The Cost of Looking Away
Most of the time, the world doesn’t fall apart in a single moment.
It happens slowly. Quietly.
Not because people fought for the wrong thing—but because too many people didn’t fight for anything at all.
We like to think the biggest threat is anger, division, extremism. But what if it’s something even simpler? Apathy.
How many times have we seen something that felt wrong and told ourselves:
"It’s not my problem."
"Someone else will handle it."
"That’s just how things are."
And then, slowly, what once seemed unthinkable becomes normal.
A law gets passed that shouldn’t have. A right disappears. A neighbor is treated differently, but no one speaks up. A school board meeting turns ugly, but the reasonable people stay home. A lie gets repeated enough times that it starts to sound true.
Until one day, we look around and wonder how we got here.
The truth is, most of the world’s worst moments didn’t happen because the wrong people were loud.
They happened because the right people stayed silent.
