Does doing nothing make you complicit?

[sqbr]

A question that has come up in two comments I've been pondering my reply to ¹ and on which I think I may actually have a really basic ethical difference about:

Lets assume a certain act is "bad" under your ethical code. It's hurtful, unethical, immoral, etc. If you did it yourself you would be being immoral/unethical.

If there is something bad going on, and you're aware of it, and you could (try to) stop it, and you don't, are you complicit in that bad act? Are you being somewhat immoral/unethical?

Because I say yes. Inaction is itself an action. It's not the same as doing the "bad" act yourself, but it's not completely different either.

To go back to the Bible², everyone but the Good Samaritan was complicit in the suffering of the victim.
See also First they came....

In the context of social justice, if you live in an unjust society (and unless you're reading this in some distant perfect future³, you are) and you do nothing to work against that, you are complicit in that injustice. Which means you have to work hard just to stay still, so to speak, which is horribly unfair but it's just another side effect of the broader unfairness of the social injustice.

Which is not to say that doing nothing makes you a bad person, life is hard and there's only so much you can do. But nor is it inherently better than doing actively bad things, and in some cases it may be worse (the same way that bad medical assistance is often, but not always, better than none).

To give an example: one of the Big Things in RaceFail09 was white authors saying "Well, if I write POC characters they will probably end up being a bit racist even if I try my best. So the least racist⁴ thing to do is to only write white characters!" (See Talking About (And To) David Levine)

But the active racism of a mildly racist depiction is probably better than the passive racism of following the all-or-mostly-white-characters status quo (where to draw the line is a matter of opinion)⁵. And there is NO WAY not to be a bit racist in whatever you do. Which sucks, but hey.

So, do people agree? Or do you not see inaction as just another form of action, subject the same moral/ethical rules (whatever they are, depending on your own POV) as, uh, active action? (You can tell I never studied philosophy, there's probably proper jargon for this stuff) Is there some hole in my argument or description?

1)It's quite possible you weren't arguing this anyway, and I do intend on writing individual replies. But now I can leave out a chunk of my argument and maybe stay under the comment length limit :)
2)I may not be christian, but I think Jesus was pretty good with the educational metaphorical story. See also... :)
3)In which case, hi from the past, hypothetical future person!
4)Where by "racist" I mean "acting in a way to support society wide racial prejudice", not "Actively and consciously discriminating against people based on race".
5) Which is better for an individual story on aesthetic grounds being of course a totally different question.

Comments

[stableglynn.livejournal.com]

If you understand all your characters perfectly you will naturally become a better writer. Since the world naturally is full of people who are different to the author then not including that diversity can only limit your writing, unless you have a good reason - ie. Jane Austen. Equally though, you have to understand why a certain person is different to you, and why the story says that has to be so, otherwise you're just tokenising. I think we agree, I'm just clarifying my point. ;)

I also have the same reaction to fantasy novels which only focus on the Good And Righteous King regaining his throne from the Evil Userpers, completely ignoring 99% of the population who live in muttle and daub, but expecting them all to come out and fight and die at the appropriate moment.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh god yes. I always identify with the peasants in fantasy and end up grumpy :)