Secret Faults

I think a great learning for our time will come in exploration of the question: What is acceptable but profoundly wrong in our own time and culture? — just as acceptable as were slavery to the founding fathers and sexual harrassment to the bosses in their corner offices, and just as profoundly wrong; wrong then and wrong now.

But what other things in our present culture are equally bad, but equally accepted?

Systemic racism is just one such thing, still too acceptable by some. And systemic sexism, enacted into practice by unequal pay and unfair policies, feeds and nourishes a culture in which women still are second class citizens.

But what else is in there, at the roots of our culture, accepted, but rotten at the root? What wrongs are so accepted that no one but the victim notices, and keeps silent because “that’s just the way things are.” The Psalmist had it right, “Who can tell how often he offends? Cleanse me from my secret faults....”

—Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG