20 January 2008

--Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, "Epigrams and Interludes," 95

--Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, "The Problem of Socrates," 11

Turning again to Pinker's five spheres of morality/science of moral sense, his sphere of authority deserves particular examination, especially in light of some recent grimm realities against our most basic instincts:

In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution to intervene and stop genocide in states showing an unwillingness to act itself (Warren Hoge, "Intervention, Hailed as a Concept, Is Shunned in Practice," The New York Times, 20 January 2008). Unfortunately, between 2005 and now, the resolution has not launched far from ideology to praxis. In fact, it has not launched at all.

Case in point - Darfur:

In a seeming absence of any moral authority and lack of any moral appeal to harm, fairness, and community, the Darfur genocides are ocular proof to the perilous difference between ideology and praxis, and the fatality of the bureaucratic entanglement quagmire. Indeed, the bureaucracy cesspool signaled yet another empty promise from the symbolic champion of morality - the UN - and there were three critical factors enabling, justifying, and sanctioning, respectively, all initiatives to intervene:

1) The Security Council's approval for the largest peace-keeping force in history with the capacity to stop the killings,

2) The vocal, organized, and worldwide campaign supporting intervention, and

3) The 2005 General Assembly resolution legally sanctioning intervention.

With everything in its favor, and with so many spheres of morality on its side, why is there inaction. Why are the Darfur genocides still persisting? Where is our morality, science of moral sense, or moralization? When faced squarely against political injustice, the natural instinct is to intervene to right the wrong and bring the crime to justice. There is a gross injustice far deeper than inaction - that of accountability and the fear of holding the criminals accountable for their unspeakable crimes.

Rather than morality, I find all signs of cowardice and hypocrisy in its place.

Degeneration by genocide, degeneration by bureaucracy, degeneration by hypocrisy - and Nietzsche is proven right.

Unfortunately, we need not look internationally to find moral hypocrisy. Painfully, this reality is inflicted all too close to home - literally:

It is with great pain that I discuss child abuse - corporal discipline issue, especially as it surfaces in the news around the Nixzmary case (Andy Newman and Leslie Kaufman, "Murder Case Tests Limits On Parents' Right to Hit," The New York Times, 20 January 2008). Perhaps the most gaulling factor in this case is the defense's ability to come up with their explanation and still maintain any sense of morality, logic, or sense of integrity. And the defense's argument, believe it or not:

" 'It was done to him, and it didn't kill him...How was he to know that it was something that would cause death?' "

Nietzsche wrote of one problem inherent in morality is its opposition to the instincts. Giving Mr. Rodriguez the benefit of a doubt, it still flies against all common sense that his instincts knew no better.

After reading Newman's and Kaufman's article, the general message becomes clear: just as with Darfur, the bureaucratic quagmire strikes again to stymie any progressive, effective, successful action to stop domestic violence. The justification bandied about court for the continued abuse today is that the laws are too vague and the breadth too wide for any effective action to take place.

From the perspective of someone at the receiving end of excessively severe and frequent beatings since the womb (in the battle of wills between my mother's will to miscarriage and my will to life, I apparently won), corporal discipline, physical abuse, however you want to call it - violence on a child - any child - affects that child. It messes with his mind, actions, behaviors, decisions, interactions, and has lasting detrimental consequences throughout the entirety of his life to his death. If that child can actually survive through the abuse to live into adulthood, that violence comes with profoundly ingrained and irreversible ramifications. And when the mind forgets, the body itself retains the memory of that pain...

One beating is one too many.

Immediately around the abused child is an impenetrable, invisible, intractible wall between him and any sense of normalcy. Instantly, there is a permanent barrier between him and all that is normal. Normalcy is a permanently unattainable goal.

So to this, where is the morality? Where is the moral sense against harm, towards fairness, community, purity, and authority?

Morality as a tyranny against instinct is a fatality against the integrity of humanity.

It is a perpetuation of our death sentence rather than a call to the progress of reason...

It is a sentence for the degeneration of man, for his extinction...

So in the face of the veritable morality quagmire, to the ridicule, to the denial, as Nietzsche rightly identifies, is it not about time to affirm, to create, to fly above rather than than fall below the unbearable weight?