During a recent conversation with a friend, who is now also an ex-work-colleague, we inevitably fell to talking about the impossible balance between personal integrity and economic survival. Finally she read this abridged quote from Shantaram to me over the phone:The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men, and a hundred million cowards.
The evil men are the ones in power..... hungry for control. They consist of the rich men, the politicians, and the extremist religious leaders.... those whose decisions rule the world and set it on its course of greed, destruction, and domination.
The stupid men are the prison guards, the soldiers, the police men, the missionaries for religious fanatics.... those that enforce the rule of evil men. They are often brave, but they give their lives for a government or religion that merely use their flesh and blood as chess pieces. Those governments always betray them or let them down or abandon them, in the long run.
The cowards.... well... they are the pencil pushers, the paper shufflers, the bureaucrats who let the evil men rule the world while looking the other way and collecting a meager paycheck or an empty blessing. They defend themselves by saying that they are just following orders, that it's their job, that it's nothing personal, that if they don't do it, someone else will. They are the hundred million cowards who know what's going on but say nothing….
I am frustrated because I believe I am the victim of cowards, but I am even more afraid of becoming one of them.
