On Scattered Showers

I rise when the sky falls.

On Peace

For a long time, I have wanted to post something explaining a bit of what I learned in my ethics and value theory course this last semester. I have already published a couple of essays I wrote for that class on this blog, but it had such a large impact on my life, that I think more deserves to be said, especially when it comes to how my thinking on ethics has changed somewhat.

Much to my surprise, I quickly discovered that the essence of not only drama, but also ethics was, in fact, conflict. When people have opposing goals or ideologies, it is the realm of ethics to arbiter that conflict. I believe that I--much like Langdon Gilkey at the beginning of his memoir, Shantung Compound--had a very naive perception of ethics before taking the class. As an idealist, I want to believe that simply showing people a just solution will convince them that it is right. However, it is rarely that simple. This is a lesson I should have learned from growing up with a younger sister, but it has somehow taken me until college to learn it. Justice and fairness are more often a matter of perspective than of objective good or logic. As John Donne once put it, “Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, / But is captived and proves weak and untrue.” We humans can use our logic to justify anything.

Furthermore, in some situations, the just or right solution is much more difficult to discern, and matters become further complicated when more people become involved. I think of the moral issues addressed in J. M. Cotzee’s Age of Iron. How does one make restitution for generations of injustice? Who is to blame? Who is innocent? Solutions to such questions seem beyond ability of imagination to conceive. What about when nations are in conflict? Who is qualified to serve as an intermediary or to decide what is right on such an enormous scale? Such questions opened my eyes to the true difficulty of ethics.

Another revelation for me, and perhaps one of the most significant, that came through this class was that I am a pacifist. I suspect that I have been for some time now, but for whatever reasons, I have been unwilling to admit it. My senior year of high school, I was convinced of the idea that, although war is awful, sometimes there is a peace that can only come as the result of a war. I admired William Tecumseh Sherman and his doctrine that hard war makes for easy peace. To my shame, I admit that I advocated such ruthless violence as Sherman’s march to the sea and the dropping of the atomic bombs. I also condoned capital punishment in the form of the death penalty. I did not like it, but knowing that my uncle and grandfather once helped convict a man of murder and that this man promised to break free and hunt down those who convicted him unless he was executed seemed like an insurmountable case for using capital punishment to protect others. Similarly, on a personal level, I knew that if I or my loved ones were threatened, I would do whatever necessary to defend them. Of course, peaceful solutions were rarely a part of my imagining.

I think back to when a house I was living in was broken into and robbed. That night I learned that my fight or flight response is to fight. As soon as I realized the circumstances, I picked up the first loose object I could reach to use as a weapon and marched into the house to confront the situation. Of course, the thieves were already gone, which is probably good since I have no idea what I would have done if I had found someone, especially since the "weapon" I had picked up was nothing more than a garage door opener. At the time, I was on edge and a bit freaked out, but looking back, it just seems absurd. What would I have done? Thrown it at them? Then what? Probably gotten knifed or shot or something. What if I had been holding a gun and found someone? With the adrenaline pumping would I have fired it? What would that have solved, and what would have become of me?

During my time at college, the foundations for my beliefs in violent solutions to ethical problems were slowly chipped away until they were supported by little other than my stubborn refusal to revise “convictions.” My freshman year I wrote two ten minute plays, one of which dealt with the absurd injustice of executing a murder and another which used humor to subvert the seriousness of the decision to drop the atomic bombs. Whether I realized it or not, these began my questioning the validity of these beliefs I had once held. Now, this semester, those beliefs were toppled. Like the absurd garage door opener in my hand as I stalked through a robbed house, I realized the ridiculous notion that hurting people would resolve conflict. It was not until our class began debating just war I realized how strongly I opposed the views I had nominally held for so long. My advocacy for the separation of church and state, my belief in the value of individual human life, and my rapidly growing understanding of what it means to live like Jesus had convicted me, and I realized that I could no longer support violence as a means to any end.