere. We humans understood nothing; all was speculation – the work of sprites and Gods. Prophets and seers, those same people that ambulate lethargically through the halls of today’s back wards of asylums, they were the ones with access into the world beneath the image of forms; it was they who spoke directly with Gods, and the future. In those days, ritual meant something – it led in a beeline into the world of the unseen, the place of dreams.
Now, we have beaten back the mystery – through the chimerical “knowledge” afforded us by testable science. We understand! Magic doesn’t exist. Retreating quickly over the past four or so centuries, magic has ben relegated to small, irrelevant puddles in the darkened shadows of our culture: among latter day Wiccans, in absurd, occult practices descended from the once proud traditions of the Templars, the Rosicrucians, the Kabbalists. In lotto winners and celebrities, sad shamans for the contemporary worldview. And, in the circus, where the forms or shamanism live on in the caller, the clowns and jugglers, the “death defying feats” (after all, a “death defying feat” was always the entrée into world beyond the world of forms for the Incan shaman or Egyptian priest), where the oily residue of a once oceanic belief in the theurgic universe still resides.

"U Ba Thaw," oil on canvas, 60" x 36", 2007

In our supposed knowledge, we have lost nearly everything. The world that our new zeitgeist, shorn of magic and wonder, has allowed us to dominate is about to shrug its shoulders, and be done with us. The Gods that used to have us cowering, giving us a sense of ultimate Truth, that forced us to be humble with ourselves and the world around us, have withdrawn, disappeared into the ether that we have willed out of existence with out addiction to “information” and “understanding.”

“With the destruction of an immutable set of principles which are the judge of both knowledge and virtue, and with the appearance of a purely terrestrial man whom became the measurement of all things, a trend from objectivism to subjectivism began in Western civilization which continues to this day. No longer was there a metaphysics and a cosmology to judge the truth and falsehood of what men said, but the thoughts of men in each epoch became the criteria of truth an d falsehood. The Renaissance brought forth a new conception of man which made all form of knowledge anthropomorphic.” (S. H. Nasr, Man and Nature, pg. 68)

It’s the Tower of Babel that we build, turning our back on the magic that is the universe, which is existence. We think that because we can name or even nominally understand something (the processes in the brain; the law of relativity), we have somehow subdued it, brought it into our realm, de-activated the magic within it. But – why do certain processes in the brain experience themselves as consciousness; why do the laws of gravity and relativity hold? Why is there someone here to ask why at all? These questions – the true questions – which lead in a bee-line back to the world of magic, are ignored or ridiculed, and we, in an ever-more myopic worldview, grind our teeth in our sleep while figuring out ways to master our domain, ignorant that our time grows dearly nigh . . .

Thirteen Years Ago

Silver was the morning air outside of Lisbon that day. Along the quay between Estoril and Cascais, the flagstone walk by the sea was still damp from the high tide. The cafés were just opening for the day, white-aproned waiters wiped off the tables with dirty rags, the cooks fired up the grills where the whole fishes would be roasted for lunch.
Earlier that December day, I had been in the center of that crumbling city. After breakfast, I took one of the piglet trams down Rua Misericordia, past the Chiado District to the Cais do Sodre, the little station from which trains left every 20 minutes, following the Tagus River to the sea. I climbed into a near-empty car, sat by the window and watched the river widen to the gulf. 20 minutes later, I got off near the end of the line, by the castle in Estoril.
1994.
The glimmering morning of an early December day. I walked along the wide, flagstone promenade by the sea; all was quiet. One, and then another old man with nothing better to do than fish into the waves of the receding sea; an old woman walking a dog. The Estoril casino was shuttered; any beachwalkers were still in bed, or back in Lisbon.
I was going to make it!
I sat in a just-opened café, ordered an espresso and watched the sea foam breach the wall and splay out over the walkway. I had just been offered the strangest art event of my life and I was certain, 13 years ago almost to this day that I had “made it.” I wrote a poetic letter to a friend, the delicate fragrance of the hot coffee wafting into the silvery light; I composed odes about myself in my head.
I was to spend three weeks painting in the storefront of an unrented store in the Espacio Chiado, a high-end shopping mall in downtown Lisbon. Nestled on the uphill between the Baixa (lower city) and Barrio Alto (the upper, older part of the city that wasn’t destroyed and the rebuilt after the great conflagration of 1755), the Chiado district was home to some of the hippest retail and nicest Soho-style design stores in this butt-end European capital; the mall itself, a chrome and marble splendor, actually had exposed within it, a piece of the 12th century Arab wall that had once protected Lisbon, which had been excavated and then encased in glass, on the lower level of the edifice.

