The end result is our attitude towards life.
(Baonghean) - A Western philosopher divides society into three types of people: the blind masses, the half-knowing people, and the knowledgeable people. The blind masses are those who see but do not see, know but do not understand, so they live passively and accept all phenomena in society. The half-knowing people see through the nature of the problem, do not hesitate to speak up, react to change the situation. The last type of people is a combination of the ability to see things clearly of the half-knowing people and the silent, indifferent reaction of the masses. For this philosopher, keeping silent in the face of social inadequacies is the optimal solution to protect the existing order, avoiding changes that could make the situation even more unstable.
We would probably laugh and mock that philosopher for being a pragmatist, changing with the wind. But when we look back at the way we react to the negativity in society, we cannot help but be startled because we ourselves are also looking for a life of peace and quiet, avoiding noise, afraid of change, and cowardly when faced with injustice. Thinking back, it is also a consequence of individualism, causing people to only focus on calculating their own gains and losses, forgetting that the duty of citizens is to build and contribute to the overall healthy picture of society. When witnessing an unjust event, we do not have the reflex to judge right or wrong. Our first thought will be how it relates to us, whether it affects our interests, and from there we will decide how to react. Is it good or bad for a drunk person to fight with another person? That is not important. What should we do, prevent, ignore or encourage? It depends on how the drunk person relates to us, how the other person relates to us. There are so many external factors that need to be taken into account, but in most cases we often choose to turn a blind eye to avoid "unexpected trouble", to avoid trouble and inconvenience for ourselves.
We often sigh and complain that today's society is "less Stone-Stone and more Ly Thong", but in fact, it is our silence and indifference that has been encouraging and colluding with bad habits to grow and flourish. So we should not blame people for not living beautifully, because the concept of beauty-ugliness, good-evil is created by us. If we do not distinguish clearly and speak up to react, bad things will automatically be normalized and accepted as an obvious truth, causing the boundary between good and bad to be erased, shifted, and degraded.
Today's society is much different from the past, it is understandable that people's values and lifestyles change. But if we increasingly withdraw, look closer, narrower, and defend our own position, indifferent to the decline of social morality, forgetting that only when society is good can individuals be beautiful, we will lose our ego, become trivial, become pragmatic, and assimilate to evil without realizing it. Returning to our philosopher, in fact, whether the blind masses or the knowledgeable people are no different, because in the end, the result of their attitudes towards life is indifference, apathy, irresponsibility, and ineffectiveness for society. Where will a community full of people who are indifferent to good and bad like that go, when we still have not awakened to restore the function of morality, personality, and the voice of conscience?
Hai Trieu (Email from Paris)