by Rachel Robison-Greene
A woman gets shot in the head by agents of the federal government and people quickly come up with reasons to explain why she must have deserved it. Thousands of people show up to protest mistreatment of their friends and neighbors. Detractors label them thugs, lawbreakers and paid actors. From the comfort of their homes in rural America, they indulge in fantasies of crackpot liberals and brown people breaking the windows of cars and businesses, abusing immigration officers, and burning cities to the ground. After all, that’s what happens in cities: liberals throw tantrums and burn them. This is what they’ve been encouraged to believe, and it suits them well.
Rule of law is ignored. Our democratic institutions are disrespected and undermined. We discontinue international aid knowing for certain that doing so will lead to the deaths of many people. We destroy our relationships with historical allies. Women complain of sexual misconduct by our leaders. Millions of pages of documents exist describing the sexual abuse of women and children by powerful people. These documents are inconvenient. Nothing to see here. Boys being boys. Red blooded American men. When you’re a star, you can do anything.
For the rest of us, a deep grief creeps in. How is it that so many of our friends and family members find this acceptable and even actively support it? How is it possible that even as the world watches a man get thrown to the ground by a group of immigration officers and shot multiple times in the head, some of our friends and family are infected by a nihilism that renders them unresponsive and even hostile to demands for empathy and compassion?
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus claims “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” This question arises in response to what feels like the meaninglessness of the human condition. We all want things to make sense. We want to follow our dreams. We want the universe to be a place in which we can thrive. Dreams are dashed again and again throughout a human life. Hearts are broken. Lives are cut short. We find ourselves without the resources to navigate the world in the ways we’d seen from the starry eyes of our youths. Many of us are broken and beaten down by life. Technology emerges that makes us feel displaced and uneasy. How might we respond?
Some people do everything in their power to avoid the problem. As Camus puts it, “Eluding is the invariable game. The typical act of eluding, the fatal evasion…is hope. Hope of another life one must “deserve” or trickery of those who live not for life itself but for some great idea that will transcend it, refine it, give it a meaning, and betray it.”
There are many ways for an idea to transcend life itself, and there are many reasons to hope that it will. The world can be a terrible place. It’s seductive to think that a religion, an ideology, or even a person might fill what may have previously seemed to be a bottomless pit of meaninglessness. The belief system is a life raft. The great leader is a beacon in the night. What does one do, though, when the beacon turns out to be a mirage, a hallucination, or even a deception? One option, of course, is to keep following it come what may, truth be damned. The alternative would be too horrible to countenance. We’d be left so fragile…
There may be no ideas or people that can imbue our lives with fundamental value. Rather than shattering us, this idea can help us to recognize our own strength. Though there may be no great person to foist all of our hopes and anxieties upon, we can do what we can to ensure that institutions are just within this life and fair for those who are impacted in the future.
In Political Emotions, Martha Nussbaum argues that political theory often ignores the role that moral and political emotions play in just institutions. She points out that negative emotions are often cultivated and used for political ends. Such emotions are attractive to the people being manipulated because they struggle with insecurities and a sense of meaninglessness. She says that one of the tasks for the cultivation of emotion in society is to “keep at bay forces that lurk in all societies and, ultimately, in all of us: tendencies to protect the fragile self by denigrating and subordinating others. Disgust and envy, the desire to inflict shame upon others—all of these are present in all societies and, very likely, in every individual human life.”
Politicians have cultivated attitudes of disgust toward racial minorities and immigrants. For too many people, this sense of disgust and outrage prevents them from recognizing members of these populations as full people with feelings and families. The same politicians have cultivated attitudes of disgust toward members of the LGBTQ community who seem to be generating this sentiment in others by merely existing and living their lives. At the same time, behaviors that ought properly to elicit disgust, like violence against innocents and sexual abuse of children are ignored because they conflict with the policies of the leader who is supposed to help the follower transcend meaninglessness. Of this tendency to use political disgust to oppress, Nussbaum says, “These forces lurk in society and need to be counteracted energetically by an education that cultivates the ability to see full and equal humanity in another person, perhaps one of humanity’s most difficult and fragile achievements.”
There are political emotions healthy democratic societies would do well to prevent, but there are also those it would do well to encourage, such as empathy, compassion, and measured anger in response to injustice. Nussbaum says that one of the main tasks for a society that aspires to justice and equal opportunity is
to engender and sustain strong commitment to worthy projects that require effort and sacrifice—such as social redistribution, the full inclusion of previously excluded or marginalized groups, the protection of the environment, foreign aid, and the national defense.
Many readers know well the sensation of waking in the morning and finding the world with all of its cruelty and injustice to be too much to endure. Loss of the bonds of family and friendship can feel like death. Nevertheless, it’s important to a functioning democracy for us to feel this way and to say so. It’s important to grieve and to feel angry. It’s crucial for us to continue to feel love and compassion for those who are hit the hardest by unjust policies and practices. It’s vital that we’re loud about it, even when it hurts. These political emotions are central to a thriving democracy.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.