Do Nothing

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
-Edmund Burke (maybe)

I'm a man. Nothing more, nothing less, just a plain simple man. I can accomplish great things, or nothing, or neither. But my greatest strength is also my greatest weakness, being that I'm a man, nothing more, nothing less. I'm of flesh and blood, if you prick me, yes I do bleed, if you tickle me, yes I do laugh and if you poison me, yes I die. Being of flesh and blood I susceptible to all the weakness that it entails. I'm mortal, I'm weak, I'm lazy, I'm all of these things and more.

But for some reason people expect more from me. People expect great things from me, and have told me that I'm meant for great things. Now I'm not a religious man, but I will swear upon a stack of bibles and on my own mothers grave, that people have told me this and its not me inflating my ego. I don't know why people expect this of me. On the contrary to what some may think about me, I'm not ambitious. I'm no great intellectual, I'm not even a good academic, I don't want fame, fortune and glory. I want to be a researcher at the State Department, a common bureaucrat, a simple Civil Servant is my great striving in life.

People tell me I'm a leader. I'm not leader, I don't want to lead. Leading is hard and I don't want to do it. I have taken the reigns when no one else would, but I didn't want to. Now I may be no leader, but I'm also no follower, I'm me, a man, a man of flesh and blood, nothing less, nothing more. I'm not Hegel's Hero. I'm no slave to the Weltgeist, higher powers do not speak to me, and if they did I would seek help right away. I'm also not Hegel's Person. I do not create history, I do not transcend morality , I'm no Socrates. But I'm not Hegel's Victim. I do not act out of petty selfishness and greed, or at least I don't like to think I do. In the end perhaps I'm Hegel's Citizen. I bow to conventional morality, the history I make, if any, is insignificant and only has repercussions as part of the collective. Well I'm also very happy in a peaceable state.

But I reject that notion. For I'm neither of any of those things. Not leader, not follower. I'm just me an individual, I'm Mike, that is who I'm, it's who I've always been, it's who I'll always be. A mediocre, at best, nothing. I've tried being more than that, I have, but I'm not. And this is want brings me to the purpose of the Edmond Burke "quote" is that what happens when evil prevails even when good men do something. This is the place I find myself, time and time and time again, over and over ad infinitium. And I grow weary and tired, fed up and melancholy. I wonder why? Why? Why? Why, the greatest of all words, friend, partner and yes lover. With the simplest utterance of this word, evil can be stopped in its tracks, lies destroyed, lives saved. But ohh, like Justice, she can be mean and cruel and turn on you for merely blinking. For why can also stop good faster than a train into a brick wall. It saps the will of those who try just as easily as it pulls the rug out from under liars.

So I must ask why? Why do I bother? Why? Why? Why anything? I have done things and I have failed, time and time and time and time again I have failed. I have done something and evil still prevails. Even on matters not as grave as good vs. evil, I fall flat on my face. If insanity is doing something over and over expecting a different outcome I must ask, am I insane? So what are my options, keep on doing what I'm doing? Or give up, stop trying, surrender and do nothing?