Dear Friends,
It seems to me, a lot of people after seeing television shows like, The Defenders, Superman and Batman, as well as movies like Goldfinger and Limitless, would like to fight for goodness and defeat evil, but sadly, they think they themselves lack the superhuman abilities that would allow them to. Of course we all have superhuman abilities, to fight the forces of evil and defend truth, justice and the American way, we just don’t know it. The answer my friends is in the thousands of tiny decisions we make every day. It is in those decisions that we can crush evil and befriend good. Every time you decide not to do a bad thing, whenever you choose to help another, you are the superhero, just as whenever you decide to do a small evil, you become a mini me Dr. No.
Courtesy is one way to fight evil. When you are courteous you not only help the person… you change the world. We all tend to mimic the behavior we see. When we are subjected to courtesy we therefore pass it on, and that courtesy that you display, in a moment without thought, effects people you never see and goes much further than you can imagine. Maybe even stopping someone from domestic violence, since their sense of humanity has been acknowledged, which is often the catalyst for such violence. On the other hand, when you slam the door in someone’s face, they will mimic that behavior as well. Maybe they will go home and yell at their children, slam the door in someone else face… or set a bomb on a train. Simply by being courteous and not rude can you be a force for good.
Trash talking is one way to become a little agent Smith and create other Agent Smiths. When we back stab people we not only damage them but ourselves as well. The damage to the reputation of the target of our vitriol is obvious but the damage to our own reputation is less obvious. Those who hear our diatribes have to worry that we are bad mouthing them when they are not around, and so they see us in a negative light. When we refuse to engage in backstabbing we show that we are above such childish behavior. We become a capacitor for goodness absorbing evil and dissipating it. Obviously gossiping is never beneficial, but it is fun, as evil often is. When we refuse to engage we become super heroes, we might not be able to leap tall buildings, but we are a force for justice.
When you see injustice, it is up to good people to point it out, especially evil masquerading as justice. Edmund Burke once said, The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. That doesn’t mean you have to don a cape and fly over the city looking for injustice, all it means is that when you see it, point it out. Evil is like mold, it grows in the dark and sunlight is deadly to it. Often evil covers itself from the deadly rays of light, by pretending to be goodness, as it did in Burke’s time. It takes discernment however to see evil for what it is. In Burke’s time many people thought the French Revolution would, in fact could only, result in a good outcome. Burke pointed out that it would end in a violent, bloody horror show, as it did. Sadly, often the heroes are called villains and villains are called heroes, usually by those that promote evil. Isn’t it the sign of a champion, one who does what is right, regardless of the slings and arrows?
Being a force for good is easy as pie. It does not take the ability to fly, stop bullets or even telekinesis, it only takes a tiny bit of effort. Our world is the result of trillions of little decisions, made by everyday people, every moment of every day. It is the aggregate of those decisions that make our world a good one or an evil one. You and I have the power to change the world by making right decisions rather than wrong ones. I am sure you can think of many areas in your life, as do I, where we can make a small change that will result in a small good. But that is all it takes! Just make one less bad decision today, and two less bad ones tomorrow, you only need to move the ball a little at a time down the field. It may not seem like you are making a difference, but changing the world is not a matter of defeating SPECTOR but of improving our microscopic corner of it.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
