Passivity and inaction are different. To indicate the distinguishing matters the intention must be examined. It is the fact of intention, in deed, that shows inaction from passivity. Where inaction is a deliberative act, passivity is the absence of action. When circumstances press, stress can move us into a state of inactivity, of dull ennui, of nonactiveness due to unknowability. Unknowability is never an absolute. It can be corrected but never fully eliminated. The moments external to a subjectivity bear both knowability and unknowability, and knowing moves between the two absolutes to find certain degree of certainty in the facts it ascertains.
The intention for action needs be behind the subjectivity or natural disposition. That inactivity nevertheless sits while it waits or seeks the facts for a case sometimes is unavoidable though at times becoming undesirable. Sometimes the facts sit in a cabinet lost in space, or a posterboard hidden in a basement, but the chance they do find presentation somewhere is usually a good one when the situation having been posed before us is one in common.
There is a need for an individual threatened with passivity, or a community, to reach out in an active action to seek the facts, not only as perceptible to themselves but also as being held somewhere else in the community or in another community. The chance they are already with a reasonably large accountability is one which should be beheld with optimism. There is actually much which can already be known by one's own perception, cognition, and conviction. But inactivity tends to draw down what is strong by our birth and upbringing when those around us do not reach out to us or we are in no habit to reach out amidst conflict to find the facts held in common.
There are words for passivity that leads to terrible outcomes, and memories, and cultural memories. The thing to do is to draw close the reality that much was prepared and has been prepared, but towards what goal and objective we can only imagine or plan reliance on decisions made previously in history. That the case was won previously can be no guarantee for a victory for the present in our future, but rather acts as a monument already set and at risk to rust for only the beginnings could have been foreseen. The grounds were laid out or the foundation set, but now a skyscraper has to be raised on methods not previously known for the circumstances did change.
What changed? Is it the world? Is it us? Is it the other? Is it our means? Is it our preparations? But of course, it is e. all of the above. To take note only of the nature of offense is to retreat into the exercise of reflection not yet of thought, not yet of planning, and short of action. There is a need to draw a demarcation immediately as per the boundaries of the sphere for which action has an effect, and too to recognize the location of other spheres of other agencies to which connection may a gain make. But whereupon, the question arrives as to who we now are, or in the immediate action, who am I and what do I know, there is no sense of withdrawing into each ourselves in fear of perception by our friends. Disagreement was oft the start of a conversation and that had made the need for fences that make good neighbors. If none of us know what the other is thinking of for nobody has spoken, then much has already been lost in terms of the sunlight hitting in the dawn that leads us into the day.
If the other did change, they did make gains for no action is taken without preparation. But to what extents, and how so - these are questions only answerable after discussion and debate result in intelligence. Had they foreseen that withdrawal into each ourselves would likely be the outcome already they suspect their effect in actualizing fear would succeed. Yet we have never been afraid and we must not anticipate we could fall into fear. Television has trained us to sit and wait and perceive but it never did ask us to act for them. No amount of boredom could risk our deeper souls to fall into inactivity for fear for fear.
