Moral Health

I grew up in a world that was full of hope.  Tomorrow was definitely going to be better.  The only interesting questions were in what ways and to what extent.  I can make this claim although diversity as we now understand it had not even been articulated when I was growing up.

I do not recall any interesting fears about society during my youth.  There were certainly no fears about public transportation or buildings being blown up.  Nor did I ever fear for my life.  There were bad neighborhoods back then.  But there was always the sense on everyone’s part, and with justification, that if one stayed clear of those neighborhoods, then everything would be just fine.  And even a mistake in this regard was rarely thought to result in the loss of one’s life.

I grew up knowing both hope and trust.  They nourished one another.  Because I was able to trust others, my life was so full of hope.  And because my life was so full of hope, I aspired to be the sort of individuals whom others would find trustworthy.

Hope and trust are human gifts.  As I have argued in the epilogue of my forthcoming book The Family and the Political Self, the ability to nourish these two sentiments is what distinguishes human animals from all the other animals on the face of the earth.  Whatever it is that animals can do with regard to trust and love, they most certainly cannot nourish these sentiments, let alone construct institutions that can underwrite these sentiments.  This I believe is at the heart of J-J Rousseau’s justification for the move from the State of Nature to Civil Society.

I so very much enjoy living; and I so profoundly delight in being able to make a difference here and there in the life of others.  Insofar as I can rightly claim to be that kind of person, it is because hope and trust were so abundantly nurtured in my life.

To speak in metaphorical terms: Hope and trust are like giant trees whose branches extend far and wide thereby offering a shelter in some cases and a buffer in others.  Together, they are the bridge that we all need over troubled waters.  They serve as the lenses through which we can look at things from a far thereby avoiding the mistakes that come with acting out of desperation.  Hope and trust are the pillars upon which the virtue of self-command sits.

I think that there is nothing on the face of this earth that can substitute for a sense of hopelessness.  The absence of hope is utterly eviscerating.  To be without hope is be a zombie: a member of the walking dead.  And the absence of hope consumes the will to trust, making the acting of trusting so very worthless.  And without trust, our souls ache for the depth of affirmation that can only come in trust’s wake.

But as I look at the future, I ask myself: Will hope and trust survive?  I would that a resounding “Yes” would bellow forth.  That is not happening, however.

Young children are growing up in a world today and they are being told to trust no one; to be suspicious of everyone.  And this makes the simplest act of human affirmation in possible.  The simplest of compliments from a stranger “What a nice young kid” now has to be negotiated through layers of concern about ulterior motives.  And way to often the compliment is not worth the concerns that it might raise.

And if this were not enough, safety in public spaces can no longer be taken for granted.  In a word: it is becoming increasingly difficult to trust the very ground we walk on.  Needless to say, this is a horrendous environment in which to be growing up.

I think that the absence of hope and trust explains a lot throughout the world.  Their absence is undoubtedly part of the explanation for so much of the rampant dysfunctional behavior that we see.  For what on earth counts as appropriate behavior in a world that has come to make next to no sense.  For another, hope and trust require that there be reasons that we take seriously in interacting with one another.  Yet, it is precisely reasons of this sort that are continually being torn down on the grounds that we should be suspicious of everyone.  Finally, the absence of hope and trust precludes those majestic moments of affirmation that continually nourish the soul.

Although there is probably no one who believes in the good of parental love more than I do, the truth of the matter is that we cannot take our rightful place in society if hope and trust do not extend beyond our family.

I have a friend, Marius, who almost committed suicide about 8 years ago.  As we spoke over lunch yesterday, I could not help but note his strength of character.  To see him today, you would never know that there had been such a dark and dreary moment in his life.  He did not just make a come back.  Au contraire, Marius is so far ahead of where he once was that those who know him all along stand in awe of him.  He explains himself as follows: “I was in the very clutches of evil; spat in its eyes; and then removed myself from of its grip”.

I would never wish evil upon anyone.  But one thing is now clear to me.  There is a moral power, a depth of knowledge, and majesty of character that only those who have vanquished evil ever come to have.  There is a fashioning that comes about only if the self has successfully passed through the very crucible of evil without overcome by evil.  Marius, himself, has noted that he would not know the remarkable strength that he possesses today were it not for the horrible pain of yesteryear.

