Ever noticed how humans look back at history with shock and judgement? We call people from past eras monsters for things like slavery, colonial conquests, religious persecutions. Yet we turn a blind eye to the same kinds of hypocrisies happening right now in our own time.
You stand in judgement over the slave-owners of centuries ago. You see them as barbaric and cruel, almost a different kind of being. But here you are today, wearing clothes probably made by hands in faraway factories that endure conditions not so different from indenture. Or you quietly accept practices that bring long-term harm to vulnerable children, all wrapped in the language of compassion and progress. The same ordinary hands do it. Yours. Mine. The neighbours'. We carry out the suffering or look away. We dress it up as necessity, as kindness, as the way things have to be.
This is not because you are bad. It is not because they were evil. It runs much deeper. Every generation believes the same thing. We have finally reached moral clarity. The past was blind. We see clearly now. We condemn the dead to feel clean. And then we become the monsters the next eyes will judge.
Have you ever felt that small quiet nagging inside? Something feels off. This does not quite sit right. Yet you push it aside. Everyone else is nodding along. The group needs it to be right. Belonging matters more than doubt.
That quiet is real. The thing that drowns it again and again across centuries is what we are going to look at together. Not with anger. Not with despair. Just with eyes wide open.
Why does this keep looping? Why do the same patterns simply put on different clothes generation after generation? And what happens when you finally stop looking away.
Take a breath. The mirror is waiting.
