At every step, with every step

¿Qué te hace pensar que eres racional?, le dije.

We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard heartedness, all indiffer­ence, all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering every­where, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet. We kill with every step.

This is why, above all, every one of us has a personal task to do. This task is not to help on the whole of humankind a little; it is not the improvement of some institution, not the abolition of a particular kind of killing. All this is good and necessary, too. But the most important task for you and me, my fellow human being, is this: to take a step forward, in our own personal lives, from animal to human.
Hermann Hesse, from "Vivos Vocos," March 1919; quoted in Eberhard Arnold, SALT AND LIGHT.