I got an email update today from Sojourners, a politically progressive Christian group. In it, Jim Wallis talks about our perceptions of injustices. He was talking about global poverty and inequality, but I think what he says applies to intactivism too:
Each new generation has a chance to alter two very basic definitions of reality in our world - what is acceptable and what is possible.
First, what is acceptable?
There are always great inhumanities that we inflict upon one another in this world ... and great gaps in our moral recognition of them. When the really big offenses are finally corrected, finally changed, it is always and only because something has happened to change our perception of the moral issues at stake. The moral contradiction we have long lived with is no longer acceptable to us. What we accepted, or ignored, or denied, finally gets our attention and we decide that we just cannot, and will not, live with it any longer. But until that happens, the injustice and misery continue.
It often takes a new generation to make that decision - that something that people have long tolerated just won't be tolerated any more.
Thoughts? Are our children that generation that will refuse to tolerate genital cutting any longer? Could we ourselves be that generation?
Each new generation has a chance to alter two very basic definitions of reality in our world - what is acceptable and what is possible.
First, what is acceptable?
There are always great inhumanities that we inflict upon one another in this world ... and great gaps in our moral recognition of them. When the really big offenses are finally corrected, finally changed, it is always and only because something has happened to change our perception of the moral issues at stake. The moral contradiction we have long lived with is no longer acceptable to us. What we accepted, or ignored, or denied, finally gets our attention and we decide that we just cannot, and will not, live with it any longer. But until that happens, the injustice and misery continue.
It often takes a new generation to make that decision - that something that people have long tolerated just won't be tolerated any more.
Thoughts? Are our children that generation that will refuse to tolerate genital cutting any longer? Could we ourselves be that generation?