"Akbar Muhammadi," oil on canvas, 60" x 36", 2007

Indeed! Three glorious weeks as the featured artist in an “Atelier do Natal,” working my magic on large, wood-slatted paintings as crowds of Christmas shoppers passed by my spot, hard-by one of the entrances to the mall. All would see the process of a true artist; surely, the press would come, paintings would sell, I would be discovered and sucked up into the European art world, a 31 year-old “comer” unleashed on the capitals of the Old World.
I sat and dreamed by the sea that day; the sun rose higher in the sky and thinned out the silvery, salty air. Clarity overtook the day, the sea foam fought with the wafting smells of the reddening charcoal. A delivery of potatoes and kale; the Caldo Verde soup was put on to boil. The smell of the Portuguese chorizo mixed in with the salt. A vague smell of fish rot washed in off the sea, and dissipated.
I dreamed over the small coffee. All of my hard work! All of the time in that unheated studio over the fish store back in Caceres, Spain, the small provincial capital in the middle of the desert, where I lived. My decision to turn my back on the United States, move to a country where I didn’t speak the language, live as an illegal alien – all of it appeared to be the right move, as I sat there, teetering resplendently on the precipice of fame and fortune.
That was thirteen years ago.
And now, today, in my suburban office off the back of the master bedroom, overlooking a fenced, winter backyard (nearly half of the 15th hundredths of an acre that define my land), my wife and two children performing their late afternoon chores out in the family room – now right now I sit waiting (still) for some shove some imperceptible event that will truly, finally mark me as a comer, as a new art voice, as someone “important” within the narrow spectrum of this art world, this America, this still-born dream I am still dreaming from more than a decade ago.
And at 44, still young?
(And thirteen years from now? Still waiting? Still on the edge of a certain type of precipice?)

Letter to a Scientist

I hope that you will forgive the length of this reply, as well as the time that has elapsed since your simple question of a few days ago; it's just that I have been lying on the floor amazed since I saw your quick note. A more profound and even plaintive question, I can't imagine.

"Who said G/god?"

I was immediately reminded of the Sufi dervish who happened upon a nest of Qalanders, deep into their sensual and ecstatic rituals, a series of sensual orgies they undertake in the hopes of shucking off the final vestiges of cloying humanity (for them, "cloying humanity" is represented by the social and cultural mores that define actions as "good" or "bad," and even their sense of "self"). The Qalanders undertake the most obscene, hedonistic "rituals" to unfetter themselves from any vestige of human morality and conditioning.

Shyly, our dervish stood at the door and peered in at the Bacchanalian scene, so foreign to his humble eyes. "Come in," said one of the Qalanders, more of a demand than a question, and before he knew it, the quiet dervish had been relieved of his goods, his clothes, his sobriety and perhaps other appurtenances; hours later, he was thrown out of the den like a rag doll, completely drunk as the day was dawning.

Having been touched in some profound manner, and now perplexed beyond understanding, he spent the rest of his life wandering in awe of every moment, oscillating between utter confusion and an ecstatic, mystical realization that lies somewhere beyond the sense of self, muttering: "Come in," and shaking his head in amazement.

You see, Doctor, that we can even ask such a question ("Who said G/god?") perplexes me. Who, indeed, "says" G/god? Though I might aver, who doesn't? We are, after all, but a message from God to God, and as such, each of us "individuals" is but a subtle eructation in the fabric of the universe, bubbling momentarily on the surface before easing back into our natural quantum (or "G/godly") state. Think "David Bohm."

Just what kind of era do we live in, that a person might say this: "I do not think that there are any other sorts of messages... hidden or otherwise. Why do I say this? Because we can explain what we see based on scientific measurements, experiments, and theory.
Widmanstatten texture is pretty well understood without any recourse to metaphysics or religion."

This statement immediately reminds me of a story about the great 18th century Jewish mystic, Baal Shem Tov, entitled, "The Famous Miracle:"

"A naturalist came from a great distance to see the Baal Shem Tov and said: "My investigations show that in the course of nature the Red Sea had to divide at the very hour that the children of Israel passed through it. Now what about that famous miracle!"
The Baal Shem answered: "Don't you know that God created nature? And he created it so, that at the hour the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea, it had to divide. That is the great and famous miracle!""

No doubt you might disagree with me, but proposing that we humans can get to the "bottom" of anything represents our own particular hubris, that which ultimately dooms humanity to being a failed evolutionary experiment. Our brains and prehensile hands will prove to be about as helpful to us as body mass was to the Dinosaurs, if we don't expand our spiritual maturity, and our sense of humility before the universe.

You know the Tower of Babel story, right? The silly Lilliputs of the Jewish Bible building their structure so that they might get a glimpse of God? The smashing of that tower and ensuing chaos represents the beginnings of perceived human variances, and of our current tribal structure of "different" ethnicities, religions, cultures etc.