For one thing, anyone who has vanquished evil has a most profound sense of some of his limits and strengths.  It is natural for all morally decent people to insist that there are some lines they will not cross.  But, alas, for most of us, this is no more than a hope.  It is not self-knowledge.  Hopes are wonderful things; and life without them would not have the richness it has.  Unfortunately, though, there is no end to the list of hopes that have floundered in the face of reality, where in order to achieve a goal people have done what they vowed they would never do.  Integrity isn’t worth the paper on which it is written if all too often a person lacks the wherewithal to say “no” in the face of great loss.

And as I reflect upon the life of my friend Marius, it seems rather clear to me that much of the cacophony that I hear in society today is occasioned by people trying to convince themselves that they have integrity; hence, they could pass through the crucible of evil without being overcome by evil.  I have seen many of my Jewish students get angry over the Holocaust as if they had been through this evil portal itself.  The same holds for many of my black students with respect to American Slavery.  Both seem willing to excuse hate on account of the wrong of evil.  Somehow this is supposed to underwrite their identity as Jews or blacks.  Yet, it was Elie Wiesel who remarked in his Syracuse University Milton Lecture address in 2000 that hate is never justified.  Rather strong words for someone who was in fact in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.

And this, interestingly, brings me back to my point about Marius.  When a person with Wiesel’s experiences remarks that hate is never justified those words have a power that they cannot possibly have coming from you and me.  His words come from a grasp of what evil is like that it is perhaps not even possible for us to imagine.  The same holds true for a person like Marius who nearly took his life, having chosen both the bridge in Paris off of which to jump and the pills that would numb him to the experience.  Marius, you see, had been raped by two men.

Both Marius and Wiesel know from first-hand experience what the self is like when it is most frail.  What is more, if any two people have an excuse to be full of bitterness, resentment, and anger, it is certainly the case that these two do.  Most importantly, both know what it is like to be triumphant over moral pain that invades every aspect of a human’s physical being and psyche.  Accordingly, by their very lives they bear witness to the wherewithal of human beings to stare evil in the face and then loosen its grip.  Needless to say, this is a moral power than only comes through experience.

To vanquish evil is to be blessed with a 6th sense.  One has a way of seeing and hearing the lives of those around one.  Part of the explanation for this is that one has no need of symbolic indications of righteousness and strength.  Why?  Because one’s very life is an indication of righteousness and strength.  Another part of the explanation is the perspective that one has.  On the one hand, of course, no one’s suffering is the measure of all things.  On the other, to have stared evil in the face and then to have walked away is to have an experience from which to extrapolate that is like none other.

Although nothing renders us entirely invincible, to vanquish evil is to no longer be in search of a citadel in which one can take refuge; for one’s life has been transformed into precisely that.

It goes without saying that none of this justifies or excuses evil.  Nothing renders us entirely invincible.  Clearly, a world without evil is preferable to one with it.  Just so, the lives of those who pass through the crucible of evil without being overcome by it are testimony to the truth that evil need not ever have the last word.  And now more than ever we must attend to the lives of those who can offer that very testimony.

To a great many people in Canada and the United States, France’s headscarf fiasco made absolutely no sense.  Why on earth would there be an issue over Muslim women wearing a headscarf in the classroom.  Surely, there was something deeply anti-Muslim in all of this.  Or so many people thought.  Why?  Because in North America, people can wear any ostensible religious sign they wish to the classroom; and this is taken to be the ultimate in religious freedom.  So it seemed to many that in the name of being neutral with regard to religion, France was in fact being anti-Muslim.  One could not be more wrong.

A little history is in order.  For 100 years, France has a very strong principle of religious neutrality in official public spaces.  This principle even has its own unique name: laïcité.  If one wants to talk about neutrality between countries or people or whatever, one does not use the term laïcité.  The origins of this principle had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam.  Quite the contrary, the problem was the Catholic Church.  In 1905, the French passed a law that re-affirmed its commitment to the idea of laïcité, while also affirming the states commitment to liberty of conscience.  The idea, quite simply, is that in all matters of the state, including education, it is French citizenship that counts first.

It is this principle that was re-affirmed yet again in 2004:

Dans les écoles, les collèges et les lycées publics, le port de signes ou tenues par lesquels les élèves manifestent ostensiblement une appartenance religieuse est interdit (Art. L. 141-5-1-[see 1st attachment below for the text]).

The article forbids the wearing of ostensible religious objects.  The headscarf and the yarmulke are forbidden; a small cross around the neck is not.

