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labingicontent warning for non-graphic ethics discussion of Really Bad Things.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while and figure I’ll put some thoughts down. People seem to use two main ethical approaches to orienting themselves to those who do really bad things. I mean things like might include rape, murder, all the way to war crimes. The philosophical crux seems to be whether such people are theoretically redeemable (in a secular and/or possibly religious sense).
One view holds that some actions are “beyond redemption,” at least in a worldly/social sense. In this view, if you commit certain really bad actions, you are irredeemable for life (if not beyond), and people should treat you as such. YouTuber Steve Shives is in this camp, as he explains well in his interesting video on Garak in Deep Space Nine. He likes Garak as a character, but notes that if this were real life, Garak would not be morally redeemable because, regardless of his personal moral development, he has committed acts too heinous. For reference, Shives notes that the Cardassians in DS9, including Garak, are coded as Nazis. Basically, he’s saying Nazis—and, by extension, others who do really bad things—can’t be redeemed, i.e. it would be immoral to consider them/treat them as redeemable. It would be giving a pass to their heinousness.
[EDIT: reworking this paragraph in response to selenak's very legitimate point that I totally mischaracterized Christianity.] This view—though atheist Shives might cringe at this—seems philosophically close to Christianity, in the sense that it posits some people deserve to go to hell. Selenak rightly reminds me that Christianity is based on the idea that everyone can repent and be forgiven anything; in that sense, no one is beyond redemption, which sounds like the opposite of the view Shives is expressing. Solid point. I was thinking (a) of the Calvinist strain that infests American secular thinking, which holds that everyone deserves damnation, but more broadly (b) of the metaphor of existence after damnation: the person who didn't repent and, therefore, is now stuck in hell for eternity, regardless of what potential they might theoretically have for learning better/repenting given longer life/reincarnation/purgatory. An attitude of "you can't be redeemed" is what I think of as "secular damnation" in that, metaphorically, it treats the person as if they were damned in the eyes of the human judge, maybe not for eternity but for their life on Earth. I do think that view is related to certain Christian mindsets (and not just Christian), though it's fair to note that Christianity is also founded on the idea of radical redemption for all through Christ. It's complicated.
The other view holds that people are constantly in flux (at least potentially) and that anyone could theoretically be redeemed if they change enough to become a truly better person. In this view, people should be treated more according to who they are in the present (which could include actions to atone for the past). Under this view, Garak is certainly potentially redeemable. It’s a question of how much he changes, including what he might do to try to be accountable for former heinous acts. And I’d like to amplify a point made in some of the comments on Shives’ video: redemption is not the same as forgiveness. Both words have many meanings, but I’m with those commenters who see redemption as more internal to the self while forgiveness is something someone gives you (though you can give it to yourself too).
This view aligns with Buddhism. I’m in this camp, as you can probably tell, and this may partly explain why I became a Buddhist. The idea that people can be reincarnated obviously massively expands the potential for moral change and time to work through karma. Translating this into a single human life, this view might acknowledge that we have effective limits in how much we can change in one life, but anyone, potentially, can be on the road to “redemption” (or Nirvana, if you will). Anyone can be improving, learning, and that should be acknowledged and encouraged.
Here’s a thing that worries me. I’m happy to coexist with folks like Shives (or many traditional Christians—sorry, Steve) who hold the first view. But I sometimes feel like some of this camp is not happy to coexist with me. There’s that sense that to consider someone who’s done really bad things potentially redeemable (at least given enough time, lives, etc.) is to be complicit in their crimes. To view a Nazi this way is to trivialize Nazism, to engage in a sort of “oh, it wasn’t that bad; we can be friends with Hitler.” And that, of course, makes me look like a bad person, like someone who won’t stand up against injustice.
Now, an obvious reply is the action is not the person: one can be disgusted and horrified by the Holocaust without denying its perpetrators the theoretical possibility of grappling with their actions and emerging sadder, wiser, and better people (in this life or some hypothetical future incarnation). But, boy, do I feel dirty just saying that. It reeks of placing too much focus on the “feelings” of criminals and too little on the torture and murder of innocents.