Well now, through our technology, Internet, scientific know-how and other narrow but prideful intellectual pursuits, doesn't it seem that perhaps we are building another Tower of Babel, yet an even more insidious one, that allows us not to "peek" at God, but to supplant It? We no longer have need of anything; give us but a few scientific instruments and a pair of stiletto heels, and we're good to go . . .

Well, Albert Einstein, who knew more about both Physics and God than I ever will, said he didn't know what munitions might be "de rigeur" for World War III, but World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones. After the fall of the latest Tower of Babel!

See? What I'm getting at? As long as we think that we can operate outside of the forces of the universe (on the grand scale) or the forces of history, even, on the micro-scale (as believed our current political leaders when they trundled us into Iraq), then we are indeed ruled by blind hubris. When we believe that we, humans, define an "end" -- in any manner -- we have lost sight of what is truly important, and have narrowed our perspective to that of an ant.

I'm no scientist, but I believe that Chaos theory posits that there is a similar way in which systems connect and move, be it population distribution across geography and time, the stock market, weather patterns, dancers on a dance floor -- what have you. The whole system is completely interlinked, predictably unpredictable and perfect. It is a controlled, vast, chaotic contingency that underpins the movements of all systems, from the way that a family moves around the house on a Saturday morning to the manner in which elements ebb and collect throughout the universe.

Systems, not specific aspects therein, cannot be boxed and tied up, "understood" and explained without taking into account all other parts of the whole -- both known and unknown. And underpinning the whole thing, the Great Law Giver, that which searches for Itself through the unfolding of all of these systems in time (instead of outside of it),
the blind, unconscious mover desperately in search of "self" – a "force" defined by the whole, while everything else within the system can fool itself into believing that he/she/it is discrete somehow in itself (as we humans certainly do) -- this vast, encompassing force underpins all, even the Widmanstatten texture forming on the cooling cores of all planets. And only that force, that which defines the "whole," can have any true "perspective" on what is going on here, in this universe.

As such, I do contend that the Widmanstatten texture have far more to tell us than that they are created by a slow cooling core of nickel and iron, and their marks are entirely comprehensible within what we currently think of as "science." In my opinion, to box Widmanstatten texture into this small explanation represents a belief not unlike that naturalist who came to the Baal Shem, convinced that his calculations had ruled out the necessity of God.

I am, as ever, sorry for the length of this reply, as well as my own lack of humility, all while claiming that human hubris will ultimately do us all in.

If you find a certain offensive, pedantic and even patronizing tone to my reply -- you are certainly not alone. For some reason, people sometimes take me this way?

With perplexion,

Tom

On God and Suffering

Dosteyevski said: “Suffering is the sole source of consciousness.” And suffering is, indeed, the single unifying factor in human experience. After all, we all suffer from something – and it is just this suffering that underpins the human experience. Pain is necessary for an awareness of “being” . . .
The only true vision of a universal “God” must move beyond the conception of “Good” and “Evil.” These are human constructs, and do nothing but provide humans a manner to blame some “other” for their problems. There is no good and evil in the universe; suffering, pain – these are absolutely necessary in the yearning towards consciousness, in God’s quest to become aware of Itself.
As difficult as it is, as much maturity it demands, we (humans) will never “understand” until we can move beyond the idea that God “knows” anything in the sense that we conceive of “knowing.” God created the universe, God created pain to know; so that It could know It. We are this yearning to know; we represent the painful growth towards God’s self-knowledge. Can God be slain? Can suffering do anything but lead to greater consciousness? Does our idea of “Good” as “pleasurable” have meaning to anyone other than a child, a spiritual infant?
I have no desire to suffer; but I also have absolutely no say in the matter. Pain comes in many forms and I have experienced some of them; there are many and much more powerful versions that I have never experienced and (God forbid!) I never will.
But what will be is what will be. Consciousness and Love (“agape,” that is) are born of the facts at hand, not wishes for different facts. Everything, absolutely everything must be viewed as the expression of an obligation; as if we have been leant something terribly important and must not only protect it, but increase it, quicken it. That “something” is our consciousness, our understanding – this is the understanding of God itself, unfolding. As the Sufis put it: “God sees through your eyes;” don’t you want God to have the clearest, most loving vision possible?

