Our continued participation signals tacit approval. But more than that. More than tacit: overt, explicit, blatant. And more than mere approval. With continued participation we are not just accessories to murder, we are the killers; and we are not exonerated by the fact that we didn’t want to hold the gun or by the fact that we didn’t volunteer to pull the trigger. Participation is complicity.
Each of us is made to choose a role in a play where the cast consists entirely of villains and victims. But it is a Hobson’s choice because all the victims are villains too. We do what we are asked and follow where we are directed, and like Eichmann our crimes are still unforgivable. We are made to sit beneath a post-Neolithic sword of Damocles; on the table is a feast that we have no stomach for while we wait for gravity to restore the balance that was lost more than eight millennia ago.
