Notable Quotable: On Having A Dead Conscience
This notable quotable was selected for its timely wisdom. It's an excerpt from the essay, 8 Behaviors Most People Don' Realize Are Signs of a Dead Conscience, which the author, Victor Mong, posted to Medium:
The dead conscience doesn’t deny cruelty — it defends it. It acts as a defense attorney for evil. Always ready with a reason to explain it away.
There’s something deeply unsettling about someone who can look directly at injustice and instantly find a way to excuse it.
A child is beaten? “Well, maybe she needed discipline.”
An innocent man loses his job?
“He brought it on himself.”
Someone is fired for telling the truth? “He should’ve known better than to stir things up.”
A woman is harassed at work?
“Maybe she gave the wrong signals.”
You bring up corruption or abuse, and they shrug: “That’s just how the world works.”
They don’t think. They don’t ask questions. They just rationalize it.
And if you press them, if you say, “Don’t you see what this really is?” — they get defensive. Or they laugh.
Why? Because they’re not trying to understand. They’re trying to protect something: their position, self-image, their fragile belief that they’re still on the right side of things.
So their conscience bends reality into knots. It rewrites the story until wrong sounds reasonable and cruelty sounds deserved. And the more absurd the situation gets, the harder they work to justify it.
Because if they admit it’s wrong, they’d have to admit they’ve been complicit.
And a dead conscience fears that more than anything. It would rather twist the truth than face itself.
— Victor Mong
Sanatana
Wow! This article is amazing and so right on.
Present Valley
Hard to read these comments that have been circulating for years.
Even harder to listen to and watch this behavior as it is happening around me...yes even from people I know.
I continually pray there will be a collective conscience raising as we go through this time of disorder and transformation...and in my lifetime!
Thanks for the post.
Slipstream
So sad, but so very true. Our country is at a new low—there's no denying it. I believe when we hit rock bottom, people will wake up and decide it's time to claw our way back to being the America that was once admired by all.
Evangel
The "dead" conscience may be comatose—or severed from the Truth. But I've known a Lazarus or two who woke up. They admit they were fooled into lies that led them down a dark path. They're fully awake now, horrified by the cruelty they're witnessing.
There is a higher wisdom we all have access to. Some of us are rooted in it, connectedly strongly. Some ignore it, allowing fear to run their heart. Others have no conscious connection to it. It's not even on the back burner. I don't think I personally know anyone in that dark space, but I know many of them are now in charge of this country.