Sunday, February 19, 2006
Washington's little flame
Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience. (George Washington)
You are lying in bed, and the doorbell rings: you know it is the neighbour who wants something from you, but you pretend not to be in. A cheque arrives in the mail from the credit card company, reimbursing you more than they should have: do you keep the money? Your mother calls you to ask whether you want to come over next weekend. You really don’t want to go, but you are afraid that she might make a scene: do you tell a “white lie”? We have all been there, when we are put in a moral dilemma, and the question is whether or not we are going to do what is right, or “chicken out”. Quite often there is a little voice inside our head telling us what to do, but do we obey it?
In his most recent film ( Match. Point see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416320/) Woody Allen spells out his philosophy of life: life is all about luck, just like when a tennis ball hitting the net can fall in either half of the court, thus making the difference between victory and defeat. The whole story of Chris Wilton is one of a man from a poor Irish background who starts as a tennis coach and ends up running a company in the economic empire of his future father-in-law. So far it’s the basic rags to riches story, but then Chris has an affair, gets his lover pregnant and his life comes close to unravelling. So he sets his Nola up to meet him, kills her in cold blood, and makes the whole murder look like a drug crime. Scotland Yard suspects that he had a motive, but “lucky circumstances” point them in a different direction, and Wilton is never found out.
The moral of the story: you can get away with murder, if you are lucky. Is it really that simple? Is life all about what you can get away with? And even if you do, will that really make you happy? Was Chris Wilton really able to just go back to his wife and kid, pretending that nothing happened? Only very hardened murderers do not wake up in the middle of the night asking themselves what they have done. Wilton might have gotten away from the police, but he cannot get away from himself. The little voice, which catches us in quiet moments to remind us of right and wrong, is called conscience. Whether our moral dilemmas are small or great, our conscience is there to help us do the right thing, and to accuse us if we didn’t.
Enlightened psychologists would tell us that conscience is a medieval concept, devised to riddle us all with guilt. Truth is that without that little voice we are adrift and subject to the views and fashions of those very psychologists. So the lucky ones are the ones who can still hear that voice, and have not silenced it through disregard or busyness. Washington was right: we need to labour to keep this flame alive. If we do we will steer a straight course; and when we don’t this flame will give us the courage to make things right, whether with our neighbour, the credit company, or the police.
You are lying in bed, and the doorbell rings: you know it is the neighbour who wants something from you, but you pretend not to be in. A cheque arrives in the mail from the credit card company, reimbursing you more than they should have: do you keep the money? Your mother calls you to ask whether you want to come over next weekend. You really don’t want to go, but you are afraid that she might make a scene: do you tell a “white lie”? We have all been there, when we are put in a moral dilemma, and the question is whether or not we are going to do what is right, or “chicken out”. Quite often there is a little voice inside our head telling us what to do, but do we obey it?
In his most recent film ( Match. Point see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416320/) Woody Allen spells out his philosophy of life: life is all about luck, just like when a tennis ball hitting the net can fall in either half of the court, thus making the difference between victory and defeat. The whole story of Chris Wilton is one of a man from a poor Irish background who starts as a tennis coach and ends up running a company in the economic empire of his future father-in-law. So far it’s the basic rags to riches story, but then Chris has an affair, gets his lover pregnant and his life comes close to unravelling. So he sets his Nola up to meet him, kills her in cold blood, and makes the whole murder look like a drug crime. Scotland Yard suspects that he had a motive, but “lucky circumstances” point them in a different direction, and Wilton is never found out.
The moral of the story: you can get away with murder, if you are lucky. Is it really that simple? Is life all about what you can get away with? And even if you do, will that really make you happy? Was Chris Wilton really able to just go back to his wife and kid, pretending that nothing happened? Only very hardened murderers do not wake up in the middle of the night asking themselves what they have done. Wilton might have gotten away from the police, but he cannot get away from himself. The little voice, which catches us in quiet moments to remind us of right and wrong, is called conscience. Whether our moral dilemmas are small or great, our conscience is there to help us do the right thing, and to accuse us if we didn’t.
Enlightened psychologists would tell us that conscience is a medieval concept, devised to riddle us all with guilt. Truth is that without that little voice we are adrift and subject to the views and fashions of those very psychologists. So the lucky ones are the ones who can still hear that voice, and have not silenced it through disregard or busyness. Washington was right: we need to labour to keep this flame alive. If we do we will steer a straight course; and when we don’t this flame will give us the courage to make things right, whether with our neighbour, the credit company, or the police.
# posted by tino @ Sunday, February 19, 2006 