"Execution," charcoal on paper, 22" x 14", 2001

“Bad” – what is bad? That which disagrees with orthodoxy? That which George Bush calls evil? Actions that hurt another human being? Pedophilia? Drug abuse? Sheathing women in burkas? And what is “good,” for that matter? “Helping” people feel less pain? Tithing? Creating art? Running for the state legislature?
We just don’t know. We yearn towards an understanding of just what is “good” and what “bad” – and we should do this. But we are completely in the dark; our quest towards a moral vision is not towards something that is existent, but into the morass of the unknown. We are told many different things by human wisdom traditions, and can imagine even more in the dark of the night, when we are released from the bonds of the sun. But what is the answer?
This scrabbling about – this is God in search of Itself. And this scrabbling about is occasioned by the very existence of what we think of as “Bad.” That which is “bad” is absolutely necessary to growth; hence, disgusting as it is, it might not be bad at all, but incontrovertible. Completely.
So, where does this leave us? Are we to throw up our hands and thank God for mass murder and Multiple Sclerosis? “Thank God for visiting this hell upon us. Amen.” I don’t think so! But we must accept that which is – this represents understanding; this is mystical realization. Accept, but not submit. Struggle to operate within the human realm to bring consciousness of morality and love into our existence, for if it expands in the human realm, it emerges into the universal realm, as well. Suffering will not be conquered, though current paradigms hold out such hope. If you haven’t noticed, we are hardly lessening suffering; we are only growing more impatient with it. And it might be just this impatience – this lack of acceptance – that makes the suffering all the more acute.
Odd, isn’t it?

More or Less

I am reminded of a story:
A man shows up at the door one day, a strange little box-like mechanism, with a small handle on top of it in his hands. “Here,” he says, insinuating the small apparatus into the world of an otherwise normal homeowner (Read: “you” or “me”). “It’s really quite easy; all you have to do is push this button,” and he points out a small red dimple on the handle atop the box, “and I will return with one million dollars. Voila.”
Of course, there is a catch; there always is, so our friend, standing unsurely in the doorway asks, “And?”
“Well of course,” says the man, in that knowing sort of way that certain men in ties can so easily affect, “Yes, of course. If you are of the mind to hit the button, well, someone, somewhere in the world will die. Like that; unexpectedly.” And here he kind of smiles. “But after all . . .”
“Who will it be?” asks the homeowner, suddenly horrified by the little device.
“I don’t know,” says the man, shrugging. “But we’re all to die, someday. No?”
“What a horrible little gadget,” says the one without the tie, shuddering.
“Be that as it may, I’ll just leave it here,” and he quickly places the little thing inside the door, “until you’re done with it.”
“But,” responds the other, “What if I never push the button?”
Alas, the suit has somehow disappeared and the homeowner is left alone with his quandary.
Of course, we all know how the story ends.

"Wish for Everything," acrylic and ink on paper, 10" x 8", 2005

It is played out again and again in households and parlors around the world on a daily basis. The price to seduce each of us into pushing that button rises and falls with all the vagaries of the stock market, but there is always a price that is barely enough, and we are always able to act with a delicious dozy indifference to that person “out there” who might well be effected by our actions. And so, push we do . . .
The greatest fib of all is that we can somehow inure ourselves to charges of malfeasance by “taking the fifth” in life. Not asking too many questions; turning a blind eye, sucking up to those who hold the Big Keys, taking a job where one delegates their moral choices to a “higher power” (i.e. their boss; not God), pushing that button anonymously and then putting the consequences out of mind. This common mental gymnastic allows us to pass the vast majority of our time operating in a complete moral void, while comforting ourselves that we have no responsibility other than to our family, our job or our “State.”
There is no such thing as neutrality.
The absurdity of Switzerland aside, every non-decision is a decision in and of itself; every abstention from taking a truly moral course of action is a descent into indifference, and amorality. Amorality and immorality are only separated by their prefix – not at all in their ultimate meaning. And it is just this indifference that is truly the opposite of Good. (“Your indifference makes of you an accomplice.”)
Albert (Einstein) had this to say – and it would behoove more of us to listen to that zany old genius:

“All of us who are concerned for peace and the triumph of reason and justice must today be keenly aware of how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field. But however that may be, and whatever fate may have in store for all of us, we may rest assured that without the tireless efforts of those who are concerned with the welfare of humanity as a whole, the lot of mankind would be still worse that in fact it even now is.”

How many “buttons” – annihilating some anonymous person out there – do we push everyday, with our job choice, our purchasing choices, our driving choices, even flushing a toilet overfilled with precious water?
No, no – of course, after all, how can we really be held responsible for any of this? They’re not really our choices, after all – for God’s sakes! What kind of realist would expect that we could take charge of our actions in such as way as to become truly moral actors in this world gone to the dogs?
(Succumb . . .)
We drift through our days, doing our jobs, taking care of our friends, certainly giving of ourselves to charity and trying to make the world a better place (within reasonable bounds, of course!), sending holiday cards that demand: “World Peace,” and then checking “Destroy” in the ballot box; going to a house of worship on the weekend and then blissfully forgetting it all the vast majority of the time.
And we feel more or less certain that we are more or less good and moral people.