Blog
07.July 2005 - 00:00
A gloomier view of human nature would produce a brighter Finland
A couple will often claim that it was love at first sight: something just ‘clicked’. Similarly, killers and the violent justify their actions by an equivalent experience: in their innocent mind, they claim, something just ‘snapped’. Not knowing, not realising what happened, something ‘clicks’, rage gets the upper hand, their minds cloud over and regrettably, after that ‘click’, often, something ‘snaps’.
When today we read sad news of what a desperate lover can do out of jealousy and rejection, the parent of a child approaching adolescence begins to feel as if she would soon be sending her child to the front line. Falling in love is risky in a country where minds ‘snap’.
The Finnish nation is strangely both innocent and violent. First we know nothing of evil; the next moment it has swallowed up someone into committing irrevocable evil deeds. It makes you ask whether these characteristics have some connection with each other. If people were taught to recognise this ‘clicking at the outset, and if a continuous little ‘clicking’ were part of our world view, would people succumb to equally desperate acts?
The great mistake made by our perplexed culture is in avoiding anxious questions about the darker side of human nature. Because we do not believe in badness, nor recognise or deal with it, we lack the means of controlling it in ourselves. In the moment of rage, it gets out of control. At home, we're not taught to handle negative feelings and a child is not familiarised equally with his lighter and darker sides. We presume that optimism produces an optimistic track record.
The Finnish philosopher UrpoHarva claimed that no ideology in human history has caused as much damage as the notion that a human being is inherently good. Collective deception and despotism are specifically facilitated when people don't know how to be on the alert. The same vision is argued powerfully by the English historian and philosopher, Jonathan Glover, in his work Humanity (Like 2003), where he goes through all the 20th century’s great tragedies, from the Gulag archipelago and Auschwitz to Ruanda and Kosovo. That book, as much as bus timetables, should be a commonplace in every home. Everyone should have a course in human nature.
In Glover's view, philosophy's greatest challenge is to come to terms with the events of the 20th century. He defends the idea of a more empirical ethics – it has to take into account the horrors the whole century was full of, otherwise it is of no use. We have to understand darker issues in ourselves than many who think hopefully generally admit to, Glover says, and continues: "We have to look at the monsters inside us carefully and honestly. Otherwise they will never be arrested or tamed." The quote is like one from Niko Kazantzakis' Reckoning: "We have much darkness, many layers, husky voices, hairy, starving beasts." Similarly, according to Freud, angels sing in our attics but in the cellar wolves howl.
How, then, should we look at the beasts and listen to wolves circumspectly and not too much?
I once read an unusual story about English family whose three children all suffered from a rare hereditary disease. The healthy parents had carried the same hereditary gene and, because their offspring inherited it from both parents, it caused them not to feel any pain. For a silly moment, I thought ”What a marvellous sickness”. But a second later I realised, of course.
The fact that these children didn't feel any pain didn't make them invulnerable. On the contrary, it exposed them to a continuous deadly peril. Because there was no pain to warn them, the children had already injured themselves and crippled each other and none of them was expected to reach adulthood.
In addition to a physical sense of pain, a human being may also have a sense of spiritual pain. Someone would call it a conscience, others the superego and yet somebody else a ‘clicking’. Anyway, the idea is the same: pain does us a service by telling us the limits and by preventing us from injuring ourselves and others.
The ever-increasing news of mindless violence has made me wonder whether a whole society can become sick from not recognising the warning pain while wrecking itself and its very life. Can a collective feeling of pain disappear, go numb? If so, all of us are losers.
The aim of recognising sensitivity to ethical pain and evil is not achieved by wallowing in it but by looking at it in the eye: successful evil management. The one who has become startled by his own badness will find his moral resources because he knows how dire is his need of them. Not only is a particular politician's greatest problem the politician himself, but everyone’s greatest problem is under their own skin.
And the solutions are found from there also. Our ability to empathise is the counter-force to our selfishness, and it is best awakened by relinquishing ourselves to another person, participating in their fate. For that reason Francis Bacon said perceptively: those who have children have given hostages to fortune. It's the same with all who love.
