I can’t guarantee the authenticity, but Genghis Khan is supposed to have said, “The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.” Whether the quote is accurate or not, it is true that evolution has endowed us humans with some characteristics that are rather unsavory in many current value systems, including mine.
It is unfortunate that, given the right circumstances, we can take great pleasure in hurting each other in every way, from the unkind word to torture and killing. Such is the legacy of our ancestors: they survived.
I was reminded of this inheritance by two articles this morning, the first an interview with Edward Tick in the June, 2008 issue of The Sun magazine. He has been counseling veterans for decades, and talks about the nature of their difficulties on returning to society and his methods of treatment.
One of the things he said that struck me was, “Ironically, the way to heal pain is by diving deeper into it. Most of the pain we are in is caused by our resistance to and denial of it.” While he acknowledges our debt to nature (evolution) for our violent tendencies, he doesn’t seem to use recognition of that common heritage in his therapy; although at the end he says, “Sometimes people have to walk through hell together in order to reach the deepest level of love and connection. That love is bigger and stronger than the anguish we face.”
In my experience—incredibly benign compared to his and the vets—one of the greatest benefits came from “walking through the hell” of recognizing my own worst tendencies. After a lifetime of denial, it was a major shock when I heard an account of police raping women who they found in cars with their boyfriends, parked in secluded places, and found myself sexually aroused by the narration. I had never acknowledged the appeal of rape, not just in sexual release, but in the feeling of power over another human being. I was humbled in realizing I had such feelings, and even though I couldn’t imagine actually acting on them, I realized that, given the right circumstances, the right life, I would be no different than any other human male.
That was the beginning of my understanding that I was the same as everyone else—not an aberration. There are slight variations between us, but in the broad view we humans are a fairly homogeneous mass. With this new perspective, I became less judgmental of both myself and others, and I think that just such a full appreciation of our commonality would help the veterans recover from their war injuries. None of us, no matter how great our atrocities, are removed by those acts from the community of mankind, but in fact, our experience places us firmly within the fold. If anything, we can value our extreme lesson in the nature of our species, and develop compassion, not only for those who shared that lesson, but for those who stand in judgement of us in smug superiority.
Later in the morning, I read Bob Herbert’s column, “The Face of Torture.” He graphically and dramatically presents the ravages of this criminal and mostly ineffective practice, with the intent, I believe, of rousing people to demand that it be ended. He ends the piece with this: “When something as foul as torture is on the table, there is a tendency to avert one’s eyes from the most painful truths.
“It’s a tendency we should resist.”
I agree that we should face the worst of what we’re capable of, and like him, that we should take any steps possible to decrease the likelihood of its occurrence. At the same time, I don’t think that demonizing the perpetrators—or even those, as in this piece, who facilitated its practice—is a worthwhile approach. It is better, I think, to point out and acknowledge our common heritage of violence, and, given that, to recognize the need to put restraints on ourselves.
My approach has a parallel in Dick Cavett’s pointing out in his column that it’s not a good idea for someone who suffers from depression to keep a gun in the house. We all need to take precautions against our worst tendencies, and in order to do that, we have to acknowledge that we have them.
A Natural Tendency to Point