Speak no evil

I have a small set of monkey statues somewhere, each is gesturing a separate representation for “see no evil”, “hear no evil” and “speak no evil”

I think in current times we could simply replace the three with the one - speak no evil. Really, when it comes down to it, that is all that they represent. It is all we seem to do.

We can forgo the suggestion that out mutism or our wilful blindness is valuable advice. It is not really implying that we can benefit if we all abstain from spreading malicious gossip, lying or ignoring what our eyes tell us. Individual slurs no longer register on the richter scale of moral outrage. In our uber-democracy the only thing which matters is how many people a company can pretend have glanced at something. No audits are required. The platform is all that matters.

In a time when the biggest threat to our culture is the fact that our culture is saturated - speaking no evil appears to have become our “thing”.

We all see the corruption. We are all capable of seeing the bigotry and recognising the hate speech. We can hear the poison, unjustified, corrosive, dripping from selfish, hateful mouths which retain a pious smile as they incite cruelty.

Yet we have mostly become mute.