I do tend to focus more on the wrongdoers. As a writer, I spend a lot of time developing characters grappling with guilt. I was watching a video recently that asked writers to consider what themes we focus on, and looking over my corpus, my most obvious answer was guilt: Ethan’s guilt in Perdita, Elek’s guilt in The Hour before Morning, Tan’s guilt in my upcoming Soldier of the Borderlands, the main characters’ guilt in “The Rebirth of Joy” and “The Descent of the Wind,” which are really the same story differently packaged. Though not published (and won’t be for a long time), my novel, Mercy, is also all about guilt.
Why do I do this? Because I’m guilty. I’m keenly aware of my guilt—rational or not, it doesn’t matter. I feel keenly the statement in Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (quote may be inexact): “I’m not guilty because I murdered. I murdered because I’m guilty.” What’s more, I believe we’re all guilty, not of same caliber of offense but in the sense of being fallible human beings. In Mercy, one character says something to the effect, “I think we exaggerate the difference between the great and little errors,” and in broad strokes, I believe that’s true. With few exceptions, I believe humans act like humans, and how hideous our misbehaviors become (usually) has more to do with power than inherent depravity. I want to see everyone as human. I want to see us all as fumbling forward, at least as having the potential to.
I’m worry that this casts me as a bad person in certain discourses. And this is sticking in the back of my mind as I prepare to publish two books, both of which may get me in trouble here. My non-fiction book on relationship cutoff—while it fully supports that cutoff is sometimes the best choice—is, on the whole, critical of our “cutoff culture,” and that easily reads as sympathizing with the bad guy, the abuser. My sci-fi book, A Soldier in the Borderlands, centers a protagonist who does some truly awful things, though perhaps morally mitigated by the fact he’s very young (14) and in a very bad situation as a child conscript. Yet I worry here, too, that this book will strike the wrong chord by seeming to abet his actions, and the actions of others in the twisted society he grows up in. It’s not my intent to deny these actions are egregious. It is my intent to treat all my characters with compassion, to call their virtues, as well as their faults, as they’re named.
But I worry that distinction, even where it’s intellectually understood, is not considered ethically valid by many in my orbit today: the orbit of the socially progressive left. I’m not going to change what I believe or pretend I don’t believe it, but I do feel a little like I’m about to march into battle. Well, I hope I’m wrong.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while and figure I’ll put some thoughts down. People seem to use two main ethical approaches to orienting themselves to those who do really bad things. I mean things like might include rape, murder, all the way to war crimes. The philosophical crux seems to be whether such people are theoretically redeemable (in a secular and/or possibly religious sense).
One view holds that some actions are “beyond redemption,” at least in a worldly/social sense. In this view, if you commit certain really bad actions, you are irredeemable for life (if not beyond), and people should treat you as such. YouTuber Steve Shives is in this camp, as he explains well in his interesting video on Garak in Deep Space Nine. He likes Garak as a character, but notes that if this were real life, Garak would not be morally redeemable because, regardless of his personal moral development, he has committed acts too heinous. For reference, Shives notes that the Cardassians in DS9, including Garak, are coded as Nazis. Basically, he’s saying Nazis—and, by extension, others who do really bad things—can’t be redeemed, i.e. it would be immoral to consider them/treat them as redeemable. It would be giving a pass to their heinousness.
[EDIT: reworking this paragraph in response to selenak's very legitimate point that I totally mischaracterized Christianity.] This view—though atheist Shives might cringe at this—seems philosophically close to Christianity, in the sense that it posits some people deserve to go to hell. Selenak rightly reminds me that Christianity is based on the idea that everyone can repent and be forgiven anything; in that sense, no one is beyond redemption, which sounds like the opposite of the view Shives is expressing. Solid point. I was thinking (a) of the Calvinist strain that infests American secular thinking, which holds that everyone deserves damnation, but more broadly (b) of the metaphor of existence after damnation: the person who didn't repent and, therefore, is now stuck in hell for eternity, regardless of what potential they might theoretically have for learning better/repenting given longer life/reincarnation/purgatory. An attitude of "you can't be redeemed" is what I think of as "secular damnation" in that, metaphorically, it treats the person as if they were damned in the eyes of the human judge, maybe not for eternity but for their life on Earth. I do think that view is related to certain Christian mindsets (and not just Christian), though it's fair to note that Christianity is also founded on the idea of radical redemption for all through Christ. It's complicated.
