By FASPE Chair David Goldman
There is an entire cottage industry philosophizing about whether there is such a thing as bystanding, as a bystander. Is apathy or complacency just a form of complicity, i.e., passive complicity through inaction? On the other hand, does condemning the bystander ignore the circumstances, the risks, the potential dangers? Is there a difference between intentional bystanding and passive, thoughtless bystanding? A debate.
Today, we are facing a more insidious form of bystanding: passive acceptance. Or, put differently, conscious (or subconscious) normalization.
As FASPE studies the insidious normalization process of the 1930s in Germany, we cannot help but notice that we are now living with (learning to live with?) behavior that is truly extraordinary and not normal, behavior that if viewed from afar (in time or space) would be shocking. Worse, it is behavior that we can be certain, when viewed retrospectively, as historians with the benefit of knowing the ultimate outcomes, will be viewed as aberrant.
One of FASPE’s partners at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum muses about the present and the future–in the certainty that there will be people in the future, like us today, who will look back at our behavior and ask “how did they let that happen?”
How? By accepting, through a gradual process of normalization, actions or behaviors that are not really normal. By allowing such not normal behavior, over time we let it take on an air of normalcy, in part because of: how it is sold. How often it occurs, how seemingly benign it begins, how normal the advocates of the abnormal appear, how willing those whom we respect are to normalize out of political expediency, how unwilling we are to consider possible adverse consequences, how comfortable we are with the present! On and on.
Consider some pictures today:
- Marines on the streets of America.
- Precision bombs being dropped as part of “modern warfare,” knowing with certainty that there will be significant civilian deaths.
- Immigration agents of the United States government entering sacred places (churches and hospitals for example) seeking to arrest non-dangerous individuals whose identities and locations are not secret.
- Denying election results in democratic countries as a political strategy.
- Disrupting and destroying necessary infrastructure and using starvation and soul-breaking, à la the siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s, as a means of modern warfare.
- Physical and emotional violence condoned, even encouraged, in America as a political tool, as political sport.
- Consorting with despots and autocrats while denying basic respect to democratically elected allies.
- Military parades in Washington à la Moscow and Pyongyang.
- Encouraging, even trading in, misinformation and blood threats to a free press.
- Denial of medical science in favor of baseless, even bonkers, conspiracy theories.
- Personal attacks on judges, law firms, and the system of justice as “legal strategies.”
- Denial of climate science in the face of the realities of unprecedented weather events, famine, and death.
- Exclusionary, bigoted, and dangerous White Christian Nationalism expressed in the name of religion and faith.
Yes, the above is the work of our professionals. Lawyers, doctors, business people, clergy and others–all normalized as simple pendulum swings and political phases, as temporary blips and exaggerations. But, they are not normal.
Perhaps all will pass gently into history with little irrevocable damage (other than to those who are the intentional or innocent victims). But that is not a strategy. It is passivity. Like those living through the 1930s in Germany who did not anticipate the destination of Auschwitz (speaking metaphorically), what future are we blinding our eyes to? I do not intend to analogize to 1935 Germany with a threat of impending genocide–that would be preposterous, demagogically unproductive. But, we do learn from history.
We must call on those in our communities with the potential for impact, our professionals, to take action, to assert ethical leadership. Not to accept the hypnosis of normalization, not to seek to minimize the impact of normalization through negotiating strategies that themselves accept the normalcy, not to limit their professional activities to the present with a blind eye to the future–but to lead ethically.
FASPE asks more of our professionals; day-to-day ethical behavior, ethical leadership in our day-to-day work demands more.
Professionals, don’t just question your ethics but act on your ethics. In your day-to-day work. We cannot allow the normalization of fundamentally unethical behavior.
"Considering Professional Ethics" is a monthly essay shared in the FASPE e-newsletter.
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