*Warning* The following post contains language that may be offensive to some readers. It is not my intention to offend, but I included the language because its specific use is germane to the point. *Warning #2* This is a long post that really asks a simple question. I appreciate anyone who reads it. In his book The Nazi Doctors, Robert Jay Lifton unpacks the genesis and development of the ideas and programs that eventually led to the Final Solution. Examining the process by which sterilization of certain undesirables led to euthanasia, and so on to the death camps, it becomes clear that a kind of social programming was take place that was incrementally conditioning people to accept the highest levels of cruelty and horror. This process continued until it made possible a scene like the following: Pointing to the chimneys in the distance, (Dr. Ella Lingens-Reiner) asked a Nazi doctor, Fritz Klein, How can you reconcile that with your (Hippocratic) oath as a doctor? His answer was, Of course I am a doctor and I want to preserve life. And out of respect for human life, I would remove a gangrenous appendix from a diseased body. The Jew is the gangrenous appendix of mankind. I do not employ this quote merely to affect shock and horror. I wish to point out that it is painfully clear that this doctor is not engaging in some process of rationalization, whereby he invents reasons to justify sadistic acts he wishes to commit but cannot admit to himself. It is clear that this doctor believes he is acting morally. That is to say, he has so internalized the superego dictates of the Nazi ideology that there seems to be no conflict between his acts and his conscience. He believes not only that he is acting within the limits of what is acceptable, but that he is committing a positive moral action. The question I would like to ask is if there is an independent moral agency that supersedes and may conflict with the dictates of an internalized social morality, or if social morality is all there is, and the only conflicts that arise do so because of ambiguities and contradictions within the social moral program. Another example: In Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck experiences a moral dilemma that captures the type of contradiction to which I refer. Huck, having escaped his psychotic father and shrugged off the ministrations of those respectable people who would see him civilized, has taken to the river. Along the way, he comes upon the black slave Jim, whom Huck invites to travel along with him. Now, Jim is on the lam, having recently escaped his owner, one of Hucks would-be civilizers, Miss Watson. Huck and Jim develop a friendship in their time together, but as the story carries on, Huck begins to experience acute guilt, and even terror, over the idea that he has committed a horrible wrong, having stolen a piece of property by abetting Jims unlawful escape. It is not a mere fear of consequences, as well shortly see, but a true feeling of having done something profoundly wrong, that besets the young boy. Finally, Huck comes to a crisis where he is near to deciding to give Jim up to his pursuers, returning him to slavery, and very likely brutal and violent punishment. Witness the remarkable piece of dialogue of Huck with himself: The more I studied about this the more more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old womans nigger that hadnt done me no harm, and now was showing me theres One thats always on the lookout, and aint a-going to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warnt so much to blame, but something inside of me kept saying, There was the Sunday School, you coulda gone to it; and if youd adone it theyd alearnt you there that people that acts as Id been acting about the nigger goes to everlasting fire. This is Huck experiencing profound guilt, and even terror of hell, over the compassion he feels for Jim. The social rule which told him Thou Shalt Not Steal Anothers Property and Black Slaves Are Legitimate Property had been internalized to a high degree, such that it was causing spontaneous guilt and shame. This is the way such prohibitive social rules are intended to act upon the mind. The important thing to notice here, of course, is that this social morality is completely neutral in content. It can legitimize slavery and death camps as easily as it can justify compassion towards Jews and Africans. Deciding to give prayer a try, Huck finds that he is unable to pray because my heart warnt right... I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing... and go and write to that niggers owner... but deep down in me I knowed it as a lie, and He knowed it. You cant pray a lie - I found that out. Another remarkable evidence of the extent to which even uncivilized Huckleberry had internalized the brutal dictates of the 19th century southern super-ego is the cavalier way in which he refers to Jim by the racial epithet. To Huck, that Jim was a nigger, that he was legitimate property, that abetting his escape was stealing, that Miss Watson was justified in wanting him back and desiring to punish him, these were unquestioned, despite his affection for the man. Nowhere in the text does he question the legitimacy of the institution or outlook. He only wrestles with his own wickedness in wanting to ignore the just laws of society in order to help his friend. Finally, Huck can no longer bear the guilt and resolves to write a letter to Miss Watson, giving up the escaped slave. It brings us to this remarkable passage: (Having resolved to write Miss Watson) I felt good and all washed and clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didnt do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking... how near I I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking... and I see Jim before me all the time... we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldnt seem to strike no places to harden me against him... Id see him standing my watch on top of hisn, stead of calling me... and see how glad he was when I come back out of the fog... and would always call me honey and pet me... and how good he always was... and he... said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world... and then I happened to look around and see that paper. I was a-trembling because Id got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: All right, then, Ill go to hell - and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they were said... I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it... I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog. This is a passage that marks Twain as a writer of sensitive moral genius. What weve seen is that, although Huck has fully internalized the validity of his societys laws, and his own moral culpability in breaking them, there is nevertheless a deep conflict between following the rules and showing compassion to Jim. The question is whether such compassion is an innate human reality which forms the basis of a deeper morality that will always come into conflict with an internalized superego that issues commands in defiance of it, or whether these conflicts arise due to contradictory aspects of that superego. In other words, Hucks conflict may have come about because, although he lived in a society in which slavery was legitimate and stealing was wrong, he was also in a society where he heard phrases such as all men are created equal and do unto others as you would have them to unto you. That is, it could have been the installed superego itself that was giving him ambiguous signals and crossing his wires, or it could be that each one of us has an innate openness and compassion for others that cannot be erased, but only closed off and repressed, and which will inevitably come into conflict with social dictates that that demand cruelty and coldness. What do you think?
Posted on: Fri, 11 Apr 2014 21:08:22 +0000
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