|
[Previous entry: "A new can of worms"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "A peek into the Abyss"] 26 January 2004: "Lights on a foggy night"
Observant readers will have noted that I am apparently unable to use the term "moral clarity" without putting it in quote marks. I did so in my previous post, and I did so last April. To be blunt, it's a phrase I don't believe in. I don't believe people who claim to possess it, and I seriously doubt such a thing can even exist, and I don't think the notion that it can is in any way beneficial. That may seem a rather radical opinion, and it deserves some elaboration.
There, is however, some form of universal abosolutism [sic] as a moral stance, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights being an example of this.I have my doubts about this interpretation; I think it was the intent of the framers of the UDHR to produce a document which would meet with universal agreement, not to make their version of morality "universal" by imposing it on the rest of the world. The UDHR was adopted by UN General Assembly resolution 217(III) (of the the 58 Member States at the time, 48 voted in favour, 8 abstained and 2 were not present for the vote; nobody voted against) in 1948; from that moment onwards, membership in the United Nations entailed acceptance of the UDHR. UN member states—and that's everyone except Vatican City—make their records on human rights open to scrutiny because, by joining the United Nations, they have signalled their acceptance of the UDHR. Thus, if a state's record is found wanting, it is disingenuous for it (or anyone else) to plead (as the governments of countries like Burma, excuse me, "Myanmar" have been known to do) that it is a victim of ethnocentricism, since the standard it is being held to is one which it has itself accepted as "universal." My interpretation of moral universalism, then, relies on discovering those elements of moral or ethical codes on which universal consensus exists. Easier said than done. There is one moral tenet which appears to have met with worldwide acceptance. In the United States, it's known as the "Golden Rule": Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.In various other cultures, it appears as "Do not unto others as you would not have them do unto you," but the basic message is the same. Even so, this precept still raises moral questions to which the answers are far from unanimous. This is where I start to sound like Sir Humphrey Appleby. For example, if another does unto you as you would not have had him do, you have two basic choices; you can retaliate (in Old Testament parlance, "an eye for an eye") or you can let it slide (in New Testament parlance, "turning the other cheek"). But if you retaliate, you are doing unto the other as you would not have him do unto you (regardless of the fact that he already did unto you as you would not have had him do), and thus you are arguably violating the cardinal rule yourself. On the other hand, if you "turn the other cheek," you allow the other to get away with violating the cardinal rule, thereby indicating that your moral values aren't worth enforcing. Of course, you could appeal that divine, karmic or some other form of retribution will take care of the offender so you don't have to, but that entails wishing upon the other something you would not have done unto you, but rather than doing the dirty work yourself, you hope some external agency will take care of it; hypocritical and gutless. And we haven't even gotten into "pre-emptive action," doing unto others what would not have them do unto you lest they do it unto you at a later date (which, you assert, they are in fact planning). It may be argued that the entire history of human endeavour in the fields of morality, ethics and law has been engaged in picking its way through this minefield. The existence of such a metaphorical minefield regarding even the most universal of moral precepts serves to reinforce the point that the notion of "moral clarity" is utter shite. Nevertheless, the question remains as to what is "right" or "wrong," "good" or "evil." There's been a spate of posts regarding the question of evil on various blogs lately. Normblog recently ran a three-part series by Eve Garrard in defence of the concept of "evil" (see parts 1, 2 and 3). Not long after, Nick Cohen wrote a piece in the Observer, which soon drew reactions from the Norm himself and Mick Hartley. All of the aforementioned are well worth reading, even if it's just to put your own views into perspective. For instance, I agree with Mick that "it's useful to distinguish between an evil action, and an evil person." Like those acts we call "heroism," even the most heinous crimes are frequently committed by "ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances" (especially in wartime), something which plays a large part in this whole Ahrendtian "banality of evil" thing. Where I don't agree is with his next sentence, which is, Evil actions are relatively easy to define.I'm not so sure. I can think of any number of actions which I would consider bad under any circumstance, but which, depending on context, may or may not be evil. Take, for example, the practice of čisčenje terena, the "cleansing of the terrain," a term incorporated into the English language as "ethnic cleansing." This consists of the premeditated forcible expulsion of all members of a particular ethnicity from a given geographical area, generally accompanied by humiliations, beatings and/or killings pour encourager les autres, the looting and destruction (or appropriation by members of the expelling force) of their houses to discourage return, etc. There are no circumstances I can think of under which this is not a wrong, a Bad Thing. What with the current flap over Jenny Tonge, a British Liberal Democrat MP who made some ill-advised comments regarding Palestinian suicide bombings (see commentary by Oliver Kamm and Norman Geras on the topic), I'm predictably hesitant to use the formula that "I can understand, though that doesn't mean I condone." But I do think circumstances do occur in which one side in a conflict may