Few are guilty, but all are responsible. –Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
When it comes to the practice of morally informed/committed conduct, realistically managing our response-ability, responsibility and accountability becomes, more frequently than not, a daunting challenge. The challenge quickly becomes over-whelming; it becomes, it seems the work of saints.
Now, Gentle Reader, the last time I checked there are few of us who qualify; we do not often claim to possess saintly qualities. Thus our challenge becomes one of devolving the ‘absolute’ into the ‘realistic’ (think: manageable). The process of devolution, however, opens the pathway to another territory. This is the territory of moral blindness.
Consider that what needs to be avoided – and with some focused diligent effort can be avoided – is our common tendency (our = society) to set limits on the human beings to whose treatment moral responsibilities must be applied. One way we do this is to exempt certain categories of ‘other humans’ from the realm of moral obligation.
To state it bluntly: What is unconditionally alien to the quality of ‘being moral,’ and what militates against it, is our tendency to halt and renounce moral responsibility for others at the border that we draw – the border we draw between ‘us’ and ‘them.’
We are well aware of, if we choose to be awake and aware, that this border-drawing-ploy takes the form of assigning to humans exempted from our (otherwise unconditional) moral responsibility features that defame and demonize their image and that dehumanize them. It is easy then for us to re-present these ‘others’ as unworthy of our regard, respect, care, compassion, support, empathy, and love. In fact, we now deem them to be deserving of punishment for their many incurable vices or, at minimum, for their incurable vicious intentions. Once we reach this border it is but an easy step that we then take and cross over into the territory of guilt-free punishment.
As we know, again if we have been paying even a bit of attention, these ‘others’ have been and continue to be accused of carrying incurable and terminal dis-eases: being in the service of the ‘Islamic State,’ intending to sponge off of our welfare system, scheming to convert us to Islam and impose the rule of sharia law (forgetting or neglecting that a significant minority of ‘good Christians’ also want to convert us to ‘their Christianity’ and impose their ‘rule of law’ upon us). There are more examples, but these will suffice for now.
Lest we think that in our country (the U.S.A.) that this is new let us remember one other example (from many). During our 1840 Presidential Campaign one candidate, Martin van Buren, sought to engender a fear in the citizens that immigration was beginning to become a real threat to America’s social cohesion.
Who were the immigrants that were going to ruin our nation: the Irish and the
Germans. One of the main defenders of immigration was Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln also noted that as a consequence ‘sectionalism was becoming more divisive’ (think: ‘Tribalism’ today). For those of us who still claim to be followers of Lincoln and his party this example invites us to pause and reflect a bit (I hope). As one of Lincoln’s contemporaries noted, ‘Lincoln forces consideration upon the mind.’
I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better. –Abraham Lincoln
Searcher-Seeker 