Guilt
I had a different post about guilt, but I decided to take it down for being too much of a downer.
So one of the themes in Closer is that forgiveness is what sets us apart from the beasts. This struck me as a strange conclusion, since I've always been used to the idea that it was intellect, or opposable thumbs, or both, that made humans what we are. I thought a bit about the forgiveness possibility... and then I dismissed it as crock of bullhooey. Western civilization was pretty much founded upon an epic about a man who couldn't forgive, and since then, vendettas - or, its more benign pseudonymn, "justice" - have been the basic organizing principle of modern social and political institutions, not to mention the western literary tradition.
This observation is not really mine, but Rene Girard's. His conclusion is that (contra the modern perception that religion is just superstitious boogey-woogey that an enlightened society should be able to shed once it stops being primative) without religion, ie prescriptions and limitations on violence, there can be no social institutions, and hence no civilization. His theory is just the opposite to Closer's, namely that it is violence that sets us apart from the beasts. Beasts lack that capacity to make ordinary bloodshed into violence as we would understand it, and neither therefore can they develop the complex institutions necessary to control violence and maintain a cooperative society.
The reason I insist on keeping religion in the discussion - which on one level could be boiled down purely to violence and civilization - is that I feel I'd like to tack an addendum to Girard's theory. Religion may be fundamental to civilization, but guilt is fundamental to religion - at least in our modern world where real, primordial violence is no longer an immediate reality. Guilt keeps our behavior in check. Why else would so many cultures claim guilt for their own? Catholic guilt, Jewish guilt, Confucian guilt, middle-class guilt, etc. Cultures that don't have guilt written into their discourse, I suspect, must either be (a) victimized themselves or (b) sunk so far into their guilt that they no longer have a name for it. The latter seems to be the case with Koreans. Korean-Americans definitely have a sense of guilt, but I'm not sure regular Koreans do - even though both groups are in the thrall of the same Confucian ethics.
So one of the themes in Closer is that forgiveness is what sets us apart from the beasts. This struck me as a strange conclusion, since I've always been used to the idea that it was intellect, or opposable thumbs, or both, that made humans what we are. I thought a bit about the forgiveness possibility... and then I dismissed it as crock of bullhooey. Western civilization was pretty much founded upon an epic about a man who couldn't forgive, and since then, vendettas - or, its more benign pseudonymn, "justice" - have been the basic organizing principle of modern social and political institutions, not to mention the western literary tradition.
This observation is not really mine, but Rene Girard's. His conclusion is that (contra the modern perception that religion is just superstitious boogey-woogey that an enlightened society should be able to shed once it stops being primative) without religion, ie prescriptions and limitations on violence, there can be no social institutions, and hence no civilization. His theory is just the opposite to Closer's, namely that it is violence that sets us apart from the beasts. Beasts lack that capacity to make ordinary bloodshed into violence as we would understand it, and neither therefore can they develop the complex institutions necessary to control violence and maintain a cooperative society.
The reason I insist on keeping religion in the discussion - which on one level could be boiled down purely to violence and civilization - is that I feel I'd like to tack an addendum to Girard's theory. Religion may be fundamental to civilization, but guilt is fundamental to religion - at least in our modern world where real, primordial violence is no longer an immediate reality. Guilt keeps our behavior in check. Why else would so many cultures claim guilt for their own? Catholic guilt, Jewish guilt, Confucian guilt, middle-class guilt, etc. Cultures that don't have guilt written into their discourse, I suspect, must either be (a) victimized themselves or (b) sunk so far into their guilt that they no longer have a name for it. The latter seems to be the case with Koreans. Korean-Americans definitely have a sense of guilt, but I'm not sure regular Koreans do - even though both groups are in the thrall of the same Confucian ethics.
posted by Rex at 5:00 PM
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