resort to the practice of ethnic cleansing for reasons which are understandable; in such a situation, it remains a Bad Thing, but it is not necessarily an evil action. In an interview which appeared in Haaretz two weeks ago and received a lot of attention in Blogoslavia (RtWT; hat tip, once again, to Norm G.), Israeli historian Benny Morris discusses the instrumental role in the Nakba—the displacement of some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from what is now Israel during the 1948-1949 war—of a pre-meditated and deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing on the Israelis' part. Morris defends the campaign with an argument that boils down to "it was them or us (given the then prevailing circumstances)." I find myself unable to agree with Morris' exact words as represented in the Haaretz piece, but I can certainly come up with an argument which parallels his. In brief, it was evident in early 1948 that the Arab side—as a whole—was not interested in trying to reach a modus vivendi with the Jewish community in Palestine in any way. The armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq were poised to roll into Palestine as soon as the British declared the termination of their mandate in Palestine. Egypt and Transjordan in particular intended to annex as much of the territory of Palestine as they could get away with (in fact, one of the things hampering the Arab war effort was that the various Arab countries concentrated more on competing with each other for a slice of Palestine than on defeating the nascent State of Israel; so much for "Arab unity"); all were intent on eliminating the Jews from Palestine, one way or the other. The only viable option open to the Jews was to carve out their own state and defend with all the tenacity they could muster. If they could hold off the combined Arab onslaught, the Jewish state would become an inescapable geopolitical reality (as indeed it did on 11-May-1949, with the passage of UNGA resolution A/RES/273 (III) which admitted Israel to the United Nations). But to allow a sizeable Arab population to remain within the borders of this state would be to clutch an asp to one's breast. Such a population might—indeed, was known to—house elements who would present an armed threat. Moreover, its presence would serve as a basis for continuing territorial disputes. The most expedient solution, then, was to expel them, and orders to this effect were included in the plans for Operations Dani (Jul-1948) and Hiram (Oct-1948), and presumably others as well. Aside: Morris notes, however, that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages.That the evacuation of many Palestinian Arabs occurred on the initiative of the Arab leadership is well established; presumably, the underlying intention was to remove civilians from the prospective combat zone, not in the least place to head off the risk of refugee columns hampering military operations. Be that as it may, the blame for the full scope of the Nakba cannot, therefore, be laid at the Israelis' door; the Arab leadership calculated that they could wipe out the Israelis, following which the evacuees could return. One can hardly blame the Israelis for proving them wrong. Where I disagree with Morris is in the following passage: [I]n certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands.My perception is that ethnic cleansing is always a crime, but that under certain circumstances, one may with some justification plead force majeure. Whatever objections to "relativism" one might have, the simple fact is that actions do not take place in a vacuum, and that therefore any attempt to pass moral judgement on a given action must take into account the context in which it took place. We can point to instances of ethnic cleansing, such as those conducted by Serb (para)military forces in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, which are not merely criminal but may fairly be characterised as "evil." The rule of thumb, I would tentatively argue, is not dependent on whether or not a modus vivendi between the cleansers and the cleansed could have been found, but that the perpetrators did not even attempt to achieve one. And even so, ethnic cleansing is something that may be reversed, witness the return of the displaced to Kozarac in the Republika Srpska (the Serb "entity" of Bosnia-Herzegovina) and to Drvar in the Federation (the Bosniak-Croat entity). By contrast, the killing of another human being can never be undone, which is perhaps why we consider it the greatest wrong one person can inflict on another. But even so, we accept that there are circumstances in which killing someone is justified. Still, "evil" is arguably one of those concepts like "art"; it's practically impossible to come up with a thorough definition of it (i.e. one that includes all which you do consider "art" yet excludes that which you do not), but you generally know it when you see it, though your opinion may differ from the person next to you (and is therefore subjective). But for all that, we agree that such a thing exists. However, we can leave the business of determining what is truly "art" to the critics, disregard their opinions and stick the picture of the dog playing poker on the wall anyway. This is not a luxury we have where evil is concerned. This has been a long and winding post, and it hasn't provided any hard answers. But then again, I think my whole point was that hard answers in the field of morality are elusive; all we can do is keep searching. There's a metaphor I've been toying with lately as a result of local weather conditions, which is that "moral clarity" is the equivalent of turning on your brights on a dark, fogbound road; it doesn't actually illuminate your path, because the only thing you're lighting up is more fog, and it just annoys traffic coming the other way. Insofar as I've managed to illuminate this topic at all, I hope that I have at least managed to show where the road is not. I'll stop at this point, before I start to sound (even more) like Swiss Toni. |
Navigation: home archives backgrounder Blogs:
au currant Miscellanea:
Care to contribute |
