Tarrou is the speaker in The Plague who arrives at this simple, demanding standard. There are two basic camps in any situation. There are those who are causing harm, knowingly or unknowingly, and there are those who are bearing it. The rebel’s task is plain. As far as possible, refuse to join the side that does the harm.

Tarrou extends the word “plague” beyond the disease in the novel. He means any arrangement that consents to murder, broadly construed. He learned this watching his father, a prosecutor, call for executions. He saw it again in revolutionary movements willing to kill for the cause. Plague is what happens when people accept harm to others as the price of order, ideology, or convenience.

This is a heavier claim than it first appears. Tarrou is not asking for purity. He says “so far as possible.” But he is asking for vigilance about complicity. The meeting where someone is being talked over and we look at our laptops. The colleague who is being quietly scapegoated and we go along with the story. The harm done in our name that we find ways not to think about.

Most days do not require heroism. They require attention. Where, today, are you being asked to join forces with something that diminishes someone? The first move of revolt may simply be to notice, and to refuse to consent in the small ways that are within your reach.

See also: April 13: Common Decency, February 18: The Vigilance That Must Never Falter