Stop It!

Russell Willis

source: Smithsonian Magazine

When did we decide that
ideology should be allowed to trump
common sense, common decency,
common colds
uncommon – but not unexpected – pandemics?

Don’t give me any crap about
it not really being a decision,
that this is what inevitably 
happens over time-- 
A Darwinian joke. 

What happens over time are
uncountable decisions—
self-aware, thoughtful, intentional/
self-serving, thoughtless, habitual
decisions, nevertheless, 
ours, yours

Congealing into acts,
corporate and individual,
simple and complex,
interwoven, interdependent,
feeding off each other  

Living that Darwinian joke,
now viewed as Gospel, as if this
behavior is built into our DNA
or is The Law or Tradition 
or the Will of God
or
just one of those things,
y’know? 

Stop it!
Say it like your Mom used to say it: 
“Stop it, now!”

Then do it.
Stop long enough to think,
to decide if that’s the way 
we ought to act.
It is, after all, only ideology,
not Truth.

Russell Willis, Ethicist and online education entrepreneur, emerged as a poet in 2019. Russell grew up in and around Texas, was vocationally scattered throughout the Southwest and Great Plains for many years, and is now settled in Vermont with his wife, Dawn.