Generation Understanding (Sonnet 2480) ― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

No matter what the apes want you to believe,

it’s not weakness to abandon suspicion,
it’s not weakness to discard judgment,
it’s not weakness to practice empathy,
it’s not weakness to be considerate –

it’s not misdemeanor to denounce primitive
practices that our ancestors thought sensible,
it’s a sign of wisdom, not stupidity, to admit
ignorance, rather than succumb to supernatural.

My favorite answer of all is, ‘I don’t know’ –
in the absence of rigorous investigation
that’s the answer I fall back on the most;

then there are times when logic is immaterial,
there I avoid all mention of knowledge, and
take the humane course, despite reason or ritual.