The difference between innocence and guilt is a matter of urgency. How much time is there to judge?

In crises – on the battlefield, in a catastrophe, or even under the pressure of a tight deadline – judgment is dispensed quickly and cursorily. (“Analysis paralysis! We don’t have time to philosophize!”) In peace judgment is slower and deeper.

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Three men were condemned in court, each for a statement he had made which had been taken out of context and used as evidence against him.

The first man would have been absolved by the sentence preceding and the sentence following his statement. The second man would have been released had the full transcript of his speech been made available with a brief explanation of his situation. The third man also would have been exonerated had the courts heard and understood his full speech, knew his biography and had learned to see his situation as he saw it – but this would have taken months or years of close and honest study. In other words, the third man really was guilty.

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Some people prefer urgency precisely because urgency leaves no time to think. One must leap straight to the conclusion, ostensibly in order to “act decisively”. In some cases, though, the need for immediate action is a semi-conscious ruse. The possibility that the situation could be different from how it appears at first glance arouses instinctive anxiety in the “man of action”. This anxiety is discharged in attacking dissent and lunging into reaction. From there doubts are dispelled by the distractions of events.

However, urgency is real, the need to act is real, and guilt is real. The question is: Real in what sense? This kind of question deservedly arouses the most cynical skepticism. “God is real… but in what sense?” “What is… is?”

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The declining world-view loves an emergency; but the dying world-view is dependent on emergencies and expends its last strength creating them.

Some wars are only the death-spasms of a world-view.