Conscience

Antigone stood firm, refusing to do wrong to please a tyrant

who worshipped his own power. Creon failed: he could not make her bend

to him and to his impious desire to have no lords above him—

even gods. Antigone stood firm. For that, she died—

but showed forever how to fiercely live.

____________________________________________________

It’s always been true that standing on conscience can get you in trouble. Remember what happened to Socrates. Say the wrong thing about the right people and you could lose everything. Integrity isn’t just rare—it’s perilous. And the fewer people who speak plainly, the more dangerous plain speech becomes.

The tyrant’s trick is always the same: make surrender feel inevitable and resistance look absurd. So we start editing ourselves. We develop the hypocrisy of the tactful lie. We make what we call strategic compromises. And each retreat makes the next one easier. The habit of looking away becomes a way of life.

Here is a contrary story.

A college president sat through meeting after meeting as her board discussed how to “adapt” to Trump’s extortion demands against higher education. The euphemisms made her sick—strategic alignment, political flexibility, public harmony, continuity of mission. It was all just a cover for cowardice. They were willing to buckle to blackmail—paying protection money to a thug, compromising their educational conscience for a few months’ reprieve before the demands return and redouble.

She listened intently. She gave them time to find their courage. But finally she pushed back her chair and spoke out. “This is wrong, and you know it,” she said. “What good can we do our students if we show them the example of surrendering to bullies? You may be able to look yourselves in the mirror after bowing to a tyrant. I cannot. If you capitulate, I resign.”

There was silence as she walked out of the room—and long after. She had simply told them what they already knew: they weren’t going along out of necessity but out of cowardice.

She left the meeting knowing that her days were numbered. But later she told reporters, “I slept soundly that night for the first time in months.”

Have you not heard that story? Neither have I. But I wish I had. I wish that someone in today’s Bizarro society were showing that kind of moral clarity.

Hannah Arendt: the greatest evil grows not from fanatics but from the quiet habit of refusing to think. Solzhenitsyn: one honest voice can crack an empire of lies. And Socrates would recognize a fellow philosopher—a soul refusing to forfeit its integrity before the court of its own conscience.

You don’t need a movement to be brave, only a soul that still howls at injustice. That is all it takes, but it is frightening to stand alone with nothing but your own voice as your shield.

It is frightening to know that the shield may be too weak to save you. But holding it up proudly and facing the onslaught is courage. And when you find your courage and use it, you will know that you have acted rightly, that you have lived well.

Let them mock your conscience. It means that yours still works. And in times like these, that is no small thing.