CONSIDER CONSCIENCE, PART II

What ‘conscience’ am I considering?  A number of writers, Fromm the psychologist, Lakoff, the linguist, and Jouvenel, the philosopher among them, have identified the authoritarian conscience as significant for many of us.  I have certainly been deeply influenced by the authoritarian conscience and I am thinking that the young 19 year old Boston bomber might well have been powerfully influenced by it.  So, what is the authoritarian conscience?  It is the voice of an internalized external authority, one’s parents, one’s teachers, one’s religious leaders, the culture, the nation – whoever the authorities in one’s culture and subculture happens to be.  As long as ones relationship to the authorities remain external we can hardly speak of conscience; such conduct is regulated by fear of punishment and hope for reward and is always dependent on the presence of these authorities, on their knowledge of what one is doing, and their alleged or real ability to punish and to reward.  Often an experience I took to be a feeling of guilt emanating from my conscience was really nothing but my fear of an authority – a fear of being punished by this authority.

We who act this way do not truly feel guilt; we feel fear.  In the formation of conscience these authorities (and their name is legion for many of us) are either consciously or unconsciously accepted as ethical and moral ‘legislators’ whose laws and sanctions we adopt and internalize.  These laws and sanctions become part of self and over time, instead of feeling responsible to something outside of self we feel responsible to something inside – to one’s conscience.  This Conscience is a more effective regulator of our conduct than fear of external authorities; I can run away from the latter but I cannot escape from myself nor, therefore, from the internalized authority which has now become part of who I am.

While our authoritarian conscience is different from fear of punishment and hope for reward, the relationship to the authority having become internalized, it is not very different in other respects.  Perhaps the most important point of similarity is the fact that the prescriptions of authoritarian conscience are not determined by our own ‘value judgment’ but by the fact that its commands and taboos are pronounced by authorities.  IF these norms happen to be good, our ‘conscience’ will guide our actions in the direction of the good.  However, what is crucial to understand is that they have not become the norms of conscience ‘because’ they are good, but because they are the norms given by authority.  If they are ‘bad’ [as it seems they were for the young 19 year old Boston Bomber – and perhaps for his older brother], they are just as much part of conscience.  STOP, PAUSE AND REFLECT.  A believer in Hitler, for example, felt he/she was acting according to his/her conscience when he/she committed acts that were humanly revolting – and they did these ‘guilt free’ [which was part of their ‘reward’ – i.e. being guilt-free].  Many throughout history have acted according to ‘conscience’ and have committed guilt-free atrocities as a result of the ‘authorities’ they internalized and then listened to and then acted upon – perhaps the young 19 year-old Boston Bomber responded such.  I am searching and seeking to understand, not only the young man and his brother, but to more deeply understand myself and my own conscience.