Column in Aamulehti 7 September 2003
A couple will often claim that it was love at first sight: something just ‘clicked’. Similarly, killers and the violent justify their actions by an equivalent experience: in their innocent mind, they claim, something just ‘snapped’. Not knowing, not realising what happened, something ‘clicks’, rage gets the upper hand, their minds cloud over and regrettably, after that ‘click’, often, something ‘snaps’.
When today we read sad news of what a desperate lover can do out of jealousy and rejection, the parent of a child approaching adolescence begins to feel as if she would soon be sending her child to the front line. Falling in love is risky in a country where minds ‘snap’.
The Finnish nation is strangely both innocent and violent. First we know nothing of evil; the next moment it has swallowed up someone into committing irrevocable evil deeds. It makes you ask whether these characteristics have some connection with each other. If people were taught to recognise this ‘clicking at the outset, and if a continuous little ‘clicking’ were part of our world view, would people succumb to equally desperate acts?
The great mistake made by our perplexed culture is in avoiding anxious questions about the darker side of human nature. Because we do not believe in badness, nor recognise or deal with it, we lack the means of controlling it in ourselves. In the moment of rage, it gets out of control. At home, we're not taught to handle negative feelings and a child is not familiarised equally with his lighter and darker sides. We presume that optimism produces an optimistic track record.
The Finnish philosopher UrpoHarva claimed that no ideology in human history has caused as much damage as the notion that a human being is inherently good. Collective deception and despotism are specifically facilitated when people don't know how to be on the alert. The same vision is argued powerfully by the English historian and philosopher, Jonathan Glover, in his work Humanity (Like 2003), where he goes through all the 20th century’s great tragedies, from the Gulag archipelago and Auschwitz to Ruanda and Kosovo. That book, as much as bus timetables, should be a commonplace in every home. Everyone should have a course in human nature.
In Glover's view, philosophy's greatest challenge is to come to terms with the events of the 20th century. He defends the idea of a more empirical ethics – it has to take into account the horrors the whole century was full of, otherwise it is of no use. We have to understand darker issues in ourselves than many who think hopefully generally admit to, Glover says, and continues: "We have to look at the monsters inside us carefully and honestly. Otherwise they will never be arrested or tamed." The quote is like one from Niko Kazantzakis' Reckoning: "We have much darkness, many layers, husky voices, hairy, starving beasts." Similarly, according to Freud, angels sing in our attics but in the cellar wolves howl.
How, then, should we look at the beasts and listen to wolves circumspectly and not too much?
I once read an unusual story about English family whose three children all suffered from a rare hereditary disease. The healthy parents had carried the same hereditary gene and, because their offspring inherited it from both parents, it caused them not to feel any pain. For a silly moment, I thought ”What a marvellous sickness”. But a second later I realised, of course.
The fact that these children didn't feel any pain didn't make them invulnerable. On the contrary, it exposed them to a continuous deadly peril. Because there was no pain to warn them, the children had already injured themselves and crippled each other and none of them was expected to reach adulthood.
In addition to a physical sense of pain, a human being may also have a sense of spiritual pain. Someone would call it a conscience, others the superego and yet somebody else a ‘clicking’. Anyway, the idea is the same: pain does us a service by telling us the limits and by preventing us from injuring ourselves and others.
The ever-increasing news of mindless violence has made me wonder whether a whole society can become sick from not recognising the warning pain while wrecking itself and its very life. Can a collective feeling of pain disappear, go numb? If so, all of us are losers.
The aim of recognising sensitivity to ethical pain and evil is not achieved by wallowing in it but by looking at it in the eye: successful evil management. The one who has become startled by his own badness will find his moral resources because he knows how dire is his need of them. Not only is a particular politician's greatest problem the politician himself, but everyone’s greatest problem is under their own skin.
And the solutions are found from there also. Our ability to empathise is the counter-force to our selfishness, and it is best awakened by relinquishing ourselves to another person, participating in their fate. For that reason Francis Bacon said perceptively: those who have children have given hostages to fortune. It's the same with all who love.
Column in Aamulehti 7 September 2003