“The fate of mankind hinges entirely upon man’s moral development.” — Albert Einstein

We did not survive for 100,000 years because we were the strongest or the swiftest, but through a shared, cooperative spirit — a moral architecture innate to our species. This in-built instinct, this creative collectivity, was the fire that kept the darkness at bay long before we had laws or borders. We understood that it was essential to negotiate rather than dictate.

When Abraham Lincoln told us to “live up to the light we have,” I interpret his words not as a religious decree, but as a human imperative: the raw, secular clarity that we must either live together or perish together.

Complicity in the continuing Gaza genocide is to witness the light of our collective conscience vanish. From the sands of Gaza and Tehran to the streets of Minneapolis, we are witnessing an abandonment of our innate moral compass.

We witness our complicity in the active weaponization of our institutions. We witness it when security becomes the excuse for violent, masked surveillance turned directly against our own people. We witness our complicity as it blinds us to human suffering, from foreign bombings to mass immigration roundups at home.

Yet, this darkness is not going entirely unchallenged. We still hold a few precious milliseconds before midnight. Can we still choose the path that ensured our ancestral existence? If we choose to ignore it, complicity is the final door through which the ultimate threat enters: nuclear annihilation.

On Feb. 5, 2026, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expired. For the first time in over half a century, the world’s largest nuclear forces are completely unregulated. We have stepped blindly into an unregulated darkness. The fate of civilization is left entirely to those craving unbridled power. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight. This is the closest we have ever been to the end of humanity.

To push back the hands of the clock, we must rediscover the light from within. Rebuilding our moral architecture starts with a refusal to look away. It requires everyday citizens to demand that our leaders prioritize diplomacy over dominance. We must compel our institutions back into the service of humanity, rather than its surveillance, and return to that simple, age-old truth: morality matters.

Sarah Blum lives in Northampton.