Now, it is interesting that many Americans regard as utterly indefensible France’s idea of laïcité. Yet, these very same people applaud the American idea of free speech which, as it happens, does not exist in France nor, for that matter, in Canada.  At least not in the way that free speech exists in the United States.

So which is better: (i) A country like France that identifies a public space in which citizenship counts first, but which places important restrictions on freedom of speech or (ii) A country like the United States which allows ostensible religious symbols to be wrong anywhere, and which places no restrictions on free speech (with simple exception of public safety: one may not shout “fire” in a public theater simply in order to exercise one’s lungs).

Anyone who thinks that religious freedom is better protected in the United States might want to think again.  In the U.S., a person may in the name of freedom of speech teach that all Jews are devils.  Leonard Jeffries (CUNY) and Tony Martin (Wellesley College) did just that.  One may not teach such a thing in French college and universities.  Tomorrow, I could choose to denounce the Muslim faith in my classroom and, in all likelihood, get the ACLU to protect my freedom to do so.  Not so in France.  The (in)famous book The Bell Curve (by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray) created quite a stir in the United States, because implied that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites.  But one thought for a moment that in printing the book the publisher a law had been violated.  By contrast, when the book Rêver la Palestine (by Elie Ebidia) was published in France, the issue of whether French law had been violated became a legitimate issue, if the book could be properly interpreted as antisemitic.

Now, I suggest that freedom of speech is to the United States what the principle of religious neutrality—that is, laïcité—is to France.   If tomorrow, a bunch of religious folks (pick a group) were to complain that freedom of speech (because there is so much talk and advertisement about sexuality) was interfering with their ability to be religious, the response would be quite simple: Deal with it!  Yet, it is certainly true that for many religious folks (be they Jewish, Christian, or Muslim), freedom of speech has increasingly become an assault on their religious sensibilities.  Americans think that a person should be strong enough in her or his religious convictions to withstand all the talk about sex and alcohol on radio and television and in newspapers and magazines.  In this respect, of course, France and the United States are rather alike.  However, I have identified an important respect in which France is more protective of religious groups, its principle of laïcité notwithstanding, than the United States.  Which is better, then?  Each system offers different benefits vis à vis religious groups; each system different drawbacks.

Now, it seems to me that those who worship the god of diversity are no position to complain.  For isn’t diversity about validating the fact that there are different ways of being in the world, coupled with the view that there can be no basis for claiming that one way is superior to the another?  In Muslim countries, the headscarf is de rigueur.  Don’t proponents of diversity have to say that this is just fine?  In fact, many do say that.  The U.S. by contrast has a complete laissez-faire approach to wearing religious symbols.  And that, too, is just fine.  Not superior, though.  So it is something of a mystery to me how it turns out, according to advocates of diversity, that France’s approach to the headscarf issue via the principle of laïcité can be open to criticism.  I would have thought that France’s approach is just one more way of going about things: no worse or no better than any other approach.

One thing is clear. Either we are committed to diversity with all that this implies or we are not.  I suppose that even with a commitment to diversity explicit harm is not allowed, though this is not always obvious, since some people have even been willing to allow female circumcision (that is, the mutilation of female genitalia) in the name of diversity.  In any event, it would appear that with regard to religious freedom France is as entitled to its approach as the U.S. is to its approach and as Muslim countries are to their approach.

It has seemed to me of late that what people believe in has more to do with what suits their agenda than a genuine depth of commitment.  Neither conservatives nor liberals are immune to this criticism.

Two French hostages were captured in Iraq and one of the demands was that France set aside the principle of laïcité. The hope had been to divide France, creating even greater tension between the Muslims and the non-Muslims of France.  But as was noted in an editorial in Le Monde (1 September 2004) this did not happen (see 2nd attachment below for the editorial):

Loin de diviser la communauté musulmane de France, loin de renforcer son aile la plus radicale, loin de creuser un fossé irrémédiable entre la société française et les quelques cinq millions de musulmans qui la composent, l’enlèvement des deux journalistes français a suscité un mouvement de communion nationale, presque d’union sacrée, encore bien improbable il y a peu.

Far from dividing separating the Muslim community from France, the capture of the two journalists gave rise to a national unity—very nearly a sacred union.

The issue of the headscarf in France is hardly dead.  But it was never about oppressing Muslims; and it took the evil of taking as hostage two French journalists to bring that point home to the Muslim population of France.