The other view holds that people are constantly in flux (at least potentially) and that anyone could theoretically be redeemed if they change enough to become a truly better person. In this view, people should be treated more according to who they are in the present (which could include actions to atone for the past). Under this view, Garak is certainly potentially redeemable. It’s a question of how much he changes, including what he might do to try to be accountable for former heinous acts. And I’d like to amplify a point made in some of the comments on Shives’ video: redemption is not the same as forgiveness. Both words have many meanings, but I’m with those commenters who see redemption as more internal to the self while forgiveness is something someone gives you (though you can give it to yourself too).
This view aligns with Buddhism. I’m in this camp, as you can probably tell, and this may partly explain why I became a Buddhist. The idea that people can be reincarnated obviously massively expands the potential for moral change and time to work through karma. Translating this into a single human life, this view might acknowledge that we have effective limits in how much we can change in one life, but anyone, potentially, can be on the road to “redemption” (or Nirvana, if you will). Anyone can be improving, learning, and that should be acknowledged and encouraged.
Here’s a thing that worries me. I’m happy to coexist with folks like Shives (or many traditional Christians—sorry, Steve) who hold the first view. But I sometimes feel like some of this camp is not happy to coexist with me. There’s that sense that to consider someone who’s done really bad things potentially redeemable (at least given enough time, lives, etc.) is to be complicit in their crimes. To view a Nazi this way is to trivialize Nazism, to engage in a sort of “oh, it wasn’t that bad; we can be friends with Hitler.” And that, of course, makes me look like a bad person, like someone who won’t stand up against injustice.
Now, an obvious reply is the action is not the person: one can be disgusted and horrified by the Holocaust without denying its perpetrators the theoretical possibility of grappling with their actions and emerging sadder, wiser, and better people (in this life or some hypothetical future incarnation). But, boy, do I feel dirty just saying that. It reeks of placing too much focus on the “feelings” of criminals and too little on the torture and murder of innocents.
I do tend to focus more on the wrongdoers. As a writer, I spend a lot of time developing characters grappling with guilt. I was watching a video recently that asked writers to consider what themes we focus on, and looking over my corpus, my most obvious answer was guilt: Ethan’s guilt in Perdita, Elek’s guilt in The Hour before Morning, Tan’s guilt in my upcoming Soldier of the Borderlands, the main characters’ guilt in “The Rebirth of Joy” and “The Descent of the Wind,” which are really the same story differently packaged. Though not published (and won’t be for a long time), my novel, Mercy, is also all about guilt.
Why do I do this? Because I’m guilty. I’m keenly aware of my guilt—rational or not, it doesn’t matter. I feel keenly the statement in Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (quote may be inexact): “I’m not guilty because I murdered. I murdered because I’m guilty.” What’s more, I believe we’re all guilty, not of same caliber of offense but in the sense of being fallible human beings. In Mercy, one character says something to the effect, “I think we exaggerate the difference between the great and little errors,” and in broad strokes, I believe that’s true. With few exceptions, I believe humans act like humans, and how hideous our misbehaviors become (usually) has more to do with power than inherent depravity. I want to see everyone as human. I want to see us all as fumbling forward, at least as having the potential to.
I’m worry that this casts me as a bad person in certain discourses. And this is sticking in the back of my mind as I prepare to publish two books, both of which may get me in trouble here. My non-fiction book on relationship cutoff—while it fully supports that cutoff is sometimes the best choice—is, on the whole, critical of our “cutoff culture,” and that easily reads as sympathizing with the bad guy, the abuser. My sci-fi book, A Soldier in the Borderlands, centers a protagonist who does some truly awful things, though perhaps morally mitigated by the fact he’s very young (14) and in a very bad situation as a child conscript. Yet I worry here, too, that this book will strike the wrong chord by seeming to abet his actions, and the actions of others in the twisted society he grows up in. It’s not my intent to deny these actions are egregious. It is my intent to treat all my characters with compassion, to call their virtues, as well as their faults, as they’re named.
But I worry that distinction, even where it’s intellectually understood, is not considered ethically valid by many in my orbit today: the orbit of the socially progressive left. I’m not going to change what I believe or pretend I don’t believe it, but I do feel a little like I’m about to march into battle. Well, I hope I’m wrong.
