With Quiet Dignity

'Strange how there's always a little more innocence left to lose.' - The Outsider (Dishonored)

Love, Dignity, Justice
by ANDR3W A

From the title and quotation chosen for this particular stream of consciousness, you might hazard the guess that something has been troubling me lately. And rightly so, my dear, vociferous readers.

I may have stated this too many times already, but I feel that our species is quite fallible. We are all inclined towards chaos – to some extent at least. The irony being, of course, that we so strongly crave to order the world around us and shape it to our needs, desires, preferences…

None of us are perfect, which is both logical and unsurprising – if it were otherwise, I for one would be rather shocked that we had discovered true Artificial Intelligence without anyone noticing. The point I would make here is that none of us are exempt from failure in any way. None of us are true beacons of virtue and morality – paragons unblemished by a cruel world. However appealing the notion of such people may be, I would argue that they do not exist.

Perhaps I am awfully pessimistic and time will prove me wrong. I would be very glad, if that happened one day. Truly, I would like to believe that we are all capable of being much more than we are – you may have noticed how often I express this particular idealistic notion of mine. As is often the case, however, reality would beg to differ. The world touches us all eventually – no one remains innocent for long. And the farther we go from our most cherished dreams and ideals, the more we realise how deep this loss of innocence may become.

Yet, you will not hear me say, my dear, vociferous readers, that there is no hope – that there is no way to retain some part of your true self, to build it, to make it stronger. Fighting for that is both the means and the end, I think, and the calls to arms are too numerous to ignore.

Someone said to me once, ‘What is true is never loud.’ So let us fight on, quietly – for innocence lost. Let us overcome and rise above all of it.

And let us live on with quiet dignity.