Doing nothing is also doing something

We picture injustice as an action. Someone lies, steals, shoves to the front. But there's a quieter kind that leaves no fingerprints: the harm you allow because stepping in would cost you. You saw the new hire being set up to fail and said nothing, because flagging it meant friction. You watched the corner get cut on the safety check and looked away, because the shift was already long. The wrong got done, and you simply declined to be in its path.

Cicero named this directly. People, he wrote, "are reluctant to incur enmity or trouble or expense" and so "suffer those to be neglected whom it is their duty to protect" (De Officiis 1.28, Miller). He's blunt about it: the person who could have prevented a wrong and chose comfort instead shares in the wrong. Not carrying your share isn't neutral. It's a thing you did.

This is the hard edge of the week. Your full share includes the parts that ask something of you — the awkward word, the inconvenient stand, the trouble you'd rather avoid. Skipping those isn't staying out of it. It's leaving someone holding it alone.