Comrade wrote:SpunkySix wrote:
Unless allowing people to stomp on others because you're scared to speak up doesn't make you a bad person.
Yes spunk, exactly. People don't speak up not because they are bad people, but because they are scared, weak puny mortals, and alone they don't have the power to stand up to opression.
Even the strongest willed revolutionaries are powerless standing alone, and would remain silent without support.
Only when united can the people bring about change to the existing conditions, and in order to unite them you must raise their consciousness.
that's why if there is an issue somewhere around you it doesn't make everyone in the vicinity an inhumane asshole
Being scared and weak isn't an excuse to watch somebody get hurt day after day and remain not only silent but more often than not supportive of the person being hurtful. Maybe asshole is the wrong word for people like that... I think "pathetic" is more fitting. "Asshole" implies that those people have the balls to be mean by themselves, which they usually don't.
You'd be surprised how fast a single person can change an entire group dynamic around in a single action, I've seen it. Heck, I've done it personally many times. Applied to defending deaf people from the BS they have to deal with, that means simply speaking up and telling people what ignoramuses they are when they spew misinformation about them.
Also, as a side note... notice that those strong revolutionaries you speak of only gain support by first standing up themselves. People don't randomly decide to follow somebody who remains silent and completely passive. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't suddenly gain support one day from people of all races while he was sitting around doing nothing. He first had to put his life on the line and take action with his own initiative. Had he been too scared to do so, we could be living in a very different world right now. Knowing that strong possibility existed, moral responsibility fell on his shoulders not to allow that.