Passive acceptance

There is nothing more degraded and subhuman than that bovine passivity in the face of nature or "fate" which, in the worst possible way, accepts an "is" as an "ought".  Which, for centuries, tolerated disease and squalor and ignorance and infant mortality as just part of life, even opposing efforts to combat them as impious defiance of God's will.  Which submits to rising inequality, austerity, and stagnation as the inexorable outcome of economic forces we cannot, or at least should not, do anything about.  Which, today, counsels passive acceptance of aging and death as a permanent fact of the human condition, even as we stand on the brink of being able to vanquish that last and most terrible enemy.

Everything humans have achieved, we owe to people who had burst asunder the mental fetters of passive acceptance of fate and the way things are.  Think big, dream boldly.