re: #562 Kenneth

I object to “Let It Be” very strongly as an expression of moral passivity, what William James called a “moral holiday”:

What do believers in the Absolute mean by saving that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute finite evil is ‘overruled’ already, we may, therefore, whenever we wish, treat the temporal as if it were potentially the eternal, be sure that we can trust its outcome, and, without sin, dismiss our fear and drop the worry of our finite responsibility. In short, they mean that we have a right ever and anon to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag in its own way, feeling that its issues are in better hands than ours and are none of our business.

One should be reminded of Burke’s dictum that “the only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.”

Of course we should all learn equanimity and accept that we cannot change everything all at once. (Unless we are Obama.) Of course we should not be dour and self-righteous and joyless. But it is disgusting to drape moral passivity with the trappings of religious faith and call it “profundity.” It is emphatically not.