Илья Марголин – The First Quarter Of My Century (страница 11)

Inaction is not always weakness. It can be a form of endurance, a refusal of imposed participation, a point at which the subject acknowledges that not every form of involvement is legitimate, not every intervention appropriate. But inaction can also be a form of guilt – where it conceals cowardice, consent, or a reluctance to interrupt destruction.

The history of the twentieth century offers both examples. The political inaction of millions made possible crimes resisted by only a few. Indifference framed as non-interference became a structure of permissibility. In such cases, inaction destroys more than violence: it creates a space in which the actions of others become irreversible.

At the same time, activism without analysis, intervention without measure, the attempt to «correct» without a clear grounding, lead to consequences no less destructive. The desire to participate without understanding renders action uncontrollable. What begins as justice can end as coercion, because the force of action is not balanced by a boundary.

For this reason, the question «which is worse» is wrongly posed. The more precise question is: under what conditions is a person able to act not out of habit, and not out of refusal, but from a clear understanding of the boundary beyond which they cease to be indifferent – and cease to be destructive.

At this point, neither emotion nor morality is decisive. What matters is discipline: thinking before intervening; seeing the structure before breaking it; holding back when action is merely an extension of one’s own uncertainty; stepping in when inaction becomes a form of consent to what cannot be allowed.

A person capable of distinguishing these states does not measure themselves by the number of actions performed. They correlate their activity with the reality they may damage or sustain. Their measure is not efficiency, but precision. Not activity, but readiness to answer for inclusion or withdrawal.

In a world where public space demands constant engagement, inaction takes on the form of scandal. But in a world where any intervention is presented as courage, action itself can become mere mimicry – a form of belonging to the flow.

Both can be justified. Both can be destructive. The difference lies in the structure of grounding.

Where a person acts or refrains not out of fear, not out of inertia, but from an understanding of the situation, their choice does not articulate a position, but responsibility.

In political philosophy, the problem of action and inaction becomes especially acute when an individual position enters into relation with a system. Political action always carries a dual status: it either intervenes in an established order or confirms it. Inaction, correspondingly, either refuses legitimation or becomes a form of tacit approval.

Hannah Arendt captured this tension in Eichmann in Jerusalem. Administrative inaction – legally correct and outwardly «neutral» – under certain conditions becomes direct complicity. It is precisely inaction devoid of an internal position that allows institutional evil to function without obstruction. It does not produce violence, but it cancels the possibility of interrupting it.

Yet political activity without grounding is also subject to critique – already in Plato, and later in Rousseau and Kant. A person engaged in politics without philosophical preparation, without a sense of measure, without distinguishing the private from the common, acts as an element of a crowd rather than as a free citizen. Thus emerges a form of action that appears courageous, but in substance generates new dependencies.

Ethics begins where a person ceases to act according to an external script. It begins with a refusal of inert participation – and of inert refusal. Ethics demands not an act as such, but the development of a criterion by which an act becomes justified. Without such a criterion, action is a form of pressure; inaction, a form of withdrawal.

From a metaphysical perspective, both action and inaction are forms of presence. Neither disappears from reality. Even silence produces consequences. The world is not divided into those who «influence» and those who «step aside.» Everything that has form acts.

Refusal to participate is also participation. It produces a field in which the actions of others intensify. Non-intervention alters the structure of a situation: it either liberates or weakens resistance. A person who steps into the shadows becomes a background for another’s will.

Thus, the philosophical formulation of the question «which is worse» loses its meaning. What matters is something else: what level of responsibility a person is capable of holding – in action or outside it. If they refuse to act, do they recognize that refusal reshapes the field? If they act, do they accept that they intervene in another’s possibility?

Inaction can be an honest form of ethical position. But it cannot be empty. Just as action cannot be mechanical. In each case, a person must answer not what they did, but why they considered it permissible in that situation.

Freedom in the political sense is not a choice between activity and passivity. It is the capacity to relate oneself to the consequences of what one has produced – or allowed.

Where Does Strength Reside?

In this essay, I examine strength as a derivative of the structure of one’s immediate connections. My central thesis is that a person realizes their potential not autonomously, but within the limits of what is permitted by their environment. In this context, the environment is not a social backdrop but a functional framework that determines which efforts are perceived as appropriate, feasible, and sustainable. Without an environment capable of sustaining a high intensity of action, even a strong will is either suppressed or dissipated. I proceed from the assumption that strength is not an internal resource, but a form of normalization of effort within a given configuration of relationships. The essay is written as an attempt to extract this condition from habitual notions of individuality and self-sufficiency.

The concept of strength is applicable to a person insofar as they are embedded in a structure that allows effort to be realized. Outside such a structure, strength remains a formless possibility. The conditions under which will acquires an operative range are determined not only by internal potential, but also by the external composition of the environment.

The environment delineates the contour of permissible decisions. It defines the framework of what is considered realizable, justified, acceptable in terms of effort and outcome. An individual cannot sustain a high level of actional tension without an external configuration that permits or reflects this level.

A figure deprived of an environment does not disappear, but loses scale. Its will remains theoretical. Resistance from the environment either dampens intensity or turns it into an isolated anomaly. Only at the point where subjective intention coincides with external acceptability does a functional structure of strength emerge.

If a person regularly interacts with four participants for whom cruelty is an acceptable mode of behavior, their involvement in such practices ceases to be an exception. If they are embedded in a group where material and intellectual discipline is high, their own standard is adjusted automatically.

The environment does not explain, does not shape views, does not persuade. It normalizes behavior through the everyday configuration of what is permitted. The structure of the norm is reproduced silently, through a rhythm of decisions and reactions that do not require articulation.

Psychology is secondary to these mechanisms. A person adapts perception and will to the prevailing system of constraints and allowances. The ethical parameters of the environment are translated into bodily and behavioral economy.

From this follows the conclusion: strength is not a characteristic of an isolated subject. It is a function of one’s position within a network in which tension is not only bearable, but required. An environment that does not allow supra-normative effort nullifies subjective initiative. An environment oriented toward sustaining intensity structures the personality, rendering it operational.

Under such conditions, a person acts not in spite of, but in accordance with permission. Their effort is not a heroic exception, because those around them do not obstruct its manifestation. On the contrary, they presuppose it as a necessary component of the overall form.

Thus, the environment is not a sum of contacts, but an infrastructure of permissibility. Within this infrastructure, the scale a person can reach is formed – a scale that does not destroy the self and does not exceed the limits of one’s own reproducibility.

Finding Yourself Face to Face…

In this essay, I address a practical and disciplinary problem: how to speak with a person you do not know, on a topic in which you are not confident. I analyze the structure of the first question as a tool that determines the course of the conversation. I explain how to maintain one’s position when one does not command the material, and why the key lies not in the content of the question, but in how it is aligned with the scale of the interlocutor. The essay is addressed to journalists, analysts, students – to anyone who works in live situations where there is no time for preparation, yet precision and dignity must be preserved.